“Avatar: Fire and Water: Making of the Avatar Films” Review: James Cameron’s Ocean of Ambition (Disney+)

As part of the promotional lead-up to Avatar: Fire and Ash, Disney+ has released a behind-the-scenes look at the making of both this film and its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water. In truth, Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films is much more “water” than “fire.” Apart from a few brief glimpses of the upcoming third installment, it’s almost entirely devoted to explaining the monumental challenges of shooting The Way of Water, with a particular focus on the complex process of filming scenes in and under the water.

As the actors themselves—Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Kate Winslet, Sigourney Weaver, among others—explain, these films may look like highly sophisticated digital animations, but they were largely performed by actors in conditions not so different from those seen on screen. While neither the bodies nor the water in the finished film are “real,” the technical, physical, and artistic efforts to simulate filming underwater certainly were.

After ruling out the possibility of using the “dry-for-wet” technique (shooting without water and adding it digitally later), James Cameron decided that everything meant to take place underwater should actually be filmed underwater. That choice led to the construction of massive tanks, the development of new technologies, and intense training for the actors, who learned to perform lengthy scenes while holding their breath. This two-part, 80-minute documentary details those innovations and efforts, illustrating just how complex and ambitious Cameron’s vision really is.

It’s ultimately up to each viewer—especially those revisiting The Way of Water before the new film—to decide whether such enormous technical and economic efforts were worth it. Still, when everyone feels the need to insist that these films aren’t “just animation,” something seems off. Many audiences perceive Avatar as not all that different from a Pixar movie, assuming the actors simply voiced animated characters rather than physically embodying them.

That’s not entirely fair—their faces and movements are indeed captured through motion-capture technology—but the films struggle with credibility due to their not-quite-convincing animation and the limited emotional pull of their interchangeable characters. No amount of physical precision can fully compensate for that. Cameron and his team have done everything possible to make these sequels spatially and physically believable, likely spending astronomical sums to ensure every underwater movement feels authentic. Yet the films themselves often fall short of the extraordinary effort behind them.

Cameron, however, has a habit of proving everyone wrong. The Way of Water was a flawed film—its narrative muscle just barely kept it afloat—but it still became a massive box-office success. Fire and Ash may follow the same path. Even if the Avatar saga leaves little lasting mark on popular culture (does anyone really think about Pandora or the Na’vi once the hype dies down?), it remains a testing ground for the technological advances that modern fantasy and action cinema rely on.

In that sense, these documentaries may end up being more significant for film history than the movies themselves. Perhaps Avatar’s real legacy will lie in the filmmaking techniques it pioneered rather than in its stories. That’s always been part of Cameron’s lore—beginning with the technological innovations of The Abyss and Terminator 2—but there was a time when we cared more about the movies than about how they were made. Increasingly, that balance seems to be shifting. Whether Avatar: Fire and Ash can tip it back remains to be seen.