Avatar: Fire And Ash Revives One Of Hollywood's Most Familiar Sci-Fi Tropes

The way of water has no beginning and no end — just like spoilers. This article discusses major plot details from "Avatar: Fire & Ash."

"Avatar: Fire and Ash" is spectacular. It looks like a billion bucks, all as James Cameron continues his epic saga. This movie is constantly in conversation with "The Way of Water," expanding on its themes and plots, with Cameron and his writing team making "Fire and Ash" the most plot and theme heavy of the three films — exploring themes of religion, culture, the failure of pacifism, and much more.

After all, we finally meet Eywa, the Great Mother and anime-looking deity of the Na'vi. And there's the game-changing reveal that Spider is now the first human who can not only breathe the Pandoran air, but even perform tsaheylu and commune with Eywa with his shiny new kuru.

Of course, it's not just dense plotting and themes, as this is still a James Cameron spectacle. With that label comes an expectation of seeing some cool stuff, which Cameron more than delivers. There's the opening act with the windtraders and their incredible flying pirate ships, a concept way too interesting and visually inventive to be discarded after just 30 minutes or so.

But none of that matters, because the real star of the film, the weirdest and most stunning concept introduced in "Avatar: Fire and Ash," comes in very early, but doesn't pay off until the third act. It's a concept that revives a very familiar sci-fi blockbuster trope from the 2010s — the sky beam. That's right! James Cameron does a sky beam, and it puts all other sky beams to shame.

Sky beams were everywhere in the 2010s, from "Avengers" to "Man of Steel," from "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon." It quickly became a tired trope, a replacement for inventive locations and a lazy way of adding stakes. James Cameron remembers the sky beam, and he puts his own spin on them.

According to the official "Avatar" encyclopedia, the beam is technically called a "Flux Devil," a rare, naturally occurring electromagnetic phenomenon in Pandora — specifically at the Cove of the Ancestors of the Metkayina Clan. The vortex is caused by the overlap between the magnetic field of Pandora and those of Polyphemus (the planet Pandora orbits) which results in extreme electromagnetism that is relatively safe for Pandoran creatures but devastating for metal structures. Phenomena like this is what causes the lifting of the floating Hallelujah Mountains seen in the first movie.

What makes this more than just a sky beam is how Cameron takes the giant colorful beam for granted, ignoring it for most of the movie. Even during the climax, the only thing we learn is that it's a vortex that damages electronics — also known as "this is a final boss battle stage." The vagueness around the Flux Devil hits at the core of what makes "Avatar" special as a franchise, the fact that the real star of the movie is Pandora itself. This is the fictional place that made people depressed because it wasn't real, after all. Pandora is a moon full of cool little features that aren't really explained in the movies, like the floating Hallelujah Mountains, which we just accept and move on from. Random sky beams are the reason we love "Avatar." May there be more weird things in the next one.