James Cameron has ideas for Avatar 6 and Avatar 7, but he might die before making them
"Mortality catches up," he says about his ideas for making even more Avatar movies
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5,000 years ago, in 2017, James Cameron laid out his basic vision for the future of the Avatar franchise—which, at that point, was just the one movie. In addition to revealing that Avatar 2 would come out in December of 2020 (it didn’t), Cameron teased that Avatar 3 would come a year later (it didn’t), Avatar 4 would come in December of 2024 (it’ll be weird if it does), and Avatar 5 would come out in December of 2025 (it still could, but again, we’re a sequel behind his schedule). In a new chat with People, though, Cameron teased that he has ideas for Avatar 6 and Avatar 7, though he doesn’t think he’ll personally make it that far.
“We’re fully written through movie five,” he explained, “And I’ve got ideas for six and seven, though I’ll probably be handing the baton on at that point. I mean, mortality catches up.” He seemed to downplay the idea of mortality by noting that “we’re enjoying what we’re doing” on the Avatar movies, adding, “we’re loving it. We get to work with great people.”
As for why his vision for Avatar has always been on such a long timeline, he told People that he sees this as a “young universe” compared to Star Trek and Star Wars, and he says “you got to pour all your heart and energy into it” if you want your thing to have the staying power of those. On that note, he also responded to people who question why he has decided to dedicate what might be the rest of his career to this one universe, saying, “Why did Lucas keep working in the same thing? Why did Roddenberry keep working in the same thing? Because when you connect with people, why would you squander that? Why would you start over with something else that might not connect?”
It’s tough to argue with that. Avatar: The Way Of Water is the third highest-grossing movie of all time, behind only Avengers: Endgame and the first Avatar, so clearly these movies are speaking to people. Cameron says that’s because humans are “innately empathetic” and they’re drawn to these movies that are about making connections and “beauty” when so many other sci-fi movies are “dystopian.”
Avatar 3, whatever it ends up being called, is supposed to be released next December.
23 Comments
Hayao Miyazaki did Nausicaa as a manga while still working on Lupin, which was more influential than Cameron, who may or may not give up everything for a bigger sub. I’m watching Marvel shows and I saw “Digital Domain 3.0″ Cameron hasn’t touched that company after Titanic, they worked on Fight Club, and now, now, now he’s thinking “maybe I will die before Avatar 6?” Miyazaki drew Nausicaa, published it in a magazine, used the funds to make studio Ghibili…. so maybe, maybe, maybe we will see a knock off of Nausicaa? I’m going through 80s manga…. Cameron clearly cribs off of 80s Manga when it was first accessible to import. It’s obvious.
Cameron has never hidden his influences, even when it gets him into legal trouble.
I hope Yoram Gross’ family is firing up the lawyers.
I miss Harlan Ellison’s rants.
Did anyone think that we really needed a fucking heptology of Dances With Smurfcats?
The first two have made over $5 billion worldwide. That’s several good years of Marvel movies. So anybody who invested in either probably thinks seven is not nearly enough.
Would $5 billion fill a couple of swimming pools? Moreover, would $5 billion research some answers to put off the end of mortality for a few decades longer?
The whole franchise honestly baffles me. I’ve seen the films; my take has been that they’re aggressively fine. Neither bad nor good enough to make me have strong opinions, but pleasant enough if you want to watch the pretty pictures while munching on popcorn for a few hours. However – on the one hand, there seems to be high level of open disdain (or at least a sense of “oh god those suck why do they exist”) among most people that do speak about them, while on the other hand they do truly obscene box office numbers. On top of all of that, the two movies had remarkably little staying power in the zeitgest; they made headlines and money, and then disappeared except as a punchline, yet a decade-plus-later sequel still sold a fuckton of tickets. Plus, despite the seeming feeling of them being bad (or offensive, or lazy, or colonialist, or whatever other common criticism you prefer), they generally got good reviews and got nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars (which, yes, I know is not a good metric of anything, but still, they did).All of these things are true about the same franchise, and I don’t quite understand how that can be.
> Aggressively fine
That sounds about right. They were fine. That said, my teenage kids (who watched the re-release of Avatar in the cinema a couple of weeks before seeing Avatar: The Way of Water in the cinema) loved both of them. The people who vociferously hate Avatar are a loud minority in the greater scheme of things. Cameron will continue to make them and they will continue to make massive profit.
The hate I get — that’s just what happens when you’re successful enough. You can find similar enclaves that are pissed about Marvel or Star Wars, the other heavy presences in the highest grossers, and it’s not totally crazy. It’s one thing to see a movie and be underwhelmed; it’s another thing to have that movie you didn’t care for completely dominate the cultural conversation.The lack of fanatical love is what makes it a real outlier — Marvel and Star Wars are basically their own subcultures now, but no one’s buying Avatar t-shirts or building a lego Pandora. It’s like we all collectively go “Oh, yeah, I haven’t thought about that in years. I think the last one of those was okay” and then buy a ticket. Which happens all the time! It’s why there are a bunch of Screams and Spy Kids movies. But somehow, with these movies, it works on a truly unprecedented number of people.
it’s because it’s not nerds who go see these movies. it’s normal people.
There’s no way it’s just nerds going to see Marvel or Star Wars movies. There just aren’t that many of them. But they are heavily in the mix, since a nerd is often just someone who’s into something beyond what the average person considers normal. Given how huge it is, it’s weird that Avatar doesn’t have any.
If you look up Jason and Rosie’s X-Ray Vision podcast, Jason has an interesting take that he distilled from others that I’ll try to distill here: This franchise is admirably diabolically insidious in how calculated it lands in the money spot. That’s not a knock against it per se. But if you squint you could see how James Cameron is moving the sliders of adjustment with each scene and plot move. X axis = heart. Y axis = head. He has a good sense of the micro-moves necessary to keep appealing to everybody. Thus the aggressive fineness. He’s “Moneyballing” the entire creation. Now if that’s all he did, the franchise would be a snooze. What Cameron can still do really well, is spin an action set piece out of just about anything. Bad guys chase good guys in a game of “Gotcha.” Add three or four props and he’s good to come up with anything. I can’t even tell you why anything was happening in the last half hour of Way of Water except that the bad guys were after the blue guys and there were speed boats and whales, and propellers, and swimming and flying and things going “Boom” and in a possible nod to Star Wars, a bad guy’s arm gets ripped off. But it was exciting. He’s the only guy going who knows how to work in 3D. He’s at the front of CGI. He’s got Sigourney Weaver in a double role as her grouchy self, and as a CGI Mo-Cap possibly-psychic alien teenager! And she’s pretty good at it. Ripley is now Newt!So, I think the franchise falls on the shoulders of Cameron and his ability to make a compelling action set piece out of a fish, a string, and two coconuts, Sigourney Weaver as a shy alien 14 year old, and fucking Stephen Lang. May Stephan Lang jump bodies forever. But all that adds up to a (sigh) I guess I’ll plunk down $20 every three years. (Or $80 something depending who-else I’m paying for.)
Was the last half hour exciting, though? I found myself aggressively bored, and completely disinterested in what was happening to any of the characters. I don’t know if I’ve ever given less of a shit about the outcome of a story I’ve watched for solidly two hours plus.
“Ripley is now Newt!”But holy crap is that lazy writing…but this is a franchise that couldn’t be assed to replace ‘unobtanium’ in the script, so lazy is where it comes from.
They’re overly long and highly derivative video game cutscenes.
I think the investment is less in the Avatar universe than in the James Cameron one. For whatever shortfalls he might have from a scripting level, his worldbuilding, directing, and action choreography is just first rate. He brings the same abilities he honed on action movie classics like Terminator, Aliens, and T2 and combines it with the epic spectacle he honed in Titanic. The dude just knows how to make big blockbusters. I do not particularly spend a lot of my time pondering Avatar when I’m not watching the films, but it’s not like I do that for every blockbuster film series that I enjoy and look forward to but don’t get obsessive about in between installments.
“Why did Lucas keep working in the same thing? Why did Roddenberry keep working in the same thing?…*insert sound of cash register opening here*
These Avatar films are stealing us of some great non-Avatar films, that Cameron would have been making instead.
Avatar movies are like airport thriller books. A pretty cover over a retread story.
In a world of war, racism, climate change, rampant homophobia and transphobia, internet trolling, pandemic and reality TV, many people want something pretty and familiar to escape to. That’s why Avatar is so successful while also being completely mid.
That’s…probably the best reasoning I’ve seen for it.
It’s also why airport thrillers sell so well.