James Cameron Says AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH Caps Off the First AVATAR Saga
James Cameron is gearing up to bring fans back to Pandora with Avatar: Fire and Ash, and according to the filmmaker, this chapter isn’t just another continuation. For him, it marks the end of something bigger.
While the Avatar franchise is planned to continue with two more films, Cameron is clear that the first three entries form their own complete story. If the journey ends here, he’s satisfied with where things land.
Talking with io9, Cameron made it clear he doesn’t view Fire and Ash as a traditional follow up. Instead, he frames it as the final act of a long planned arc that began with Avatar in 2009.
“I think you’ve got a little bit of experience with sequels and how you have to deliver beyond the audience’s expectation, take them from the familiar to the new each time.
“I don’t think of Fire and Ash as a sequel. I think it was a culmination of a saga. I like ‘saga’ better than ‘sequel’ because a lot of where we were going with the story was in the original architecture of the story. So if you think of this as the third act, I think that’s healthier.
“As opposed to a typical Hollywood sequel, where they make a bunch of money with a movie and then they’re like, ‘Oh, crap. We’ve got to scramble around and get a new script. Maybe it’s not so good, but let’s just shoot it and get it out there.’
“That’s not what we’re doing here at all. It’s a long game. And I went into it knowing that we’d be playing a long game and betting that the audience would come along with us and care about these people. Because they may be 10 feet tall and blue, but they’re people.”
That long game has been at the center of Cameron’s approach since the beginning. The filmmaker built out the broader narrative years before cameras rolled on The Way of Water or Fire and Ash, treating the trilogy as a single overarching tale rather than three separate installments.
While Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 are still officially on the release calendar for 2029 and 2031, Cameron has become increasingly unsure about whether they’ll actually move forward. If they do, though, he sees them as the start of something distinct from the story that wraps up this December.
“It’s its own saga,” he said of films four and five. “It’s got a beginning and a middle and an end that plays out across these two films. They’re vaporware right now.”
Even if Cameron is cautious about their future, the cast is all in and hoping audiences get to see the next era of Pandora.
“I really hope that we get to make four and five, because it’s such a mind-bending, crazy story that I feel has to be told,” Jack Champion, who plays Spider, told io9. “It goes to the next level,” added Trinity Bliss, who plays Tuk.
Avatar: Fire and Ash arrives December 19, and its performance will likely shape what comes next. If audiences turn out and connect with this next chapter, the door may open wide for Cameron to continue the saga he’s been crafting for over a decade.
Whether or not the story extends into two more films, Cameron sounds confident that this movie gives fans a meaningful conclusion to everything the first three have been building toward. And if this is the end of the first saga of Pandora, it sounds like he’s ready to let it stand strong on its own.