I've been trying explain this to people on here for the last year.
The shift from spectacle driven blockbusters to character-driven ones is a huge thing that no one here is really talking about.
The Marketing for this has been not good. It needed to start with teasers at NWH last year.
The first film blew the roof off of hall h back in 09. Why wasn't it there? Why wasnt there an avatar day during the summer where you could drop a documentary on why it took 13 years?!
Some of this is on fox and Disney and some of it on James Cameron for not reaching out to other forms of media ( books, animated series, /anime. You have a deal with Ubisoft why didn't work with them to make games that help fill out the universe a decade ago?!)
Once again, as I said in the box office club I created, I could be wrong on this and it could be bigger than the 1st. But it's obvious to me the franchise has been mismanaged for various reasons for 13 years.