Four Avatar sequels incoming: My thoughts

There’s been some fairly big news in the movie-going world recently. As some of you may have read in my one hundredth post last year, Avatar remains my favourite film of all time; I loved every minute of it from the phenomenal production values to the incredible battle scenes. On April 14^th 2016, director James Cameron, who has remained submerged from the Hollywood scene for the past seven years, announced that not three but four sequels were planned; it’s a rare move to announce so many follow-ups at once and I thought I’d share my impressions on the decision.

The reaction from the overall community has been quite mixed which tends to be associated with popularity. Whenever a piece of entertainment media becomes massively successful, the hate bandwagon becomes a common trend. With the highest grossing film of all time, you have to expect many naysayers who denounce the news. One reasonable complaint is that it limits creativity in favour of a profits pursuit; there’s a fair few people who would like to see Cameron return to the Terminator franchise which has recently been wreaked beyond repair. Others would like to see him branch out in a different direction again, promoting filmmaking creativity in the process. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the director do something new, but as it stands I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more from the world of Avatar.

My biggest concern with the Avatar sequels is that such a massive gap between films will ruin the film’s chances of gaining solid commercial success. By the time Avatar 2 releases (having been pushed back by Star Wars Episode VIII); it will have been nine years since the original. Audience engagement can drop massively over a long period, something which really damaged Sin City: A Dame to kill for in 2014. The film ended up being a commercial failure, making only 39.4 million dollars on a budget of 65 million; the original film came out in 2005 and the sequel’s lack of impact was magnified even more by the gap between the two. I’ll definitely be seeing each of the Avatar sequels, but many audiences may be disinterested when they arrive. The film will need to have a strong spread of advertising to bring people back into theatres; now that the series is competing with the return of Star Wars, Cameron and his crew will have to work even harder to stay relevant.

An epic five film saga has the potential to tell a deep and expansive story and with a bit of luck Avatar 2 should be a strong springboard for the next three sequels which will arrive between 2020 and 2023. James Cameron has rarely put a foot wrong as a director and surely with many years of work he’ll be able to create a series just as dazzling and gargantuan as the original film. He’ll also be co-ordinating writing efforts with the likes of Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds in 2005), as well as Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes). We’re still a couple of years off, but nevertheless I’m hoping that this planned vision for Avatar turns out well.