A couple of weeks before it was released I saw someone on Twitter saying that the new Avatar sequel was going to be a big disappointment. I immediately remembered people saying almost the same thing about Titanic just before it was released. The film was so long and so overly-expensive there was no way it could possibly break even. That was the conventional wisdom and it was completely wrong.

In fact, until the first Avatar came out in 2009, Titanic was the #1 movie of all time as far as global box office. So here we go again. Whether you like Avatar or hate it, there’s no doubt that it’s making lots of money and James Cameron is once again proving to doubters that he knows how to make a spectacle movie that makes money at the box office.

Box office totals for today aren’t out yet (obviously) but when they are added to the cumulative total through Tuesday, Avatar: The Way of Water will become the biggest movie released in 2022:

James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has now officially, and as projected, crossed the $1 billion mark at the international box office with Tuesday’s grosses included. What’s more for this 20th Century Studios/Disney juggernaut, at $1,482.5M worldwide through Tuesday, the epic sci-fi sequel is next on its way to yet another milestone and will top $1.5B global when today’s numbers are factored. In doing so, it will become the No. 1 worldwide release of 2022, surpassing Top Gun: Maverick’s $1.489B…

Globally, it is the No. 12 biggest release ever, now overtaking Disney’s own Frozen II.

Following the holiday period, and while some offshore markets still have local holidays, midweeks continue to be strong and there is plenty of runway ahead.

When it passes Top Gun: Maverick today, Way of Water will take the #11 all-time spot. It will easily climb to the #9 spot by this weekend. After that the competition gets a little stiffer with another $150 million needed to enter the #8 spot currently held by The Lion King. Here’s a look at the top 12 as of today from Box Office Mojo:

Cameron hasn’t given specifics about how much this movie cost to produce but he did say it needs to reach the #3 or #4 spot in order to break even.

Speaking to GQ about the Avatar 2 budget, James confirmed that it was “very f**king expensive”. He said that it represents “the worst business case in movie history.” He continued to explain that in order for The Way of Water to be profitable, “you have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”

Back in 2017 a report in Variety suggested the total budget for all four planned sequels was going to be over one billion dollars or about $250+ million each. If you add a bit of inflation since then it seems possible the budget could have been as high as $300 million not including whatever was spent on marketing. But on top of that you have to add in the cost of producing Avatar 3 which was shot at the same time and is essentially done filming.

“2” is fully in the can. We have a working cut that we’re filling in the visual effects within. I feel pretty confident with that film. “3” is still a bit shadowy. It’s way too long. I haven’t really turned my energy into a disciplined cutting process on that yet. But I know I’ve got the performances. That’s the important thing. I’ve done all the capture. I’ve done most of the live action shooting. I still owe a little bit on some of the adult characters. We were more concerned with the kids aging out…

We mixed the schedules for “2” and “3” together, based on the types of scenes and the environments. I said, let’s just treat it like it’s a six-hour miniseries and we’re only going to go to Frankfurt once. We’re going to shoot all the scenes from “2” and “3” at the same time. That was more or less the motif. Actor availability was an issue as well. Anything that had to be done with a specific actor, we did all the scenes for “2” and “3” together — and a little bit of “4.” Because once again, I had to shoot the kids out. They’re allowed to age six years in the middle of the story on page 25 of movie “4.” So I needed everything before then, and then everything after, we’ll do later.

That’s about all of the information that available publicly so my interpretation of all of this is that Cameron has probably spent all of the money on the first film plus a lot of the money on the 2nd film before Way of Water hit theaters. And if you figure that scripts or treatments for 4 and 5 and some pre-development for those films, maybe he has spent well over half a billion at this point. And I think he’s saying that if you had to make all of that back on this one film, it’s going to have to be up in the very top 5 movies of all time to do that.

So is it any good? Well, if you hated the eco-themes of the first film you’ll hate this one just as much. Cameron gives us a new McGuffin in this film, i.e. something else the humans are after that’s even more valuable than “unobtanium.” And once again, you get the distinct feeling that ultimately its capitalism, or at least a certain dim view of it, that is the real final boss in these films. That can be a lot to take especially if your view of capitalism is that it’s produced far more for far more people than any other system. Not to put too fine a point on it but we definitely wouldn’t have $300 million blockbusters and all of the new technology needed to make them in a world without capitalism. I wonder if at some point Cameron might want to acknowledge that.

On the other hand, we do live in a wonderful capitalist system that makes possible things like Avatar: Way of Water, a film which is ultimately about a struggling family, one which is far from perfect. The characters are well drawn to the point that they seem less like plot devices or aliens and more like real people. And of course the visuals are spectacular, better than the original. It absolutely feels like a real place and you do quickly get past the science fiction cloaking of the film even if you don’t get tired of looking at all of the new things on screen.

I don’t know if this movie will hit the top 5 or if the next sequel will be any good. Maybe in a few years this will all look like folly. The one thing I keep thinking is that I’ve heard people predict doom and failure for Cameron before and so far they’ve been wrong every time.