There’s only one movie worth talking about this Christmas, and it is Avatar 2: The Trail of Water. And above all for extra-cinematic reasons. Director, James Cameronand the production house, the Disneyare at the end of a ten-year journey and an apparently suicidal plan: a Continuation which comes 13 years too late, without the novelty that turned the first film into the biggest box office hit in cinematic history (The 3Dthat future that would have conquered the cinema and living rooms) and with hardly anyone who remembers exactly who the characters or the plot of that colossal blockbuster set in the imaginary world of Pandora were. All for an estimated cost of over 350 million euros. And the most expensive film in history and any collection inferior to the 2 billion euros will be considered a failure. The estimate did the same Cameron which, as he told a GQ a few months ago, he told Disney that Avatars 2 represented “the worst business model in the history of cinema”.
That is, it must compete with both its own disk current (Avatars is still at the top of the league that only the last film of the avengers managed to get close: 2.922 billion dollars, almost 2 billion euros: 2.8 billion euros at current exchange rates), as well as with its previous record, Titanic (2.187 billion dollars, almost 2.1 billion euros, currently in third place in the all-time rankings), the latter only to “cover expenses”. The plan is even crazier: while the sequel comes out, Cameron will finish shooting Avatars 4 (the 3 is already in post-production), and will prepare the filming of the fifth chapter. The plan provides for the exit of the upcoming sequels in 2024, 2026 and 2028. And now it’s too late to back out.
The return of a more central world of his characters, Pandora, with beyond plays in his favor 3,500 visual effects, and the certainty that no one has ever understood the 3D and the computer graphics much as Cameron (easy to prove: just review almost all of his films from the 90s onwards, starting with Terminator 2whose special effects have aged very little). The self-proclaimed “king of the world” from the night he conquered the Oscars with Titanic today he is 68 years old and there is no doubt that he can perform a new miracle.
It would be the third: Titanic it could spell the end of Cameron’s career. A disaster moviewhich has yielded beyond 200 million dollars (something never seen in 1997), of which everyone knew the ending: the sinking ship. But the romance between Jack (Leonardo Dicapriothe only one who didn’t celebrate the Oscars because he wasn’t even nominated) and Rose (Kate Winsletoverwhelmed by mega production and by pneumonia that she had taken on the set) has broken a roof that today seems normal when it comes to blockbusters: a billion at the box office. No one had ever done this before.
Titanic then it lasted a long time. A folly that the executives of Fox had remedied with some cuts to have a more commercial film: three and a quarter hours. It is a detail worth remembering today that everyone thinks that Avatars 2with a similar duration, is too long. Avatars it almost lasted two and a quarter hours. Another suicide. A film made to be shown in 3d salehitherto non-existent, with a new franchise And blue alien characters. The first film to cross – and break through – the threshold of 2 billion. A figure that Titanic he then caught up on its re-release in 2012, three years after the release of Avatars. And neither is the bittersweet return of Star Wars managed to eclipse it: alone The awakening of the Force and the last two films of the avengers have reached these heights.
Avatars 2 it also has another advantage: it will come out in Chinesesomething that was not known until almost the last and that has dragged a large part of the current blockbusters: none of the last seven Marvel films has managed to get a slot in a country increasingly adverse to Western cinema, with a very limited number of releases , and in which Disney has no particular allure. China brought more than 250 million euros in receipts to the previous film, a figure that could easily multiply thirteen years later.
The highlight of this sequel also has to do with past successes. Shortly after the filming of Titanic, Kate Winslet she had told the press that she would never work with James Cameron again, unless she was paid a lot. Twenty five years later Titanic, it is estimated that he received at least six million euros for his role in Avatars 2and that he will take a portion of the proceeds. Lots of money. In essence it is the timeless story of James Cameron, a genius behind the camera who understands how the film industry works. A talent that he showed in Hollywood the day he presented himself to Fox executives to sell them aliens: as he said, his idea was to add an “s” to the original title, Alienin order to make it clear to the public that now there were more than one aliens. “But in the end it all boils down to this,” she said as she added a vertical bar to the letter “s”: the symbol of the dollar.
