Will the new Avatar be the last?

For someone who has directed two of the three highest-grossing films of all time – and if we include Titanic in the mix, three of the top five – James Cameron struck an unusually modest figure at this week’s premiere Avatar: Fire and Ash. When asked at the screening whether its inevitable box-office success would result in the planned fourth and fifth films being produced, the erstwhile King of the World responded “I’m not even thinking about four. Are you kidding me? I’m unemployed right now.”

Admittedly, Cameron’s definition of “unemployed” is rather different to that of most people, whether they be A-list directors or the less fortunate. He has now spent 16 years in the Avatar universe, and after the inordinate success of the first picture – still the highest-grossing film in history – he has shown no interest in diversifying away from the world of Pandora and its motion-captured blue denizens, instead constructing an increasingly baroque and detailed universe that drags in vast audiences. The films may be titanic in length – the latest one clocks in at 195 minutes – but they are also staggering in ambition and imaginative force, even if those who might prefer something more cerebral and less, well, blue are likely to be disappointed.

Nonetheless, the now-71-year-old Cameron might be forgiven for dampening sky-high expectations with the latest release, as the world of cinema has changed beyond all recognition since 2009. Back then, 3D was the hottest game in town, with the Terminator and Aliens director its leading pioneer, and audiences were desperate to put on their plastic glasses and soak up the spectacle. Now, these same audiences have been reduced in the post-Covid, streaming era, and 3D is a novelty format that only Cameron still seems enamored of, despite or perhaps because of the high supplements that theater owners can charge for tickets.

There are other issues, too. While the PG-13 Avatar films are hardly adult-oriented, there is also a sense that the only pictures that are doing really well are those aimed at teenagers and children – witness the recent success of the Wicked and Zootopia sequels, and the failure of virtually everything else – and that Cameron’s eco-zealotry may be an uncomfortable fit in the MAGA era; its predecessors both were released under Democratic administrations and seemed almost the cinematic exemplars of those governments.

There is also the problem that the Avatar pictures aren’t actually all that good. Cameron’s undeniable skills as a director – pacing, action, spectacle – are perhaps outweighed by his deficiencies, namely that he cannot write dialogue or convincing characters to save his life, that his plots are stick-thin and that his love of technology is far greater than his interest in actors. Yet he seems unwilling to move into the kind of joyfully dynamic blockbusters that The Terminator, its superior sequel and Aliens represent – as well, for a guilty pleasure, as 1994’s very silly, very funny True Lies. Instead, he seems as lost in Pandora as his paraplegic marine Jake Sully, forever doomed to walk its groves in his own version of a giant blue body.

For all this, I suspect that Fire and Ash will be an enormous hit, just like its predecessors, and that Cameron will remain within the Avatar universe, as planned, until 2031, when the final installment in the series is intended for release. By then, the filmmaker will be nearly 80; not in itself an ancient age, but the idea of his doing another Titanic-esque epic might seem beyond him. And when he finally expires, worn out by too much boundary-pushing and technical fiddling, we may look at this long period that this undeniably gifted filmmaker chose to spend in an imaginary world of his own creation, and wish that he had done something more interesting, instead.