The Avatar trilogy is some of the biggest, boldest filmmaking in modern cinema (at least on the technical front). Taking audiences to the magical world of Pandora and its indigenous humanoids, the Na’vi, allowed James Cameron to bring together all of his cinematic interests into one record-setting franchise. Cameron’s favorites are all there, from large-scale set pieces and apocalyptic sci-fi action to immersive world-building, romance, and ample water, all present and accounted for. These films are so grand and expansive that they’ve nearly redefined what’s even possible for sci-fi action cinema, with Cameron evolving motion capture in ways that expand our ability to bring performers into new worlds. While Fire and Ash continues to impress visually, some sequences feel familiar, as if Cameron is relying on the same breakthroughs that defined the first two films rather than pushing into entirely new territory.
He’s also at a crossroads, recently telling THR that he doesn’t intend to merely do Avatar for the last leg of his filmmaking journey. As much as I respect Cameron for his beautiful, creative world-building and the larger-than-life vibes of the Avatar films, that’s a great thing.
James Cameron Is One Of The Best At Original Cinematic Visions
Three films in, the scale of Avatar‘s narrative is expansive and the stakes for the Pandoran world we’ve come to love have never been higher. Though Cameron has already written the fourth and fifth films, he’s still hedging his bets on its final entries. Cameron’s said before that he still intends to direct the 4th and 5th Avatar films, but he has also said he’d be willing to end the franchise if the third film flops. In a recent interview with THR, Cameron said, “I’ve got other stories to tell, and I’ve got other stories to tell within Avatar.” He continued:
What won’t happen is, I won’t go down the rabbit hole of exclusively making only Avatar for multiple years. I’m going to figure out another way that involves more collaboration. I’m not saying I’m going to step away as a director, but I’m going to pull back from being as hands-on with every tiny aspect of the process.
The big enemy here is time. Were Avatar 4 and 5 to be made with the 71-year-old Cameron at the helm for both, assuming three years between the release of each film, given the three-year gap of Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash, he would be around 77 when the final film premieres, capping his career with a five-pack of maximalist spectacles. The art of cinema and audiences need more from James Cameron than just Pandora.
James Cameron’s franchise is on track to beat more records than ‘The Way of Water.’
We’re in an era plagued by studios mining IP and gobbling franchises, preferably ones they can build universes from. With theatrical windows collapsing and the one-two punch of streaming and COVID having conditioned audiences to eschew theaters, the regurgitation of old stories isn’t sufficient to inspire audiences to head to theaters. Between the Terminator franchise, Titanic, and a host of other memorable films, Cameron is one of cinema’s biggest innovators. He tells big, bold stories that center on time-honored themes, and executes them with technical precision. His capacity for innovating and seeing possibilities in a storytelling world is legendary. James Cameron is as skilled at inventing original tales like The Terminator and Avatar as he is at expanding existing ones in stunning new directions, like Aliens. That’s a rare skill, and one we need.
And We Need Cameron’s Ability To Get Original Visions Made
It’s also worth noting that Cameron isn’t merely good at big, original visions: he’s good at getting impossible projects made. Avatar: The Way of Water was an easy film to greenlight, given that 2009’s Avatar quickly became the highest-grossing film of all time (now sitting at nearly $2.8 billion at the global box office). James Cameron is the box office king, given Avatar beat his own record with the Oscar-winning historical romance Titanic, but the films are so wildly different that there was no guarantee that a phenomenon was coming. Cameron is successful and persistent, and along with a small group of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, he’s also one of the few remaining directors that studios don’t say no to (irrespective of budget). Best yet, audiences showed up in droves for a new Cameron picture—it took one week for Fire and Ash to make back its whopping $400 million budget.
The Avatar trilogy has been a solid exemplar of grand, fun, maximalist sci-fi cinema. These films are big, bold, and look great in IMAX. Even still, there’s evidence that the time is right for Cameron to move on to new territory. The Way of Water used a repetitive device to evolve its story: every time things were stagnant, the Sully kids were endangered. Fire and Ash finds new threats, but its final hour repeats the major beats of The Way of Water‘s finale. Cameron isn’t stuck, but he’s at his best crafting new worlds and visions. He’s not suffering from creative burnout either, with 10 reported projects in various levels of progress. It’s clear that Cameron’s creative heart isn’t only in Pandora, and he has a wealth of new stories he intends to tell. In an era where we need big, innovative films that land at the box office and escape studio interference, we need new worlds from Cameron. Unlike cinema, Pandora’s doing just fine. Cameron has proven he can invent entirely new cinematic worlds, and while Pandora remains breathtaking, audiences may be craving that same sense of fresh innovation in his next projects.
Avatar: The Way of Water
- Release Date
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December 16, 2022
- Runtime
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192 minutes
- Director
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James Cameron
- Writers
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Amanda Silver, James Cameron, Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, Shane Salerno
