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 14th
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.