James Cameron | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

When I see any Avatar movie, the first three: “Avatar” (2009), “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022) and “Avatar: Fire and Ice” (2025), I think of Pixar, the company that always puts out outstanding animated movies. Some of the best: “Toy Story” (1995, 1999, 2010, 2019), “Inside Out” (2015, 2024), and “Finding Dory” (2016). Granted, these movies are not nearly as complex and costly as the Avatar movies, which use live-action capture to create the characters. The difference is that Pixar movies consistently deliver a great story and screenplay, as well as exceptional animation. The reason for a high quality story is obvious, “how can we spend so much on great technology and not take the time to create a great story, dialogue and screenplay first”?

Unfortunately, all of the Avatar movies believe that record-breaking special effects are enough; the story is always secondary. “Avatar: Fire and Ice” is very similar to the previous movie; there is no real contiguous story, and too many examples of disconnected scenes and jumping around to different reasons for another special effect or action sequence. As with all of the Avatar movies, this one is once again, way too long at 3 hours and 15 minutes. There is no reason why this movie should be this long, with so many unnecessary scenes that have nothing to do with the overall story. This film could have easily been cut down to 2 hours and 30 minutes with no reduction in quality. Nobody in charge seems to realize that movies that are too long, can potentially greatly reduce the box office. Most people do not want to sit and watch a movie for over 3 hours, with movies normally lasting only two hours.

James Cameron started working on these Avatar movies in 2006, and now almost 20 years later, after the 3rd one has been released, there are plans for two more movies, with Avatar 4 scheduled for release in 2029 and Avatar 5 scheduled for 2031. In my opinion, it makes no sense why Cameron would want to spend the majority of his career as a screenwriter and director with one movie concept, even though these movies have advanced movie-making technology more than any other films.

This movie stars the same three main starts, Sam Worthington as Jake, Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, and Sigourney Weaver as Kiri. Other known actors include Kate Winslet, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi and Edie Falco as General Ardmore. All of these actors have to be grateful for big paydays that will probably last all the way until 2031 when the last Avatar is completed.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a correct and low 68% with this review, being typical of the critics’ opinions: Michael Compton: “After taking a step forward with the previous film, ‘Fire and Ash ‘ takes a giant step back — a film overstuffed with style but completely lacking any meaningful substance.” For a normal movie a 68% rating would mean failure at the box office, but like the other Avatar movies, this one will probably also gross over 2 billion dollars worldwide. My rating is 100% for the special effects and 65% for the story and a moderate recommendation.

Before seeing the sequel to “Avatar”, released in 2009 – titled “Avatar: The Way of Water”, I went to Rotten Tomatoes and was stunned to see that the rating for this movie – that cost so much to produce and so many years to make, was only 78%. Then when I sat through a way too long 3 hours and 12 minutes of this movie, the reason for the low rating became obvious.

Unbelievably, this second installment of Avatar has no real story. What this film does have is about 20 different small vignettes all strung together with only some of the smaller parts contributing to any coherent sequence of thought. Asking anyone to try and explain what this movie is about is a telltale sign of no coherent screenplay. This movie is just a series of events that justify amazing special effects. Considering that director James Cameron recently said that Avatar: The Way of Water will have to gross 2 billion in ticket sales by March 2023 just to break even, it is impossible to believe that all the thousands of people involved with this movie – just forgot about the script. When you realize how many millions and billions were spent on newly invented movie equipment and new software to create the incredible visual special effects it appears that they all forgot that to obtain the big box office they need to break even – having no story and making a movie 3 hours and 12 minutes long, might just make this latest Avatar a money loser. How many people will look up the running time of this film and say to themselves, “there is no way I can sit through a movie this long”. Considering the myriad of small stories in this too-long film, this movie can easily be cut down to two hours and it will be a much better movie-going experience. Where is it written that very long makes a great movie? This has never been true.

As far as the problem with the lack of a good script, an excerpt of a review on Rotten Tomatoes from writer Udita Jhunjhunwala, says it best: “This is the second of a planned five-installment series, so there are many more worlds and wonders of Cameron’s imagination and capabilities of technology yet to be explored. Perhaps in subsequent films, there might also be greater attention to the script. While the new film is a successful and sometimes wondrous visual experiment, as a story, it treads in shallow waters.”

Due to the extreme cost of the new technology and software that had to be developed to produce this movie (the special effects are even more amazing in 3D), there will be 3 more Avatar films, released in 2024, 2026, and 2028. Now the hope must be that the mistake of making this film too long and with no script will not hurt the possible success of the next 3 installments. Word of mouth is a huge part of marketing a great movie – very true of Cameron’s other blockbuster hit Titanic, released in 1997. However, for this movie, word of mouth just might kill the hoped-for box office.

As far as rating this movie, I have to give it 80% just for the incredible science, technology, and hard work involved in making it over the last decade. However, I will add no more points to the rating because they completely forgot about the most important part of any movie – one or more people looking at the empty page on a computer screen, trying to write a great screenplay. I give Avatar the Way of Water a mild recommendation only for the groundbreaking special effects.