Those wondering if the third film in the saga about clashes between humans and blue alien creatures would live up to the epic stature of its predecessors can hold their collective Pandora breath. Despite a lush rendered environment, James Cameron’s latest opus Avatar: Fire and Ash (C) is just as head-scratching in its mediocrity as the two films before it. In some ways this one’s a little worse as it flagrantly rehashes many of the themes in the last bloated entry. Rarely has so much meticulous craft been invented at the service of such benign characters and pedantic a storyline. Riffs on loss, conflicts with warring tribes and meddling humans, meditations on the nobility of sea creatures and even Biblical parables about fathers and surrogate sons don’t make this entry any better. The soggy story and screenplay extinguish most of the intrigue here, with flickers of action sequences filling the ample running time between the senseless sermonizing. None of the CGI-coated actors get much of a showcase as this glorified screen saver parades before us.