By Travis Johnson
James Cameron’s Avatar came out back in 2009 and while we’ve been promised a sequel or sequels (the current count is four, with the first scheduled for Christmas 2018) since then, narrative details have been hard to pin down. Until now.
Speaking to Variety while pimping the new Cirque du Soleil show Toruk, Cameron let slip, “The storyline in the sequels really follows Jake and Neytiri and their children. It’s more of a family saga about the struggle with the humans.”
Interesting stuff. Avatar cops a lot of stick, but in the end it’s a good film that hits way more than it misses, and makes up for a pretty rote storyline* with some great world-building. Still, it stirred up extreme reactions on either end of the spectrum. Remember when people were getting depressed because they couldn’t go to Pandora? It was a weird year.
Speaking of originality, even that briefest of teasers puts us in mind of Michael Blake’s The Holy Road, his as-yet-unfilmed novel sequel to Dances With Wolves. So, even if Cameron isn’t the most original of storytellers, he’s consistent in his unoriginality, which is something.
*It is straight-up hilarious when sci-fi fans complain about lack of originality in cinema, then give The Force Awakens two billion dollars.
