Upon its release in the bygone age of 2009, Avatar smashed box office records, eventually claiming the title of the highest-grossing movie in history. The movie held the top spot for a solid decade, eventually losing to (and later reclaiming it from) Avengers: Endgame. All of this success put director James Cameron in a somewhat unique position. On the one hand, it meant that as long as he was interested in making one, a sequel was all but inevitable. At the same time, the pressure was on. Most sequels, after all, have to worry about living up to the original on some level, and in the case of Avatar, the level is that of (by at least one metric) the most successful movie of all time.
Now, with the first of Cameron’s four planned sequels gearing up for a 2022 release, we have some insights into how those pressures shaped Cameron’s approach to his follow-ups. In a recent interview on author and one-time presidential candidate Marianne Williamson’s podcast (aptly titled The Marianne Williamson Podcast), Cameron’s recollection of the process reveals a particularly analytical approach, which isn’t so surprising when one considers his reputation as a perfectionist. Specifically, he describes three “tiers” that he believes explain the original film’s success. The first two were what Cameron terms as the “surface plot” with the underlying themes of colonialism, imperialism, etc. respectively. It was the third, though, that he found especially important. To wit:
“There was a level that was dreamlike that you could not express in a sentence. It didn’t have any ‘-isms’ to it, it was a dreamlike sense of a yearning to be there, to be in that space, to be in a place that is safe and where you wanted to be. Whether that was flying, that sense of freedom and exhilaration, or whether it was being in the forest where you can smell the earth. It was a sensory thing that communicated on such a deep level. That was the spirituality of the first film.”
Cameron’s insistence on grounding the sequels in the success of the original sometimes led him to take drastic measures. Early in the development of the sequels, he brought in a team of writers to help break down what made the first film resonate with audiences. However, they couldn’t help “doing what writers do” – that is to say, they started pitching stories. This ultimately led Cameron to threaten to fire the entire team if they didn’t stop focusing on new stories. It was only when they figured out the third tier described above that Cameron’s creative team was given the go-ahead to create.
You can hear more of Cameron’s remarks on the March 18, 2021, installment of The Marianne Williamson Podcast.
It will be interesting to see if Cameron’s efforts on this front pay off. After all, despite the director’s strident belief in the profundity of Avatar, more cynical observers would argue that the first film’s success had more to do with spectacle, a combination of gorgeous (not to mention groundbreaking) visuals and a plot that could, by virtue of its simplicity, easily translate across cultural and linguistic boundaries.
One way or another, we’ll know soon enough, as the hype machine gears up for Avatar 2‘s December 2022 release. And of course, be sure to check back with Geek Anything for more on all of the upcoming Avatar sequels as their release approaches.
