Nobody Is Concerned About The Avatar Sequels, Jokes John Oliver
John Oliver jokes that no one cares about the Avatar sequels:
According to John Oliver, nobody cares about the Avatar sequels. The first Avatar was a hit with audiences, grossing a record $2.847 billion worldwide. The original Avatar was such a great success that James Cameron declared right away that he would be developing a sequel. Cameron, though, was obliged to postpone his plans while he sorted out the technical problems of filming performance-capture underwater. Cameron eventually resolved the issue and returned to work, aiming to shoot Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 back-to-back, with rough plans for Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 to follow. Indeed, Avatar 2 was supposed to be released in December 2020, but it was moved back a year to avoid clashing with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Due to COVID, the film was then put back another year.
Despite all these delays Cameron continues pushing forward shooting footage:
Despite these setbacks, Cameron continues to film footage for all of his planned Avatar sequels. However, Oliver, the anchor of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, is unimpressed by Cameron’s perseverance. During a segment on Sunday’s show, Oliver expressed his disinterest in further Avatar while criticizing the 2009 Climate Change Global Conference and its inability to bring answers to climate change challenges. It just so happens that Avatar was released in 2009, and Oliver exploited this coincidence to illustrate his argument (via IndieWire):
There are things it’s OK to take a decade on and not deliver on. The Avatar sequels, for instance. Take your time on those, James Cameron. No one gives a s–t…I will give anyone in this audience $1,000 right now if they remember either of these characters’ names.
An image of Avatar’s main characters, Jake Sully and Neytiri, was shown as Oliver offered his humorous challenge to the audience:
As Oliver issued his amusing challenge to the crowd, a picture of Avatar’s key protagonists, Jake Sully and Neytiri, was presented. Of course, the issue of Avatar’s relevancy has been raised several times over the last decade. Indeed, despite the original film’s enormous box office success, it appears to have had little influence on mainstream culture as a whole. In 2021, Avatar is certainly not as big as Star Wars or Marvel as a pop cultural phenomenon in the West. However, the film appears to have a strong following in China, where it was just re-released and grossed enough money to surpass The Avengers: Endgame as the all-time box office champion. Cameron, the writer-director of Avatar, has been counted out many times before, but he always manages to get the final laugh. Titanic, for example, was predicted to be a disaster before becoming the highest-grossing film of all time in 1997. Before it topped even Titanic’s blockbuster performance, Avatar was viewed as a potential blunder. By attempting four additional Avatar films at a time when the first film’s significance appears to have mostly gone, Cameron may have taken on more than he can chew. However, audiences will have the last say. For Cameron, if there’s one thing he understands, it’s how to satisfy an audience.
Source: Last Week Tonight (via IndieWire)
