Avatar: The Means of Water runs over 180 minutes, so in case you’re seeing this, likelihood is that you just’re both sitting in a theater or headed for one. You simply wish to know whether or not you may lastly run to the lavatory, seize a snack, or register your opinion on social media instantly after spending three hours in James Cameron’s world of Pandora, watching large blue alien cat-people go ham on greedy-ass people. Right here’s your reply: No, Avatar: The Means of Water doesn’t have an after-credits scene or a mid-credits scene or a post-credits scene or any sort of tease of what’s coming subsequent. That closing line about household, teased within the very first Avatar 2 trailer, is all you’re going to get. Fly! Be free!
Except you wish to spend the following seven minutes watching the names of each motion-capture professional, marine biologist, and CGI designer who labored on the movie scroll by. Which is likely to be the well mannered factor to do: A few of these folks have been engaged on this film because it was first introduced in 2011, in any case.
Avatar: The Means of Water is lacking just a few extra issues as nicely. Positive, it has house whales, coming-of-age tales, a creepy resurrection, and a ton of visible references to previous James Cameron films. However only for a second, let’s deal with just a few issues it’s lacking.
Avatar 2 doesn’t have an after-credits scene
Cameron’s sequel ends, as an alternative, very similar to The Starvation Video games: Catching Fireplace, with a key character mentally developing for air after trauma and loss, discovering their emotional footing once more, and informing the viewers, through voice-over, that it’s time to take the struggle to the enemy — after which wanting immediately into the digital camera to sign simply how decided they’re. It is a good components for what’s successfully extra a chapter ending than a film ending — it indicators that there’s extra to come back, and it leaves a personality making significant eye contact with the viewers, letting them really feel like even when they weren’t included within the struggle they simply watched, they’re nonetheless invited to the struggle to come back.
That’s assuming you’re OK with free ends, however these are just about assured from the center installment of a trilogy. “Wait,” you say, “a trilogy? Ha ha, no, you’re misinformed, there are going to be 5 Avatar films. James Cameron mentioned so.”
Properly, sure and no…
Avatar 3 is occurring, however Avatar 4 and 5 are unknowns
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Picture: twentieth Century Studios
Cameron has been saying for years now that he has a highway map for 5 Avatar films in complete, and he’s laid out launch dates for these films via 2028. Film No. 3, presently rumored to be titled Avatar: The Seed Bearer, is about for launch in December 2024, and was shot back-to-back with The Means of Water. Cameron says the primary act of film No. 4, presumably titled Avatar: The Tulkun Rider, has been shot as nicely. (The tulkun are the house whales which have such a distinguished function in The Means of Water.)
However that doesn’t imply we’re assured 5 Avatar films. Chatting with Complete Movie in November, Cameron signaled that the fourth and fifth films would possibly by no means be accomplished if The Means of Water and its sequel don’t make the immense piles of cash they must be worthwhile. “[W]e is likely to be semi-done, which means: ‘Okay, let’s full the story inside film three, and never go on endlessly,’ if it’s simply not worthwhile,” Cameron mentioned.
That doesn’t appear seemingly, although. The 2022 theatrical launch of Avatar alone introduced in $75 million. Even in a notoriously troublesome period for blockbusters, with extra $100 million flops than record-breaking hits, audiences flocked to theaters to revisit the world of Pandora. So it feels inconceivable that they’ll completely reject The Means of Water, even when it does fall wanting Avatar’s report monetary success. However early box-office monitoring suggests the sequel may open to greater than $500 million in its first weekend.
“Look, I consider persons are gonna love the film, proper?” Avatar producer Jon Landau lately informed Polygon, when requested whether or not he believes the sequence may attain a pure conclusion with the third movie. “I don’t suppose we will predict world occasions. I don’t suppose anyone may have predicted the pandemic. I don’t suppose anyone is aware of what’s going to be occurring tomorrow.”
That mentioned, the producer thinks Avatar 3 will convey the story to a satisfying shut, if it involves that: “I feel that none of those films create a cliffhanger in your emotional conclusion,” he mentioned.
Avatar 2 doesn’t have an extended Disney Plus streaming lower
Cameron mentioned one thing else fascinating in the course of the lead-up to The Means of Water’s launch: He’d prefer to make films with completely different cuts for his or her streaming releases, presumably stretching as much as six hours on streaming. “I wish to do a film that’s six hours lengthy and two and a half hours lengthy on the similar time. Identical film,” he informed Dune director Denis Villeneuve in one in every of Selection’s “Administrators on Administrators” interviews.
“You’ll be able to stream it for six hours, or you may go and have a extra condensed, curler coaster, immersive model of that have in a movie show,” Cameron mentioned. “Identical film. Simply, one’s the novel, and one’s the film. Why not? Let’s simply use these platforms in ways in which haven’t been executed earlier than.”
If there’s any franchise that looks like it’d justify that therapy, it’s the Avatar films, given the decade-plus planning and pre-production section they went via. There’s a lot joyous Pandora tourism in The Means of Water, and so many new characters with their very own small arcs, that it’s simple to think about a extra TV-oriented model of the movie with additional episodic footage, drawing out a few of these tales at size.
However Landau confirms that for now, at the least, Cameron is simply blue-skying about know-how and the longer term, and there are not any plans for an extended streaming lower of Avatar: The Means of Water.
“I feel Jim is seizing on alternatives for different tales with two completely different cuts — the thought could be that you just construct a bigger, epic narrative that may final six hours, and also you pull a two-and-a-half-hour film out of it.” However undoubtedly not with both Avatar 2 or the already-shot Avatar 3, he says: “We don’t have the quantity of content material to try this.”
