James Cameron is seemingly going in a braver, bolder direction in the third and fourth Avatar adventures. While the first two films — Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water — didn't quite break new narrative ground, they delivered an unparalleled 3D audio-visual experience that looked best on the big screen. In the next film, though, Cameron promises some interesting developments with regard to characters and storytelling.
Speaking about Avatar: Fire and Ash to Empire magazine, Cameron teases the film's “clever action set-pieces” and a fresh storytelling approach. “You can get your blood up in this movie. But what excites me as an artist who recently turned 70 and has kind of done all that stuff is not only the opportunity to get to do it again, but to get to a level of character and intrigue you haven’t seen before in an Avatar movie.”
Cameron said he and his team are just "starting to riff on it and twist it and turn it,” calling the attempt a “tricky" thing. "We could be getting high on our own supply here, and everybody who looks at it goes, ‘F***, that’s not what I signed up for.’ But if you’re not making brave choices, you’re wasting everybody’s time and money. That alone is not sufficient to create success, but it’s necessary. You’ve got to break the mould every fricking time.”
In Fire and Ash, Cameron will introduce a Na'vi clan known as the 'Ash clan' whose leader Varang, played by Oona Chaplin, is expected to play an antagonist that locks horns with Jake (Sam Worthington).
On this character, Cameron tells Empire: “Varang is the leader of a people who have gone through an incredible hardship. She's hardened by that. She will do anything for them, even things that we would consider to be evil. One thing we wanted to do in this film is not be black-and-white simplistic. We’re trying to evolve beyond the ‘all humans are bad, all Na’vi are good’ paradigm.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash arrives in theatres in December 2025, and Cameron is confident that he has created something good. “It’s in strong shape, I think,” says the director behind blockbusters such as Titanic and The Terminator.
He feels the production process has quickened compared to The Way of Water. “We have doubled the number of shots finished at this stage of the game than we had on movie two [and] the films are about equal length. So that puts us well ahead of the curve, which is something I’ve never, frankly, experienced before. The process is a little bit less nightmarish. We’re getting to the point where we are actually getting good at this.”
