Can you feel it? If you’re paying enough attention, and you have your spirit tuned to the frequencies of the planet, then you’ll be able to sense that the old Avatar machinery is starting to crank up again. The third instalment of the series, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is set for release in December. And this means that James Cameron finds himself saddled with a familiar task; in just nine months he has to try and motivate people to see a film from a franchise that they’ve already forgotten about twice before now.
The bad news is that these are incredibly expensive films to make. So expensive, in fact, that Cameron previously stated that the second film needed to be the third highest grossing movie of all time just to break even. And, just to compound things, that film was such an incomprehensible mishmash of confused mythology, nondescript motivation and vague characterisation that this one needs to be something really special to get bums on seats.
