James Cameron's defense of the Avatar: The Way of Water runtime misses the point of many criticisms of long runtimes. After a gap of 13 years, James Cameron will return audiences and cast members Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana to Pandora in Christmas 2022. The original Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time, so there is a considerable weight of expectation on Avatar 2 to perform well at the box office. Adding to this pressure is Cameron's plan for Avatar 2 to be the first of four sequels that will be released over the next six years, risking financial failure if audience interest dwindles.
The interest in these sequels will be dependent on how audiences respond to The Way of Water. The main selling point of Avatar was James Cameron's ground-breaking use of CGI and 3D projection to immerse audiences in an alien world. The sequel is set to take this immersion further, with technological advances in visual effects allowing James Cameron and his team to explore the watery depths of the Na'vi home world. Water is notoriously hard to simulate, and if Cameron has truly accomplished it then it will be a major leap forward for visual storytelling. However, James Cameron has already identified The Way of Water's runtime as a potential stumbling block for critics and audiences, but his pre-emptive defense misses the point of much of these concerns and risks undermining Avatar 2 as a result.
In an interview with Empire Magazine, James Cameron spoke of the sequel's pressures to perform, and pre-emptively defended Avatar 2's long runtime. "I don't want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [television] for eight hours ..." he says, in a nod to how streaming audiences consume new shows like Stranger Things. The forthright director continues by saying "Here's the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it's okay to get up and go pee." Avatar represented a huge paradigm shift in visual effects and 3D technology. Cameron's suggestion that Avatar 2 will be at the vanguard of a bathroom break paradigm shift fundamentally misses the differences between movie theaters and streaming services and also risks underselling the sequel.
James Cameron's Avatar 2 Defense Misunderstands Runtime & Streaming Debates
On release, Avatar became the highest-grossing movie of all time because it steadily built Avatar's momentous box office numbers through word-of-mouth from dazzled audience members. Suggesting that Avatar 2 is a film that audiences can take a break from at any time implies that its plot and screen time isn't impacted by missing a period of it. If that's the case, then perhaps for some it's better to wait for the movie to go on to a streaming service, the home comforts of which would better allow for Cameron's bathroom break proposal.
In conflating watching a long movie in the theater with binge-watching TV at home, the record-breaking Avatar director misses the key differences between the two. Most obviously, the projectionist isn't going to pause Avatar 2 for audiences who need a bathroom break. At home, viewers can pause what they're watching whenever they want. More crucially, however, is that TV shows aren't movies. TV shows are structured to allow the audience a brief break between episodes during a binge-watch session. Avatar: The Way Of Water isn't structured in the same way, and nor should it be. A trip to the theater should be an opportunity to be immersed in a story, and whether Cameron likes it or not, long runtimes and small bladders can break this immersion. By highlighting this in his interview, Cameron is undermining the technologically advanced, immersive storytelling that he's spent his career perfecting.
