Avatar: Fire And Ash Proves Why Jake Sully Is The Worst

Eywa has no dominion here ... but spoilers do. Read no further if you haven't yet watched "Avatar: Fire & Ash."

The "Avatar" movies are cinematic spectacles at their absolute best. Each film boasts incredible worldbuilding that makes Pandora a lived-in and tactile planet, and a sense of wonder that's unparalleled anywhere else in Hollywood. Pandora feels real, at least real enough to give you depression for not being able to visit it.

In the third movie, "Avatar: Fire and Ash," the sense of novelty from the marvelous water landscapes of "The Way of Water" is gone, but that allows James Cameron to instead double down on plot and themes this time around. For one, this is James Cameron at his most religious, with the movie presenting a clash of faiths and an exploration of what belief means. At its core, it's also a movie about rejecting pacifism in the face of annihilation, and about why resisting aggression cannot bring peace when the other side doesn't respect life itself. Arguably, this is also the movie where James Cameron is most obviously working to pass on the torch to the next generation. We see this with the change in narrator and the bigger focus on the children of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). This prompted many fans, including some of us here, to speculate that Jake would not make it out of the movie alive.

That didn't happen, of course, but maybe it should have. That's because Jake Sully is the worst, and "Avatar: Fire and Ash" proves it.

Jake Sully is the protagonist of the first "Avatar" and our entry into this world Cameron has created, also serving as the Toruk Makto and at one point, the leader of the Omatikaya Clan. In "Fire and Ash," however, he just sucks.

Let's start with his paternal skills. Jake is a horrible father, by any metric. His kids don't listen to him, and he does not care to listen to them either. He already got his firstborn killed, and his second almost takes his own life in this film. Then there's Spider (Jack Champion), his adopted teenage son that Jake and Neytiri practically raised. What does good old Jake do in this movie? Well, he goes all Abraham and tries to murder Spider while the poor kid is desperately trying to hold his pee.

But wait, Jake is more of a marine than anything. He's a leader, you say. Well, Jake is also a terrible leader to the Na'vi. He ignored every single plea from his son Lo'ak (Britain Dalton) to listen to Payakan about the need to fight back, which meant they almost didn't have a Tulkun army for the final fight. Oh, and there was that whole thing where Jake Sully tried to get the Na'vi to use human assault rifles and literally spit in the face of their entire way of life.

Truly, every decision Jake makes in "Fire and Ash" is the wrong one. He decides to run away and hide instead of fighting, which gets a lot of people killed. He steals his big rousing speech from "Planet of the Apes." He's a bad dude, and he doesn't have to be the main dude.

Jake Sully needs to go. He has served his purpose, and it's time to let someone else take up his place as this franchise's anchor. Spiritually, Jake is no longer Eywa's favorite child. Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) took his place as she is now going on her own spiritual journey with the Great Mother as a weird, immaculately conceived child. Jake is also no longer the only one who can rally all the troops and call them to action, because Payakan is the hero who managed to convince the Tulkun to join the fight (Lo'ak helped, too).

Jake has always been a problematic figure, arguably an example of white saviorism. He's a Lawrence of Arabia at best, and a Paul Muad'Dib Atreides at worst. Yet it is not too late for "Avatar" to solve this problem. Jake can simply exit the story and pass down the torch to the next generation. His role is and always was to just light a spark, rather than lead. He is not the representative of the Na'vi, nor a messiah. He's just the newest Toruk Makto, a guy who was called to rally the Na'vi to defend their home. He is not meant to be the guy who will inspire the Na'vi to change their ways and actually go on the offensive to end the RDA once and for all, let alone lead them to the canonical ending of the franchise as seen in the theme park.

You know who can lead them, though? Jake's kids. We're already seeing Kiri become a new sort of religious figure of authority, while Lo'ak's close bond to Payakan makes him uniquely placed to take up Jake's military/inspirational role.

We just need to get rid of Sully.