Avatar 4 Gets a Positive Update From James Cameron (Including a Character That Will Get More to Do)

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Suffice to say, for fans of the franchise, his comments to ScreenRant make Avatar 4 seem far more likely after it failed to live up to the massively high financial bar set by its two predecessors. Asked by a reporter about potentially changing his plans for Avatar 4 after the response to Fire and Ash, Cameron offered a note on whether the sequel was actually going to happen:

“Absolutely. To be perfectly clear, we haven’t even made a decision to move forward. But should I do that – which I will say is likely, but not 100% – we will definitely learn from the lessons of all three films.”

James Cameron Discusses Plans for Avatar 4

Image Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Cameron has spoken before about how the scripts for both the fourth and fifth Avatar films have been completed. But, as is always the case, a sequel is partly shaped by reactions to its predecessor. For one, if a predecessor fails financially, the next movie isn’t happening at all. Furthermore, if one character is despised or beloved, they usually get, respectively, less or more screentime in the next movie. Think about how Jar Jar Binks went from a major player in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to a pair of cameos throughout the rest of the prequel trilogy.

This trend is as applicable to Avatar as it is Star Wars or any other franchise. Cameron was asked if reception to any specific part of Avatar: Fire and Ash has shaped how he’ll go about making the next one. After acknowledging that the next movie isn’t 100% certain, but likely, Cameron said that “Varang may need to be written up a little bit moving forward. She kind of just took her place amongst all the others, because there are a lot of characters and plates spinning in the story. So, yeah, we might want to make her a little more [prominent].”

Chaplin’s Varang was unquestionably the best part of Fire and Ash. She’s arguably an even better villain than Stephen Lang’s Miles Quaritch. And now that Quaritch is seemingly fully dead this time (which is how it should remain) Varang should take center stage on the antagonist side of things.

Cameron seems happy that the audience responded so positively to Chaplin’s character. Cameron also revealed that he wouldn’t consider changing Avatar 4 plans to write Varang into the plot more to be a bad thing:

“That’s a good problem to have when people are really responding to an element. In The Way of Water, people really responded resoundingly to Payakan. He was literally the highest-rated character in the film. I didn’t tell the actors that. But it’s like, “I guess we better put Payakan into Fire and Ash.” You learn as you go forward. It’s evolving.”

Payakan the whale (well, tulkun) was a highlight of Avatar: The Way of Water, for sure, but Varang was even more integral to Fire and Ash. It’s exciting to imagine the next film leaning into the character even further.

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