Over the last few years, James Cameron has been single-mindedly focused on making Avatar sequels until we have blue Na’vi makeup coming out of our ears. Avatar 2 and 3 are on the way, but 4 and 5 and possibly 6 are, according to Cameron, up to audience reactions.
Cameron spoke to Vanity Fair about these infinite Avatar sequels, and here’s a bit of what he had to say:
“We all know where we’re supposed to be dramatically in the saga, and that’s great. Let’s face it, if ‘Avatar 2‘ and ‘3‘ don’t make enough money, there’s not going to be a ‘4‘ and ‘5.’ They’re fully encapsulated stories in and of themselves. It builds across the five films to a greater kind of meta narrative, but they’re fully formed films in their own right, unlike, say, ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy, where you really just had to sort of go, ‘Oh, shit, all right, well I guess I better come back next year.’ Even though that all worked and everybody did.”
Whatever the motivations behind Cameron’s backtracking might be – maybe he’s, like, reading how people generally don’t care about all these movies anymore – this is a good thing. If we have to have these Avatar sequels, don’t inundate the pop culture landscape with these things for another 20 years. Nobody wants that.
Anywho, Avatar 2 and 3 are on the way; there’s nothing we can do about those. Hopefully Sam Worthington can clear his busy schedule enough to be the superstar we all remember and love.
