The film felt, to me, like a retread of The Way of Water in enough many ways that it almost makes the first sequel redundant. This is simply a more entertaining movie that presents the exact same ideas and concepts only without dragging it's fucking feet in delivering them. I feel like you easily could've cut down both movies into one by drawing a smaller cast of characters, and framing it with a proper juxtaposition between Quaritch swaying the Ash People and Jake joining the Water People. So many beats are the same between the two sequels, but they simply land better here, that it's clear there was a lot of copy paste going on in The Way of Water, and here, they did it again but bigger and better.
Vrang and the Ash people are a terrific foil, and should've been used a lot more because that's really where the movie shines. The scarification and blood letting is a bold new version of the Na'vi, counter to their "noble savage" presentation thus far. It makes the entire concept of "blue cat people" more interesting, because they're no longer perfect. Their rejection of the Na'vi ways, and open hostility toward Ewya, contrasted against the other Na'vi thus far is a great concept - but it feels like it was under used so that they could move the other plot lines along. That's a bit sad because they're basically the same plot lines from the second movie, although they're almost all better here. Lo'ak's plot line works better here, for example, because there's an actual reason for the disconnect between him and Jake - the death of his brother. Compared to the second movie where he's just a teenager doing teenager stuff, it lands dramatically better. So much so that Cameron should've known, and not tried to make this two movies.
Despite all the screen time, I felt Quaritch didn't get much character development. I expected him to go full native after falling in with Vrang, but the movie didn't give me enough time with that to see it through. Quaritch rejecting the humans and joining the Ash People in their nhilism would've made for a better character arc. I guess we might see it in Avatar 4? He just keeps doing the same thing, over and over. If he really hated Jake enough to keep doing this again, and again, and again, I feel like he'd have shot him in the face already.
I'll need to watch it again, but I appreciate the work being done with Neytiri, who felt strangely absent in the second movie. The grieving mother, the hateful native, the dominant warrior; she's slowly becoming a solid character with depth and purpose. I liked her admitting she hates the "pink skins" and Jake trying to push back on it. Unfortunately, that scene also seemed over too quickly with little consequence. The mother of your children just admitted that whenever her kids act up, she feels ashamed because she blames the human part of them for all their faults.... and then that goes nowhere, I guess? If you're going to try and dig into the realities of an inter-species relationship in your sci-fi movie, please at least have the courtesy to follow it through with some kind of payoff or resolution.
Spider and Kiri were also in the movie.
Seeing Eywa's face was an interesting choice, giving the deity Na'vi personage in the "spirit realm", which has now morphed from a database of fractured memories in the first film, to a complete memory playback machine in the second movie, to a legitimate full blown after life here in this movie. Obviously this will be continued through Kiri in future films, but it raises questions about life after death. Quaritch and the other humans were able to be revived with the human's technology, it might reason that Ewya has this ability too, given the Na'vi appear to live on in the "spirit realm" completely intact.
I'm curious to see where the story might go from here, but if all Cameron has planned is another "Quaritch kid naps kids to try and capture Jake again... again, then Human and Na'vi fight, Humans lose because Ewya magic", then this might be the right place to let the story stay. It's clearly not completed, but I'm not sure going back to the same well for a fourth time is the right move without something to seriously shake up the formula here.
Overall, it's a better movie than the first sequel, but if Cameron had been honest with the story and himself, half the characters here should've been cut, and both movies should've been condensed down into one movie. That one movie, had it been the first sequel, stood a chance of being a superior film than the original. Instead, we got an ok second film followed by a third film that largely makes the second film redundant.