After waiting 13 years between Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water, the three years that have passed between the latter flick and Avatar: Fire and Ash feels like a walk in the park. Like its predecessors, the 2025 movie release was expected to be quite the long watch, as one cannot simply explore Pandora within a standard two-hour time frame. But now Fire and Ash’s official runtime has been revealed, and even by the standards of a Cameron movie, it’s pretty lengthy.
You’ll definitely want to make sure you use the bathroom prior to sitting down for Avatar: Fire and Ash at the theater and not drink a lot of soda as it’s playing. The movie is listed on AMC Theatres as being three hours and 15 minutes long, i.e. just shy of 200 minutes. Yeah, that’s a lot! So how does Fire and Ash’s runtime compare to James Cameron’s other movies? Here’s a breakdown of the theatrical runtimes of his feature directorial efforts, from least to greatest:
- Piranha II: The Spawning – 94 minutes
- The Terminator – 107 minutes
- Aliens and Terminator 2 – 137 minutes
- The Abyss – 140 minutes
- True Lies – 141 minutes
- Avatar – 162 minutes
- Avatar: The Way of Water – 192 minutes
- Titanic and Avatar: Fire and Ash – 195 minutes
There you have it: Avatar: Fire and Ash is tied with Titanic as James Cameron’s longest movie, meaning if it was being released on VHS, you’d need to watch it on two tapes. That’s quite an undertaking, though not one much bigger than Avatar: The Way of Water. Now I wonder if Cameron might try to outdo his 1997 epic romantic disaster movie and make either Avatar 4 or Avatar 5 his longest movie yet.
At least Avatar fans can take comfort knowing they’ll be getting their money’s worth when they go to see Fire and Ash next month. Taking place one year after the events of The Way of Water, the threequel will follow Jake, Neytiri and their children still grappling with the death of Neteyam. Simultaneously, they’ll clash with the aggressive Ash People tribe, led by Oona Chaplin’s Varang. As if all that wasn’t enough, Varang has also allied with Colonel Miles Quaritch, who, along with many of his soldiers in the first Avatar movie, was resurrected in The Way of Water as a Recombinant.
Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19. Get up to speed ahead of time by streaming the first two Avatar movies with your Disney+ subscription, and relish that you can pause them whenever you choose for bathroom and snack breaks.