Beautiful Burdens

VATAR: Fire and Ash is the fading echo of a breathtaking song. We return to Pandora; feel the caress of the wind, flow of the water, softness of its bioluminescence, and breath of every being.

- PRASHANTH VALLAVAN

Decades later, you still feel the exhilarating rush when the Sullys soar the skies on top of their winged reptiles. There is immense joy in the little moments where the characters interact with the seemingly conscious ecosystem all around them.

When James Cameron takes the time to show us the children exploring the ocean, playing with their aquatic friends, it reminds us why the alien planet struck a chord with us, leaving us yearning for a place that never was, and a curious case of unlived nostalgia sets in. As for the story itself, we keep finding echoes of earlier storytelling beats threaded through interesting moral quandaries set around the world and its characters, of which most of them are interesting, some of them stale, and all of them woefully underexplored.