Avatar: Fire And Ash Provided A Big Disney World-Related Payoff, But I Wish We Got More Of It

Avatar is a strange film franchise. It’s one that has, in its first two movies, made two of the highest-grossing movies ever made, and yet, it has been accused of having no cultural impact whatsoever. While James Cameron has been trying to manage expectations on Avatar: Fire and Ash, the movie is clearly going to make some box office bank, once again showing that people are interested in these movies.

The idea that Avatar was this franchise that everybody had forgotten about never made sense to me. Maybe that’s because, as a theme park journalist, it has been part of my life for years. Since 2017, years before even The Way of Water was released, Pandora: The World of Avatar has been part of Walt Disney World. And now, part of Disney World has become the best part of Fire and Ash.

James Cameron Has Been Teasing Fire And Ash’s Windtraders For Years

Disney bought the theme park rights to the Avatar franchise way back in 2011, two years after the first film became the highest-grossing movie ever made. Construction began on a theme park land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World back in 2014, and a little over three years later, the land opened to much fanfare.

It primarily focused on the original movie, including a ride where you floated down a Na’vi river and one where you rode on the back of a banshee. However, even back then, it was clear that James Cameron was thinking about the future of his alien world, as elements of future films became part of the land at the beginning.

The end of Avatar: Flight of Passage, the banshee ride attraction, saw a massive whale-like creature jumping from the water. It was an animal we would come to know in Avatar: The Way of Water as a Tulkun. But there was also a reference in Fire and Ash that’s been there the whole time. The gift shop in the Avatar land has been called Windtraders since day one, and now we finally know what that means.

The Windtraders Were The Highlight Of The New Avatar, And Could Have Been So Much More

As a theme park fan, I was excited to see the Windtraders come to life in Fire and Ash. It was revealed long before the movie’s release that the characters would make an appearance. The only thing about them that I found disappointing was that they weren’t in the movie nearly enough.

Of the two new tribes of Na’vi that the film introduced, I found the Windtraders far more interesting. Their method of transportation, on massive freight carriers strapped to flying animals, was the coolest thing to look at in 3D in the whole movie. The people themselves, a tribe focused on commerce, and thus trying to stay out of the conflict, also had far more potential for drama than the more traditional villains.

The action sequence involving the Windtraders, which sees a battle in the air when the Ash People attack, is also the highlight of the movie as far as the action goes. The finale battle is bigger, but it’s largely set pieces we saw in the last movie. This fight felt fresh, new, and different in ways most of the rest of the movie simply didn’t.

Needless to say, when that battle is over and the Windtraders disappear from the story, it was quite disappointing. In the end, the characters only seem to exist as a way to transport Jake Sully and his family to the place where they come in conflict with Varang and her Ash People. Once that happens, their utility as characters is done. It would have been nice to see them return at the end to fight the Ash People in retribution for the earlier slaughter. If nothing else, it would have added a new element to the fight.

James Cameron seems to be hedging his bets and sounds far less than certain that Avatar 4 and 5 will actually happen. If they do, I certainly hope we see more of the Windtraders. There’s an opportunity there that I wish Fire and Ash had taken advantage of.