James Cameron Can't Stop Shading Marvel Ahead of Avatar 2 Premiere
While some people have long stopped hoping for Avatar sequels during the 12-years wait, now Avatar 2: The Way of Water is about to finally be released on the big screen.
Expectations for it are extremely high, considering that the original Avatar is still the highest-grossing movie of all time, after the box office boost given by the recent re-releases.
However, there's also a feeling that Avatar has slipped off the public's radar, and is no longer culturally relevant in the way that, for example, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is today.
James Cameron, unsurprisingly, is aware of such talk, as his recent interview evidenced:
"There's skepticism in the marketplace around, 'Oh, did it ever make any real cultural impact?'Can anybody even remember the characters' names?'"
However, while Cameron acknowledges that Avatar, as a franchise, took far too long to make its return, partially thanks to the fact that Cameron himself was not initially in a hurry to produce a sequel – with his fortune, he could afford to take his time, even though 20th Century Fox wanted Avatar 2 ASAP – he remains confident about its prospects and dismissive towards the idea that it has slipped into cultural irrelevance:
"When you have extraordinary success, you come back within the next three years. That's just how the industry works. You come back to the well, and you build that cultural impact over time. Marvel had maybe 26 movies to build out a universe, with the characters cross-pollinating. So it's an irrelevant argument. We'll see what happens after this film."
Speaking with Variety previously, Cameron took a jab at big superhero movies, clarifying that he referred both to Marvel and DC.
"When I look at these big, spectacular films — I'm looking at you, Marvel and DC — it doesn't matter how old the characters are, they all act like they're in college. They have relationships, but they really don't. They never hang up their spurs because of their kids. The things that really ground us and give us power, love, and a purpose? Those characters don't experience it, and I think that's not the way to make movies," Cameron said.
If I'm allowed to use a personal anecdote, I do still remember names of Avatar's main character couple and the main villain without googling them, which is more characters than I remember from most of the MCU movies.
And while we will indeed see what happens after the release of Avatar 2, the original had never been truly forgotten by sci-fi fans. As a release date for the sequel was finally set in stone, discussions on the franchise flared up again. So, among the nerd audience Avatar remains relevant. Now we will see whether normal moviegoers remember it.