By Ajith Rajapaksa –
Ajith Rajapaksa
The third film in the Avatar series “Fire and Ash” is currently being screened in cinemas around the world. Presented as a 4DX experience, it incorporates motion, scent, wind, water, and mist, immersing the audience deeply in the world of Pandora. The first Avatar film was released in 2009. It set numerous records, won three Academy Awards, and received more than 80 international awards. Its visual effects and 3D technology were especially praised. The film earned approximately USD 2.9 billion in global revenue against a production cost of USD 237 million. The second film “ The Way of Water,” reportedly cost nearly twice as much to produce and was released in 2022.
Throughout the Avatar series, what is depicted is the immense destruction inflicted across the universe by humans driven by greed, for valuable minerals, wealth, and biological substances that promise immortality. The main character, Jake Sully, is a former corporal in the United States Marine Corps. After fighting in endless wars on Earth, he is left permanently paralysed from the waist down. Confined to a wheelchair and lacking the financial means for adequate treatment, Jake is abandoned by a system entirely controlled by profit-hungry corporations. Coming from the working class, Jake represents a social stratum that is used for military conflict and discarded once it is no longer useful. Although the technology exists to repair his spinal injury, he cannot access it. His economic desperation drives him to accept the Pandora mission.
Pandora is a moon inhabited by another form of life. The Na’vi are the indigenous, humanoid species of this fictional moon. They possess a neural organ, resembling a braid, which allows them to connect physically and spiritually with Pandora’s fauna and flora. The Na’vi live in close harmony with nature, and all life on Pandora is guided by Eywa, the planet’s sentient life force.
Several clans inhabit Pandora. The first Avatar film focuses on the forest dwelling “Omaticaya” clan. The second film introduces the “Metkayina,” a reef and ocean-based clan. The third film introduces the “Mangkwan,” or Ash People, the clan of fire and ash. All these groups are Na’vi. Spiritually connected, ecologically balanced, and communally oriented, they stand in stark contrast to the human colonisers who arrive to exploit Pandora’s resources.
As environmental destruction on Earth intensifies and the demand for rare minerals grows, a powerful interstellar mining and colonial entity “The Resources Development Administration” (RDA), decides to invade Pandora. The primary objective is the extraction of unobtanium, a highly valuable mineral critical to Earth’s energy needs.
An “Avatar” is a genetically engineered Na’vi body remotely operated by a human mind. These avatars are deployed for various missions on Pandora. Jake is recruited because his identical twin brother, a scientist trained to operate an avatar, has died. Since avatar bodies are genetically matched and extremely expensive, Jake becomes a cost-effective substitute despite lacking scientific training. His role is to act as an informant, reporting back to the military and the RDA.
At the beginning of the story, Jake is politically indifferent. He accepts the mission primarily to survive and believes cooperation will allow him to regain the use of his legs. However, his lived experiences among the Na’vi rapidly radicalise him. He transforms from a discarded imperial soldier into a militant figure who rejects militarism, corporate extraction, and colonial logic. Jake represents the alienated human subject of late capitalism, broken by empire, yet ultimately resisting it to reclaim dignity and purpose.
After falling in love with a Na’vi woman, Jake chooses to protect the Na’vi rather than submit to human authority. As a result, he is branded a traitor. A military unit led by Colonel Miles Quaritch is sent from Earth to capture him.
The film’s central conflict unfolds between the Na’vi, who live in spiritual harmony with nature, and the colonial human forces. The human military acts with extreme brutality, slaughtering indigenous populations that stand in their way. Jake’s military training helps the Na’vi resist. While humans depend on advanced technology for long-distance communication, the Na’vi are biologically capable of direct neural connection. They also ride the Toruk, a massive aerial predator revered as sacred. Those who master it are honoured as Toruk Makto, legendary leaders.
Ultimately, the Na’vi defeat and expel the human forces. All surviving humans, except a small group of scientists, are forced to leave Pandora. Neytiri kills Colonel Quaritch. Spider, the colonel’s son who was born on Pandora, is left behind because transporting small children in cryosleep is impossible. Jake permanently transfers his consciousness into his avatar body through a Na’vi ritual, severing all ties with human colonial society.
Avatar: The Way of Water
The second film depicts a shift from extractive industrial capitalism (unobtanium mining) to late-stage financial capitalism, where value no longer resides primarily in resources or labour but in rent, speculation, and life itself. This transition is politically significant and far darker. The primary commodity is “amrita,” a fluid extracted from the brains of the tulkun, highly intelligent, whale-like marine beings. Amrita halts human ageing and grants extended life, making it enormously desirable to Earth’s elites. This represents a transition from classical extraction to bio capitalism, where biology, longevity, and even consciousness becomes sites of accumulation.
To protect his family, Jake leaves the forest when another military force arrives from Earth. He seeks refuge with the ocean-dwelling Metkayina clan. Although their leader initially resists, knowing that sheltering Jake puts his people at risk, he ultimately allows them to stay. Adapting to aquatic life is challenging for Jake’s family, but they quickly develop the necessary skills. Meanwhile, Spider, left behind on Pandora, befriends Jake’s children. He respects Na’vi customs and lives as an adopted member of the family.
The tulkun are gentle, intelligent beings deeply tied to oceanic Na’vi culture. One outcast tulkun, “Payakan”, forms a bond with Jake’s son Lo’ak. Payakan was exiled for allegedly breaking the tulkun code of nonviolence by killing a human. He later reveals he was not responsible. Although Metkayina leaders remain sceptical, Payakan helps Lo’ak navigate the oceans and eventually fights alongside the Na’vi against humans.
The returning human military force is again led by Colonel Quaritch, now resurrected as a recombined genetic and memory copy. The original human Quaritch is dead, but his replica lives on, no longer remotely controlled. Spider, Quaritch’s son, symbolises a human generation trapped between two worlds, seeking coexistence rather than domination.
The Metkayina represent a commons-based society. The ocean belongs to no one and is governed through ritual and shared responsibility. Financial capitalism cannot tolerate the commons, everything must be priced, traded, and monetised. Jake is no longer a revolutionary leader but a displaced refugee, constantly fleeing. This reflects a grim reality: financial capitalism creates permanent insecurity, even for those who resist it. Revolution becomes harder when power flows like capital, without territory or centre. The Way of Water is deeply pessimistic, financial capitalism does not collapse easily, it adapts, expands, and continues extracting. The enemy is no longer a visible army but a decentralised system.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
The third movie introduces another Na’vi group, the Ash People, shaped by volcanic landscapes, fire, and destruction. They are morally ambiguous and inclined toward cruelty, unlike the forest or ocean clans. Politically, this is significant. The narrative moves away from romantic resistance toward a more materialist understanding of conflict.
Although the enemy is militarily defeated, Jake’s family mourns the death of his eldest son, fracturing their unity. The Metkayina formally accept Jake’s family as their own, and Jake realises that running is no longer a solution.
Another human force arrives, led once again by Quaritch’s avatar. Through manipulation, he forms an alliance with the Ash People, promising weapons in exchange for help capturing Jake and hunting tulkun. The conflict thus becomes an internal one, not merely a battle against an external enemy. Although the Metkayina eventually prevail, the film questions the moral limits of violence. Military victory may offer physical survival, but the spiritual and ethical cost of war remains unresolved. Colonial violence fractures societies from within, and scarcity and instability generate authoritarian tendencies even among the oppressed.
The Ash People are not outside capitalism, they are its by-product, shaped by ecological collapse, permanent war, and resource scarcity. They mirror the rise of warlords, militias, and ethnic nationalists on the capitalist periphery, forces later exploited by empire to justify intervention.
Resistance itself becomes violent and destructive. Jake is forced to confront this uncomfortable truth. The film reflects real-world struggles where, after a common enemy weakens, internal conflicts emerge. The central question becomes, what replaces empire? If survival requires violence, can a civilisation still call itself peaceful? Without a new ethical framework, capitalism poisons resistance itself, turning victims into agents of violence.
Avatar can be read as a powerful allegory of the decline of the American Empire, not as a sudden collapse, but as a moral, institutional, and hegemonic decay. Traditional American myths justified power through democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law. In Avatar, these ideals are absent. There is no Congress, no courts, no public debate. The RDA rules Pandora through brute force. This reflects a shift from democratic legitimacy to corporate governance in American politics.
Decisions about war, resources, and human life are no longer collective choices but business calculations. Politics becomes management, violence becomes logistics. This mirrors post, Cold War American power, where military interventions are justified not by ideology but by market stability and supply chains. Once grounded in moral narratives of liberation and progress, American power in Avatar abandons these pretences. Colonel Quaritch speaks openly of terror, shock, and annihilation.
This mirrors the behaviour of US President Donald Trump, who disregards international institutions, withdraws from the Paris Climate Agreement, promotes fossil fuel extraction, dismisses environmental destruction, intimidates opponents, praises authoritarian leaders, and openly frames foreign policy as a series of business transactions. Such bluntness reflects the final stage of empire: when legitimacy erodes, violence becomes honest. Power no longer seeks consent, it demands submission. This, Avatar suggests, is the true mark of imperial decline. The collapse of American power is not defined by a loss of strength, but by a loss of legitimacy, and once legitimacy disappears, even overwhelming power becomes fragile.
