The previous Avatar: Fire And Ashtrailer featured typically stunning visuals, but gave away little in terms of plot. By contrast, the new trailer lays out the antagonist’s motivations completely. “This is the only pure thing in this world,” the Mangkwan leader Varang (Oona Chaplin) explains over a flame. “The fire came from the mountain. Burnt our forest. My people cried for help. But Eywa did not come.”
The Mangkwan clan (or the Ash People) “have a bunch of unresolved trauma” from being hit by natural disaster, Chaplin previously told Empire magazine. Those circumstances lead Varang to team up with the humans who still seek to dominate Pandora. “You wanna spread your fire across the world, you need me,” Quaritch (Stephen Lang) tells Varang in the trailer. “It’s easy to fall into the villain mentality, but actually she’s the hero of her people. Because she’s saved them out of misery and starvation and begging,” Chaplin shared with Empire.
Beyond the machinations of the Mangkwan, there are other huge developments in the latest Avatar: Fire And Ash trailer. Spider (Jack Champion) experiences a transformation that allows him to experience Pandora without a mask, which changes the game for humans’ interaction with the planet. But that, of course, only further puts the Na’vi at risk. In the third film, Spider and his birth father Quaritch will “reconnectout of necessity,” Stephen Lang told Empire. The actor says the “relationship will deepen” between father and son, and “respect and admiration really develop in spades, as well as animosity and manipulation.” However, he warns that “when enemies cooperate, you can be sure betrayal is just around the corner.”
Avatar: Fire And Ash, directed by James Cameron, also stars Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, David Thewlis, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, and Kate Winslet in addition to Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña. The movie premieres in theaters December 19.
