On top of all the financial goals put into Avatar 2 , there’s the Oscars thorn. Nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, an award that it did get at the Golden Globes, Avatar only took the awards for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Special Effects. There is a certain quorum about why it did not win in 2010. The weight of the first film fell almost exclusively on the special effects. Those were other times for CGI, but unlike Titanic, which also has CGI to bore, Avatar focused more on the technique (the special effects) than on the lyrical (the story it tells is not one of those that grabs your heart and turns it over).
There was also talk that the Academy would take time to reward a mega-production again, after the eleven Oscars for The Return of the King in 2004. There was also the problem that not all members of the Academy could see the film in 3D. The movie loses on DVD no matter how you get. Then it was a movie about space and science fiction, historically, it has never managed to win the award in this category. If Dune did not get it, which lost to CODA for best film, neither The Arrival , nor ET, the movie that made kids swoon (the epitome of experiential cinema), it was clear that Avatar had no chance. And then there were the actors, but, well, you know, it’s not exactly an actor’s movie (until the dubbing gets the consideration it deserves). And so we come to Avatar 2 . What possibilities does this second installment have of repeating candidacies, beyond the technical ones?
The new story focuses on the weight of families and on the remorse of Jake Sully’s character for not having done the right thing from the beginning and having caused what he did to Pandora (the two comic miniseries, one of them based on the original script that James Cameron discarded for Avatar 2 , focus precisely on this discomfort), which would balance the lyrical and technical equation, but the rest of the problems would remain. And a new one is added: it is not just a science fiction film, but also a science fiction film within a franchise that will be followed by three other films (The Seed Carrier, Tulkun’s Rider and The Quest ) . by Eywa). And that’s something the Academy doesn’t swallow. It is one thing that The Lord of the Rings needed three films to explain itself and another, very different, to reward a Cinematographic Universe designed for commercial purposes.
Avatar , as a concept, and James Cameron, as a spokesperson, probably began to put the stones in the wall that will prevent it from receiving the Best Picture Award in 2010 from the very moment that it first announced that there would be a second installment and that it would be It was a movie product. If the Hollywood Academy liked film products, another rooster would have crowed at the Oscars for Black Panther or Avengers: Endgame. On January 7, 2010, just days after Avatar announced that it had grossed $1 billion, Cameron announced during a Los Angeles screening of the film that there would be a sequel. Days later he announced that there would not only be a sequel… but that there would be several. “I had a story in my head from the beginning, there are even scenes in Avatarthat I could have cut but kept because they lead to the sequel,” Cameron told Entertainment Weekly a week later. “It makes sense to think of it as a two or three movie arc, in terms of the business plan,” he said. Yes, like a business plan. On March 7, 2010, Cameron lost the Best Picture Oscar. At one point he will go so far as to say that the Oscars no longer award this type of film, “great visual cinema.”
In April 2010 Cameron already reveals that the second installment will take place in the Ocean, although in the first script he will write, the action will take place in space (yes, in space, with zero gravity and arrows). “Part of my focus in the second film is to create a different environment, a different environment within Pandora. And I will focus on the ocean of Pandora, which will be just as rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it won’t be a rainforest.” he said in an interview in the Los Angeles Times. In August of that same year, Cameron announced that Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 would be shot at the same time. Cameron raises the release of the two films will be in December 2014 and December 2015.
On May 7, 2012 comes the big news: there will not only be Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 , but also Avatar 4 . “I’m not interested in developing anything other than Avatar. I’m in the Avatar business. Period. Ball. That’s it. I’m doing Avatar 2 , Avatar 3 , maybe Avatar 4 , and I’m not going to do any other movies,” Cameron told him. to the New York Times. In January 2015 Cameron says that Avatar 2 , Avatar 3 and Avatar 4 are delayed, but only by a couple of years, with the second installment coming in 2017.
And on April 28, 2015, tad, James Cameron announces Avatar 5 . Now they have the complete scripts, he says, of the five films, all that remains is to enter pre-production. In January 2016, some media, in order to get clicks, say that Avatar 2 has been cancelled. In April 2016, Cameron denies the news and announces that Avatar 2 is scheduled for a Christmas 2018 release; Avatar 3 , at Christmas 2020; Avatar 4 , in Christmas 2022, and Avatar 5 , in Christmas 2023. Just a year later he readjusts the expectations: Avatar 2, on December 18, 2020; Avatar 3, on December 17, 2021; avatar 4,on December 20, 2024; and Avatar 5, on December 19, 2025. On September 25, filming began on Avata r 2 and 3. When Disney bought Fox, it was announced that the first sequel would arrive on December 17, 2021; Avatar 3, on December 22, 2023; Avatar 4, on December 19, 2025; and Avatar 5, on December 17, 2027. And the pandemic arrived.
That’s not to mention that a sequel always has it more difficult. In the history of the Oscars, only two sequels have won the Best Picture award: The Godfather II (in 1974) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). Nor is it that many other sequels have been nominated in this same category: there is Toy Story 3 (2010), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Godfather III (1990), then there would be The Bells of Santa Maria (1945), by Leo McCarey with the adventures of Father Chuck O’Mailley and finally there would be The Silence of the Lambs.(1991), if we take into account that Michael Mann’s Manhunter , based on the novel The Red Dragon .
