Avatar: The Way of Water director James Cameron claims run time caused tension within the studio. Avatar: The Way of Water clocks in at a whopping 3 hours and 12 minutes long. This beats the run time of other epic action films from recent years, including Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2 hours, 41 minutes), Avengers: Infinity War (2 hours, 29 minutes) and this year’s hit sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which ran a comparatively miniscule 2 hours and 10 minutes. Prior to Avatar: The Way of Water’s release, Cameron made a crack at the run time, responding to the question of when audiences should go to the bathroom during the extended run time of the sequel, in which he advised fans that they could take a bathroom break “any time they want" as they could "see the scene they missed when they come see it again.”
Despite Cameron’s joking about Avatar 2's length, the director opened up about his fight to keep Avatar: The Way of Water at its three-hour runtime. According to Entertainment Weekly, Cameron originally pitched Avatar 2 to 21st Century Fox as a three-hour movie. When Disney bought fox in 2017, Cameron felt “morally obligated” to preserve his original intention of a three-hour sequel, which reportedly caused “a lot of tension,” with the studio and Cameron alike struggling to find the perfect equilibrium in between “keeping engagement” and “preserving beauty.” Check out the full quote from Cameron below:
I think there was a lot of tension around length. And because it's a complicated linear narrative, which is the worst scenario for trying to shorten, you've got a complex story servicing a lot of characters, and it's like dominos falling: This has to happen for that to happen. You're not following a bunch of parallel plot lines in a way that you could take a lot out. The hardest thing when you're trying to shorten a film is to hold onto the things that don't advance the plot, that are beautiful or scary or suspenseful for their own sake. Things came out, and then if I felt the pacing was off, we put things back in.
Was Avatar 2’s Over 3-Hour Runtime Worth It?
After its release, Avatar: The Way of Water’s runtime has caused quite the stir in its critical reviews. The central thread in these reviews is that, despite the grandiose visual spectacle of the Avatar sequel, the film is overlong, with a thin plot that does not merit the epic run time. Admittedly, Cameron does dedicate a fair amount of screen time to “preserving beauty” over plot events. Whether it's the return of the tulkun or Kiri’s first experience underwater, Avatar: The Way of Water audiences spend many minutes gazing at blue people and the creatures surrounding them swim.
What these criticisms ignore, however, is the immense amount of character development present in Avatar: The Way of Water. While it is true that the middle third of the film sees few action sequences and advancement of an event-driven plot, that section devotes over an hour to creating complex characters with idiosyncratically intermingling dynamics. It establishes Lo’ak, the outcast brother yearning for connection with his environment, and Kiri, the Na’vi adoptee seeking a connection with those who bore her. The plot may not proceed with gun fights and peril, but Avatar: The Way of Water’s long second act certainly does “[keep] engagement.” As compared with 2009’s Avatar, The Way of Water follows a far greater number of characters, each one of them carrying more depth than leading man Jake Sully did in the first installment.
Will the Avatar 2 Sequels Stay Similar Lengths?
With three more sequels on the docket, Cameron now faces a number of runtime decisions as he maps out his plans for Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5. Avatar: The Way of Water already clocked in at 30 minutes longer than its predecessor, so it is very possible that Cameron will continue this trend and to side toward these longer, extended narratives. Early reports from members of the Avatar creative team have indicated that the Avatar scripts keep getting better, though the question among audiences is whether better means longer for the sequels. Time will tell as Avatar 3 continues its development leading to its December 2024 release.
Source: EW
