James Cameron has been sucked up by the 3D virtual reality that is Pandora and, by all accounts, he doesn’t mind staying there for the rest of his career.
During a Q&A with other directors for Empire Magazine, Cameron was asked by “RRR” director S.S. Rajamouli if he ever feels bad that he is not able to tell new stories because of all these “Avatar” movies. Cameron responded by saying that Pandora isn’t a crux, but that it can be used for whatever new stories he’d like to tackle well into the future:
“The world of “Avatar” is so sprawling that I can tell most of the stories I want to tell within it and try many of the stylistic techniques that I hope to explore […] our time as artists is finite. I will always mourn some of the stories that I don’t get to make.”
Cameron will be 70 years old by the time the third ‘Avatar’ movie gets released. If he does embark on a fourth film then, by Cameron’s 2027 estimations, he will be 73.
The Canadian director started working on the first “Avatar” movie around 1999/2000. From a filmmaking standpoint, it’s all he’s been concentrating on since then. That means that by 2027, Cameron would have almost exclusively worked on these damn “Avatar” movies for nearly 30 years.
I’m not saying it’s a waste of time, he seems to genuinely be passionate about these movies and the first one was a true groundbreaker. The sequel is also making boatloads of money, but from my point of view, as someone who was thrilled to no ends by Cameron’s visual miracles in “The Terminator,” “T2,” “Aliens,” and “Titanic,” I can’t help but be disappointed by this.