‘Avatar 2’ Director James Cameron Criticizes J.J. Abrams’ ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, Offers Update on Planned Cinematic Series

‘Avatar 2’ director and co-producer James Cameron offered his thoughts on J.J. Abrams ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, criticizing the film for being unimaginative with repetitive elements and characters. He also offered updates on his sequels for the planed cinematic series.

According to Business Insider, Cameron expressed his opinions on Abrams’ addition to the highly popular ‘Star Wars’ franchise saying that the new film lacked imagination in comparison to George Lucas’ past installments.

When asked by reporter Hannah Litchfield on his thoughts on ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, Cameron replied, “Well, George Lucas is a friend of mine. And he and I were having a good conversation the other day about it. I don’t want to say too much about the film, ‘cause I also have a lot of respect for J.J. Abrams, and I want to see where they’re taking it next, to see what they’re doing with it.”

He added, “I have to say that I felt that George’s group of six films had more innovative visual imagination, and this film was more of a retrenchment to things you had seen before and characters you had seen before, and it took a few baby steps forward with new characters. So for me the jury’s out, I wanna see where they go with it.”

According to Australia Network News, he also offered an update on the next sequels of his adventure-fantasy series ‘Avatar’. He said, “We’ve decided to embark on a truly massive cinematic project, making four epic films, each one of which stands alone but which together form a complete saga.”

He added, “My original plan was to release them a year apart… I don’t want to land on the same date as one of the ‘Star Wars’ sequels.” Cameron then joked that competition wouldn’t be fair to the ‘Star Wars’ franchise. He said, “No, that’s just good business. I don’t want to go head-to-head with ‘Star Wars.’ That would be stupid. And hopefully they won’t want to go head-to-head with us.”

The 61-year old Canadian filmmaker first achieved international recognition for his science-fiction film ‘The Terminator’, released on October 1984. He was then hired to helm and write the 1986 cult classic ‘Aliens’, which featured Sigourney Weaver in the lead role.

He then reached the status of prolific Hollywood filmmaker with his 1997 film ‘Titanic’, which earned him Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Film Editing. Soon after, Cameron embarked on one of his biggest films to date with the creation of ‘Avatar’.

The first film in the planned big-budget cinematic series broke numerous box office records, earning $2.79 billion worldwide against an estimated $237 million production budget. It gained $760.5 million in domestic sales and received $2.02 billion overseas.

‘Avatar 2’ is an upcoming adventure-fantasy film scheduled to premiere sometime in 2018. Sequels are also scheduled to be released on December 2020, 2022, and 2023 respectively. The second film will star Zoe Saldana as Neytiri and Sam Worthington as Jake Sully.