<em>Avatar: Fire and Ash</em>, the third film in James Cameron’s expansive, expensive sci-fi saga, is dominating the box office just like previous installments. It also raises the same question that has dogged the series for over 15 years: is Avatar good or bad for the film industry? According to one of Cameron’s fellow auteurs, it’s good, but not everyone agrees.
Variety polled directors on their favorite 2025 movies, and Michael Mann surprised many film buffs by naming James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash as his pick.
Mann doubled down on his take, calling the Avatar franchise Cameron’s “magnum opus.” However, it’s fair to say that is a claim that Terminator and Titanic fans might find hard to comprehend.
Michael Mann Says “Avatar” Is James Cameron’s “Magnum Opus”; He Might Be Right
But What Does That Mean For The Rest Of Hollywood?
First, let’s dig deeper into Michael Mann’s praise for Avatar. Mann himself has a stacked filmography over his 45-year career as a director; Mann’s films include Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Ali, Collateral, and his own magnum opus, the 1995 crime epic Heat, which brought Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino face-to-face on screen for the first time.
Here is how the director summed up James Cameron’s Avatar movies to Variety:
Jim’s artistry, intellect and heavy lifting creates diverse alien biology, anthropology, mechanical engineering, politics, visualization and taut storytelling. It’s extraordinary. Jim began with a blank piece of paper. No writer-director I can think of has invented as large a three-dimensional world of his own imagining as has Jim. “Fire and Ash” on its own is an incredible achievement. There are two more installments to come. From some point in the future, when regarded historically, the whole of “Avatar” will be seen as the magnum opus it truly is.
For film critics and fans alike who revere Michael Mann, but don’t necessarily “get” what James Cameron has been doing with Avatar for the past twenty years, it is a record scratch moment. It is a reminder that there is something spellbinding about Cameron’s worldbuilding.
The remarkable thing about Avatar is its scale. Mann is right to say “no writer-director…has invented as large a three-dimensional world.” Still, it’s worth asking: is this impressive in its own right? A point of contention regarding Avatar has always been the films’ exorbitant budgets, which have been validated by the franchise’s commercial success, but not necessarily its critical returns.
The Legacy Of “Avatar”; How James Cameron Changed The Nature Of The Franchise Era
It’s Harder Than Ever For The Michael Manns Of Hollywood To Make Films
For some perspective: Michael Mann’s Heat had a budget of $60 million. That is roughly 1/4 the cost of James Cameron’s first 2009 Avatar film, which had a budget of nearly $240 million. Over fifteen years later, what it took to make Heat pales in comparison to the approximately $400 million spent on Fire and Ash.
This isn’t a novel argument: the era of massive-budget movies, from Avatar to the MCU, has the consequence of making it harder for mid-range budget movies, like Heat, to make it into production. In fact, Michael Mann’s long-awaited Heat 2 has taken so long in development, in part because of budgetary concerns.
In general, filmmaking is much more expensive these days. Heat 2 is finally moving forward with a $150 million-dollar budget, almost triple the original’s. And generally speaking, studios and production companies are increasingly hesitant to put up even OG Heat levels of cash unless they’re confident in its potential return on investment.
Film Budgets Have Become All-Or-Nothing, And It Has Made Hollywood Way More Cautious
The High Cost Of Film Production Ensures Safer Bets
Avatar: Fire and Ash has currently grossed over a billion dollars and counting during its theatrical run, more than doubling its budget already. The long-term viability of the Avatar franchise was made possible by the fact that the original film made nearly $3 billion in total, effectively a 100% return on its budget.
There’s also no denying that James Cameron is one of the most impactful directors in film history. He was even before Avatar, and the franchise cements his legacy, for better or worse. Michael Mann isn’t wrong to say the Avatar movies may very well be what Cameron is most remembered for.
And there’s no point in quibbling with the quality of the Avatars . Good or bad, the franchise has a massive global audience. It’s not a matter of whether the movies are “good” or “bad.” The issue with the Avatar movies is that they contribute to the decline of big-budget auteur filmmakers.
“Avatar” Might Be James Cameron’s Defining Achievement, But Fans Can’t Help Asking “What If?”
What Else Could James Cameron Have Done On Screen?
James Cameron is associated with blockbuster franchises like Terminator and Alien, but it’s important to note how different the film industry was 40 years ago. Cameron created Terminator, and wrote/directed T2: Judgment Day, but even then, it was decades before his films were “franchise-ified.” Likewise, Cameron’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien made the series iconic but not a franchise.
Cameron’s ’90s films, notably True Lies and Titanic, helped define what blockbusters would look like in the future. But with Avatar , Cameron explicitly tries to create the biggest film franchise in history. It is his hyperbolic extension of contemporary filmmaking. In a way, it has been stunningly successful but there are consequences.
A significant consequence is how many James Cameron movies like True Lies , and Titanic, or even the first two Terminators, have audiences missed out on in the past thirty years? In the twelve-year gap between both films people worried there would never be another Cameron film. Now concerns arise that there won’t be any more non-AvaatarCameron films.
If it weren’t for Avatar could James Cameron have directed his gangster epic equivalent of Heat? And would Michael Mann’s career look any different today? These are real questions people should be asking about Avatar films rather than whetherAvaatar:Fire and Ash was a new high or low for this franchise.
