Filmmaker James Cameron has previously indicated that with the fourth “Avatar” film, we’ll see a time jump with the story moving into different aspects than previously seen.
That’s one of the reasons why filming on the fourth and fifth films hasn’t really gotten underway yet, beyond filming of the pre-time jump scenes in the first act of the fourth film. Part of that is Disney waiting to see how the first two sequels perform before moving forward with two more.
Speaking with the CrewCall podcast recently, Cameron says “Avatar: Fire & Ash” should offer a more complete story ending than “Avatar: The Way of Water” did because both films were initially designed as one film:
“Two and three used to be one movie. We just tried to pack it all into one movie. It never worked. So I unzipped it into two separate films. So really they complete a story arc. The end of three brings you to the end of a story arc for the Sully family. A whole new arc starts in four and five.”
That means with “Fire and Ash,” there won’t be some cliffhanger ending – it will feel like a real resolution so if the franchise does stop here, it should be a satisfying ending:
“The one thing I can promise with this film is there’s a real sense of culmination. It’s not just a cliffhanger, you know, with a kind of bleeding stump of a movie. It’s not Han Solo in Carbonite, you know what I mean? And you’ve got to tune back in. If I do get to make 4 and 5, that becomes one new kind of epic story.”
He confirms that if the next arc goes ahead, we “will see Earth” and the consequence of us running rampant, to which Cameron says, “it’s not pretty”.
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” opens in cinemas in December.
