umour me for a second: despite its big, flashy, expensive exterior, I believe Avatar: Fire and Ash to be the perfect Christmas family movie — kind of like the first Die Hard, another fun Christmas family movie.
Strip away the action, and Avatar is about overcoming odds, keeping the family together, forgiveness and redemption, with a little bit of unexpected magic near the climax. Isn’t that exactly what a Christmas movie is all about?
In Fire and Ash, the magic comes courtesy of Eywa, the spirit of the alien planet Pandora that resides in everything and commands the wildlife. One connects to Eywa through tendril-like organic connections called “queues” at the end of Na’vi hair, which provide neural links to control animals and access the spirit realm, where souls of every dead person on Pandora reside (after their bodies are absorbed into Eywa’s soil).