James Cameron shared on Friday that the upcoming “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” set to release Dec. 19, 2025, will be even longer than its predecessor "The Way Of Water."
James Cameron shared on Friday that the upcoming “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” set to release Dec. 19, 2025, will be even longer than its predecessor "The Way Of Water."
Christ. The last one was a slog to get through. I got to the point where I was fast forwarding through action scenes because it dragged and I was so sick of it
People keep saying this kind of thing, without understanding there are only a couple dozen stories. Literally, every good story is a version of something else. Maybe at best, a mash up of a couple.
Sure, but you can subvert archetypes or mix different types to make new stories. If you're going to follow one of the archetypes, you need to have good dialogue, character development, visuals, etc.
I generally believe most movies should be shorter and that there's a lot of room for addition by subtraction. That said, if a movie earns its runtime then I don't think there's an upper limit to how long it can be. Lawrence of Arabia is 3 hours and 45 minutes and it's incredible, I don't think I'd cut anything in it besides the long black intro screen which is a relic of its time. I would say justifying that run time gets exponentially harder past a certain point.
With Way of Water sitting at 3 hours and 12 minutes I do think Avatar 3 needs an intermission if it's going to be longer. Asking people to sit and be fully engaged for 3 and a half hours is a big ask and having a chance to go to the bathroom, get snacks, stretch your legs, etc is needed for something that massive
I think there's been a problem with editing in Hollywood for quite a long time now. Many movies are much longer than they need to. A recent example is Anora, which could have easily trimmed 20-30 minutes of its runtime without losing any plot or character development.
According to wiki, 30% of the 4th movie is already filmed, and the rest is going to be filmed after the 3rd is released. And the 5th movie is set for 2031