Avatar: Fire and Ash throws its main characters back into all-out war, but sadly, it makes sense for the trajectory this story has been on. The trailer for the movie debuted on Monday, and it’s full of hints of the violence ahead for Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). To put a finer point on it, Worthington sat down for an interview with Empire, explaining what this tragedy will really mean for his character. Jake Sully came to Pandora as a soldier in the first movie, and his arc was all about leaving warfare behind to find a different path. In Fire and Ash — in theaters on December 19th — he will be forced back to his old ways, not just by enemies, but by his own grief.
Avatar: The Way of Water ended on a bitter note, and almost a cliffhanger, in an emotional sense. Jake and Neytiri’s eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) was killed in the climactic showdown, and director James Cameron told Empire that grieving for Neteyam is the emotional foundation of this new story. “Everybody in this movie is reacting from a place of trauma,” he said. “Everybody. Jake’s processing the death of his son. Lo’ak is processing the death of his brother and his own guilt around that.”
“The peacemaker that Jake was in 2 has changed, because he’s grieving,” Worthington added. “He doesn’t know how to go forward, and so he goes back to the world that he knows, which is soldiering. To attack, to go to war, that’s a comforting place for Jake.”
Worthington said that the grief forms a wedge between Jake and Neytiri, and he feels it is elegantly done. “Because of Neteyam’s death, there is now a division in that relationship,” he said. “That’s a great design by Jim — how do you split apart the perfect love story? Jake and Neytiri share this painful wound, but they can’t seem to heal each other. So they kind of split, not because they want to, but because they’re just trying to survive within themselves. Jake heads back to battle and Neytiri kind of closes down.”
The trailer gave us a glimpse of the tension between Jake and Neytiri, as he lashed out at her in one scene, warning that she won’t be able to live “in hate” for long. It was a powerful role-reversal for the couple, and it looks like Neytiri may have some unexpressed wrath as well. After threatening to kill Spider at the end of the previous movie, she can now be seen in the fray once again, and she seems to come face to face with the new Na’vi antagonist, Varang (Oona Chaplin).
Avatar: Fire and Ash hits theaters on December 19th. The two previous movies are streaming now on Disney+.
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