Can you feel it? If you’re paying enough attention, and you have your spirit tuned to the frequencies of the planet, then you’ll be able to sense that the old Avatar machinery is starting to crank up again. The third instalment of the series, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is set for release in December. And this means that James Cameron finds himself saddled with a familiar task; in just nine months he has to try and motivate people to see a film from a franchise that they’ve already forgotten about twice before now.
The bad news is that these are incredibly expensive films to make. So expensive, in fact, that Cameron previously stated that the second film needed to be the third highest grossing movie of all time just to break even. And, just to compound things, that film was such an incomprehensible mishmash of confused mythology, nondescript motivation and vague characterisation that this one needs to be something really special to get bums on seats.
But the better news is that James Cameron has been here before. He knows exactly how to get people excited for Avatar movies now, and by God he’s going to pull out the big guns. So, how is Cameron going to make you want to watch Avatar: Fire and Ash? Simple, by promising you a sustained emotional breakdown.
So far, one of the only people to have watched Fire and Ash in its entirety is Cameron’s wife Suzy Amis Cameron. According to an interview in Empire, Suzy watched the film just before Christmas. There is a chance she might not yet be over it.
“My wife watched the whole thing from end to end. She had kept herself away from it and I wasn’t showing her bits and pieces as we went along. This was 22 December,” Cameron said. “She bawled for four hours. She kept trying to get her shit back together so she could tell me specific reactions, and then she’d just tear up and start crying again. Finally, I’m like, ‘Honey, I’ve got to go to bed. Sorry, we’ll talk about it some other time.’”
Now, Fire and Ash is thought to be a long film – Cameron has already said it will be longer than Avatar 2, which had a three hours and 12 minutes runtime – but even so, a four-hour bawling fit seems excessive. This is a film that will make you cry so hard and for so long that even James Cameron will eventually get bored. That’s really saying something.
Let’s do the maths here. If Suzy Amis Cameron’s reaction is any indication then, come December, you’re going to have to put aside seven-and-a-half hours aside to experience Avatar: Fire and Ash; three-and-a-half to watch it and then another four to lie on the floor weeping and wailing as you process what you just saw. That’s a big chunk of time. It means that realistically you can only watch a matinee performance, or else you risk losing a full night’s sleep to sobbing uncontrollably about the fate of some blue smurf thing whose name you will never be able to remember. Surely that will affect box office grosses.
But let’s look at this as an opportunity. If Fire and Ash is really as emotionally pulverising as Cameron makes out, then the marketing possibilities are endless. Perhaps audiences could be handed a sachet of rehydration salts with their tickets, or maybe fleets of therapists could be waiting in the lobby to soothe the exploded nervous systems of everyone who sees it.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that the third Avatar film isn’t even going to be the most hysterically brutal Avatar film of the series. No, that honour goes to the fourth instalment. In 2022, Cameron revealed that, while studio executives sent him three pages of notes after reading the script for Avatar 2, and just one for Avatar 3, the sum total of the response to the fourth film’s script was an email reading “Holy fuck”.
Now, bear in mind that Avatar 3 managed to ruin Suzy Amis Cameron for four hours, with the implication being that the same will happen to you. What on earth is going to happen after the fourth film? Will you bawl for five hours? Six? Will your hair spontaneously burst into flames? Will your heart explode inside your ribcage and kill you instantly? Better start pre-booking your ambulances for December 2029.
