Speaking to Deadline while attending the Critics Choice Awards, Jame Cameron teased what we can expect from the still-untitled “Avatar 3.” As the filmmaker explained, “Fire has a symbolic purpose in the film and there’s a [Na’vi] culture that is specifically around that concept.”
Granted, we already knew this. Cameron has talked before about how the next film is going to introduce a Na’vi Fire Nation, much like the human Fire Nation in “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” What’s more, the “Ash People” are meant to be a villainous Na’vi tribe, which seems to kind of defeat the whole point of Cameron’s appropriation of Indigenous cultures for his big sci-fi saga.
Though he tried to play things coy, saying that was “probably saying too much as we speak,” the filmmaker still went ahead and spilled some more details about the film. Cameron revealed that the Fire Nation is not the only new Na’vi culture we’ll meet, further suggesting the “Avatar” films are following in the footsteps of “ATLA.” He explained:
“You’re going to meet two completely new cultures in the next film. We met the Omaticaya, we met the Metkayina, and you’re going to meet two new cultures in the next film, and it kind of rove a little more freely around the world of Pandora to different places.”
Sure, it may be a bit gimmicky — especially if the franchise continues to tie each new Na’vi tribe to an element — but the different Na’vi cultures and the different biomes of Pandora are part of what makes this franchise so exciting and worth coming back to. More than the plot of the Sullys running from Quaritch, it is seeing new places in this world that makes “Avatar” such a winning series.