James Cameron Has One Very Specific Goal With His Avatar Movies

James Cameron's third "Avatar" film, "Avatar: Fire and Ash," is due in theaters in December of 2025. When it is released, only three years will have passed since "Avatar: The Way of Water," the second film in the series. That is a downright tiny span of time, given that 13 years passed between the first "Avatar" and "The Way of Water."

There is certainly an irony to Cameron's filmmaking approach to his "Avatar" movies. By his vision, the distant moon of Pandora is an Eden-like paradise whereupon the locals are psychically linked to a grand Earth Mother-like consciousness that runs through the whole planet. The Na'Vi are gentle and peace-loving, and can connect their brains to flora and fauna with an eerie tendril that grows on their heads. The planet provides and everything is sustainable.

The irony is that Cameron, in order to visualize this idealized natural world, required some of the most advanced artificial filmmaking technology available. He uses state-of-the-art CGI and motion-capture technology to realize the Na'Vi, and all the backgrounds are created via computers. It's gorgeous to look at, and certainly inflames one's imagination toward natural living, but it's the fakest of all possible worlds.

Of course, creating a beautiful world is only a secondary concern for Cameron. In a recent interview with People Magazine, the director admitted that, more than anything, he wants to move an audience. Specifically, Cameron wants to make you cry. This is something the director has been skilled at achieving since he made "Titanic" in 1997, one of the biggest Hollywood weepies ever produced. If Cameron can't make you — and himself — at least a little sad, then his film didn't achieve what it was supposed to.

Cameron puts pressure on himself to create indelible, permanent images in the cinematic consciousness. He once said that there's no reason to make a movie anymore unless it's going to be the biggest movie ever. Given that "Titanic," "Avatar," and "Avatar: The Way of Water" are all still among the highest-grossing films of all time, one could say that he's living up to his ambitions. But then, on the other hand, he wants to connect with an audience as well. Cameron is one of the world's best populist filmmakers and is very much an expert at making a certain kind of crowd-pleasing melodrama. As he told People:

"[T]he hardest part of the job is to live with every image every day and its [new] detail, but still be able to feel how the movie [affects] you as an audience member. [...] If I can't cry in the movie, I know I've failed seriously, and if I don't, there's something wrong. It has to be fixed."

It was this personal mandate that caused Cameron to panic, he admitted, on the set of "Fire and Ash." The story of his 2025 film is not yet known as of this writing, but it will involve a nation of fire-focused Na'Vi. Whatever the story is, Cameron felt, early in production, that it wasn't clicking. He said that he "had that crisis of faith on 'Avatar 3' at one point in an early cut. [I thought to myself] 'We're not there.'" 

Cameron, however, has since cracked the code, saying that "It's banging now. Absolutely interesting." I guess that means Cameron figured out a way to tug at his own heartstrings. Time will tell if "Fire and Ash" proves to be just as popular as the first two "Avatar" movies.