Fire and Ash Footage Goes From Quiet Beauty to Violent Rage

When the audience was handed 3D glasses as we walked into the final presentation at CinemaCon 2025, it could only mean one thing: we were going back to Pandora. And, sure enough, Disney presented the first footage ever from Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in James Cameron’s epic fantasy franchise.

Cameron wasn’t there in person, but he put the presentation in the capable hands of Neytiri herself, Zoe Saldaña. The footage began with the water tribe, the Metkayina, as characters swim through some kind of wreckage (maybe from the end of the last movie?), followed by scenes of the kids like Lo’ak, Kiri, Tsireya hanging about.

“The strength of your ancestors is here,” Tsireya says to Lo’ak as she touches his chest.

The Wind Traders show up, and all of the Metkayina are excited. It’s friendly. People are cheering, and some of the younger characters like Kiri and even Spider are riding with them. Cameron films these scenes with a real love for these people. These are basically flying pirate ships with sails made up of almost translucent material. Members of the tribe bark out orders around the ship like you’d see in an old pirate movie but the ships just keep gliding along. This is peaceful. This is beautiful. This is nice.

The ships slowly float through the mountains with some other Na’vi, like Neytiri, riding alongside on her Ikran. Spider playfully dangles his foot off the side. Again, everything is quiet and calm. But not for long. Neytiri spots something watching them from the sky and screams for Jake. It’s the Ash tribe and they have a much more menacing presence than the Na’vi people we know, thanks in large part to the bright red war paint they wear and the sparks coming off the back of their Ikrans.

The Ash tribe swoops down and attacks our heroes in a massive midair battle. Jake fires his gun. Neytiri fires her bow and arrow. But the Ash tribe shoots arrows with fire, which start to burn down the Wind tribe’s ships.

We see Jake seemingly trekking across Pandora by himself, walking by massive volcanoes and eventually arriving at what looks like the gate of the Ash tribe with his hands in the air, giving himself up. He and Neytiri are having problems with Lo’ak and tell him, “You can’t live in hate!” They hug him.

Tonowari, leader of the water tribe, says that they can’t defeat enemies that come from the stars. We then see the Ash tribe seemingly teaming up with Quaritch and the rest of the human army.

Neytiri is in the hospital and screams for her children. A raid is happening. There’s a quick shot of the eye of a Tulkun. Things end with a massive battle that’s happening on what looks like floating rocks. They seem to be in the middle of some kind of floating wreckage from a battle that’s still happening. Neytiri and the leader of the Ash tribe, who we’ve seen throughout the trailer, are fighting but Neytiri’s snarls come up against her flame thrower type weapon. “Your goddess has no dominion here,” the Ash woman says, confirming they don’t believe in Ewa. And that’s the end.

So you have the serenity of the Wind tribe, the kinetic energy of the Ash tribe and in the middle, the water people, which now includes the Sully family. We have a feeling not everyone is going to make it out alive.

Avatar: Fire and Ash opens December 19, and Cameron is still working on it.

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