James Cameron has spent nearly a decade building new technology for his Avatar sequels. He'll use all of those technical advancements to expand the world of Pandora, and to bring to life story elements that will be seen across four more movies. But one thing Cameron isn't spending a lot of time doing? Creating new characters, because there won't be very many.
Cameron revealed to Empire that the characters in all of the movies will pretty much be the same. In particular, Stephen Lang's villain Quaritch will be the antagonist throughout...
“The interesting conceit of the Avatar sequels is it’s pretty much the same characters. There are new characters and a lot of new settings and creatures, so I’m taking characters you know and putting them in unfamiliar places and moving them on this greater journey. But it’s not a whole bunch of new characters every time. There’s not a new villain every time, which is interesting. Same guy. Same motherfucker through all four movies. He is so good and he just gets better. I know Stephen Lang is gonna knock this out of the park.”
It sounds strange, until you learn that Cameron will be telling one overarching story across all four movies. The idea, he admits, came from his buddy Peter Jackson who, I might add, they still haven't done any of those Tintin sequels they promised. Just sayin'.
“I said ‘It’s your fault I’m doing this, motherfucker!'” He recalls. “It’s one big story. But I would say a little bit different from The Lord Of The Rings, which you knew was a trilogy and that allowed you to accept a sort of truncated ending for movies one and two and then a fulfillment. This is a greater narrative broken up into four complete stories.”
So here's hoping you don't get sick of smurfy Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver. I keep thinking that it's been too long since Avatar and that none of us will want to see more but Cameron has been successful at everything he's done. While nobody can expect the same record-breaking numbers as before, don't be surprised if Avatar 2 is another smash when it opens December 18th 2020.
