James Cameron Reveals How Avatar Franchise Isn't Like Superhero Movies
James Cameron says that the Avatar movies aren't like superhero stories in one important way. He sat down with B TV to discuss the importance of one villain running through the whole story so far. Yes, The Infinity Saga brought the Marvel heroes together against one big threat. And there are other examples on the page of recurring villains. But, most cinematic encounters with bad guys only last one installment. Cameron's use of Miles Quaritch and his commitment to keeping him around does buck this trend. The director jokes that you need to have that evolution of the bad guy over time for the audience. (Interestingly, Jonathan Majors' Kang the Conqueror is a bit of column A and a little of column B.) Check out the rest of his comments down below!
"It's not like a superhero story where there's a new villain with every film. Same guy, right? Same adversary through the whole thing. But how he evolves is also very interesting once we bring in additional adversaries as we go along. Additional adversaries and additional allies."
More Avatar Sequels Are On The Way
One way this franchise is very like superhero movies is that there will be numerous sequels. In a chat with Chris Wallace on CNN and HBO Max, the filmmaker talked about how The Way of Water is going to at least break even and might make $2 billion dollars. That means more work for the team.
"It looks like just with the momentum that the film has now that will easily pass our breakeven in the next few days, actually, so so it looks like I can't wiggle out of this, I'm gonna have to do these other these other sequels," Cameron revealed. "And I'm sure that we'll have a discussion soon, you know, with with the top folks that Disney about, you know, the game plan going forward for Avatar 3, which is already in the can we've already captured and photographed the whole film. And then avatar four and five are both written we even have some of four in the can. So you know, I think we can see that that I think we've begun a franchise at this point."
The journalist would ask him if it was sad that other projects would likely never get made because he was consumed with Avatar materials. "Not so bad. I mean look, I understand this business and I understand the vagaries of it and the variables and you know the old expression you know, man proposes God disposes you never quite know what's going to happen," the director admitted. "I also believe in planning for the upside not not sort of just making a movie Herky jerky and then waiting to see what happens but plan for the upside and then accept that if it doesn't work."
Do you agree with Cameron's assessment? Let us know down in the comments!