As someone who loves spending multiple hours in a dark theater and getting transported to faraway, imaginative places to escape the world, I feel weird saying this: I think the Avatar movies are too long. I know, I know, there are so many great long movies (even James Cameron is prone to make superb epics), but after spending the better part of three-and-a-half hours with Avatar: Fire and Ash, I need to talk this out.
With the latest (and longest) installment of the Avatar franchise now out on the 2025 movie schedule, I think this is a good time as any to bring up my biggest complaint. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Fire and Ash and think it’s a cinematic achievement, but I can only sit in a chair for so long. Hear me out!
I Love A Long Movie As Much As The Next Guy, But Even I Have My Limits
Some of my favorite movies of all time have runtimes that cross the three-hour mark. Whether it’s modern gems like The Brutalist and its much-talked-about intermission or classics like The Godfather Part II and Lawrence of Arabia, I think sometimes filmmakers need all the room they can get to flesh out their stories.
That said, Avatar: Fire and Ash’s extensive 197-minute runtime seems a little much and borderline unnecessary. Knowing how long it was going to be before jumping back into the story of the Na’vi and traveling back to Pandora, I treated my screening like surgery in that I didn’t eat or drink anything the morning of or during the movie. I wasn’t forced to do that, but I thought there was nothing I could afford to miss. Well, about that…
Like 30 To 45 Minutes Of Fire And Ash Could Be Trimmed
As pointed out in CinemaBlend’s Avatar: Fire and Ash review, this is the longest entry in the franchise (Avatar was 162 minutes long, while Avatar: The Way of Water was 195 minutes), and you could feel those minutes adding up. There were multiple times when I kept wondering how much time was left and checked my phone to see that I still had two hours before the credits.
This isn’t to say it’s a bad movie, because it’s not; it’s just that there are a good 30 to 45 minutes that could be cut out, and the movie wouldn’t be any worse. Don’t get me wrong, James Cameron has crafted one of the best sci-fi movies in a long time and an unparalleled cinematic experience, but maybe some of those flying scenes, underwater sequences, and other minor story beats could have been left on the cutting room floor.
Again, I never had a bad time while watching but I can’t lie and say I wasn’t completely exhausted by the time the big finale came around. There was a pattern of a big action sequence followed by a long period of story multiple times throughout the movie, and by the final stretch of the epic, I was beat, both physically and mentally.
If the fourth and fifth Avatar movies end up happening (which I’m almost positive they will), I hope that Cameron makes them somewhat shorter and more streamlined. Not just for the sake of the story, but for the sake of the audience.
