Fire & Ash's 3D & Technical Criticism

Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s presentation in high-frame-rate 3D gets a new defense from director James Cameron. After incorporating a higher frame rate into substantial portions of 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, the upcoming third installment in the epic saga is poised to lean even further into this technology, but the decision isn’t without its detractors.

Speaking with Discussing Film, Cameron addresses complaints about Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s use of 3D and high frame rate (HFR), making clear that it’s not a point of view he agrees with. “I think $2.3 billion says you might be wrong on that,” the director says, referencing The Way of Water‘s stellar box office performance. “Well, that’s the argument from authority,” he continues, “but the argument from artistic is: I happen to like it, and it’s my movie.”

Like Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit movies before it, The Way of Water uses HFR in the name of increasing immersion in the film’s 3D world. While most standard movies are presented at 24 frames per second (fps), Jackson and Cameron, among other filmmakers, made the decision to use 48fps for large sections of runtime, which theoretically makes the scenes appear more “real.”

While one certainly can’t argue with The Way of Water‘s box office returns, there are outspoken critics of both 3D and HFR in movies. A common complaint about HFR specifically is that it actually hurts immersion, as it can make a movie look less traditionally cinematic and more like a video game or a soap opera.

Cameron has previously defended HFR as a means of improving 3D, particularly for underwater scenes, and The Way of Water has been hailed as one of the most visually stunning examples of 3D moviemaking. The heyday of 3D blockbusters may be over, but Cameron continues to champion it with his Avatar movies, and it’s clearly a format that audiences will embrace under the right circumstances.

2009’s Avatar, after all, remains the highest-grossing movie of all time with a worldwide gross of $2.9 billion. Though this franchise-starter didn’t utilize HFR, it did push the boundaries of 3D and was celebrated for its visuals.

It remains unclear whether the planned Avatar 4 and 5 will happen, but Cameron’s latest comments suggest that, if the films do move forward, audiences can expect more 48fps sequences. Not only does The Way of Water‘s box office performance suggest most audiences aren’t especially bothered by HFR, but the filmmaker evidently believes in its artistic merit, too.

Even so, HFR is sure to remain divisive. While many questions remain about Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s story, audiences can evidently expect some major deviations from the standard 24fps presentation when they return to Pandora on December 19.