The highly anticipated sequel to James Cameron's 2009 box office breaking sci-fi epic Avatar is almost here. Avatar 2, titled 'Avatar: The Way of Water', returns to Pandora and the Na'vi well over a decade later and follows Jake and Neytiri's new life as a family - until war returns, forcing them in to the water as refugees. Cameron spoke in length about his vision for Avatar as a franchise and how the sequel came to be after shooting finished two years ago:
‘Ok so the film is longer. People wanted the first film to be longer – be careful what you ask for. That I can do. It’s longer because there’s more characters to service and there’s more complexity in the story, which I think is actually a good thing. What we set out to do was drop you back into Pandora very quickly, get you into Jake and Neytiri’s lives, and let Jake take you through the fifteen years in between the first film and the second one - take you through having kids, being a father, their life. But then the humans come back, and all goes to hell. Cut to a year later and they’re at war again: ultimately it kind of becomes a kind of a refugee story where they are displaced from the forest and have to go to the ocean.'
'I think where the surprises really start is where we start to follow the kids. We start to go off of Jake and Neytiri for a while and we follow the kids. All of a sudden that story is just as compelling as Jake and Neytiri’s story and that is by design. It’s not really about “handing off the baton” as such but introducing new characters and new complexity into it. Jake and Neytiri are through the whole saga – it’s all written out. 4 is written, 5 is written. These are shootable scripts. They may be tinkered with a bit, but I consider these shootable scripts. They are through the saga right through until the end.'
Fans and casual movie-goers alike are concerned that the 3 hours and 12 minutes runtime will mean most viewers will need at least one bathroom break and end up missing some part of the film.
‘We wanted to play the epic game – in epics there are more characters and there are more threads to follow. The first one follows the classic kind of Joseph Campbell archetypes of mythic storytelling. It follows that fairly clearly – the second one doesn’t at all, it’s kind of an intimate epic. In the first movie you’ve got giant armies being raised and a massive clash of forces, good vs evil, at the end and Jake emerges as the mytho-heroic character on the orange creature. That’s not what happens in the second movie. The second movie, quite frankly, is like a slow Tuesday afternoon and a bunch of shit goes down. He doesn’t go out and raise any army but it still feels epic. It’s a more intimate epic more closely focused on the characters and the bonds between the family members. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything – by the way Titanic sinks, you know that going in, but it doesn’t ruin your appreciation of the film. We’re teeing up a lot of stuff that gets paid off in later films. I don’t want to give the impression that it’s this kind of bleeding open ended thing where you just kind of drive off a cliff. As much as I love Lord of the Rings, that film just fucking ends.’
The production budget alone on Cameron's ambitious sequel is reportedly in the $250 million range. Claims have been circulating that Avatar: The Way of Water needs to gross $2 billion to break even, meaning it would have to at least be in the top five highest grossing films of all time. Cameron has directed two of the top five: Titanic in third place with $2,201,647,264 and Avatar in the top spot with $2,922,917,914.
‘While we were in post-production we thought “Ok, well what’s the hook?” We’re talking to Disney, we’re talking to their marketing people and its “family”. So then a whole bunch of trailers come in and they’re about family – about Jake and Neytiri. I said: “wait a minute. Jake and Neytiri age people don’t go to the movies anymore”. An eighteen-year-old doesn’t want to hear about family from the parents’ point of view – trust me on this. So, then we thought we’ve got to tell the kids story too and it turned out there was actually a balance to be found there. People wanted to feel like the story continued with Jake and Neytiri but they also wanted to see new things. I think the trailers promise that.’
‘I’ve seen how you do it wrong as a parent, I’ve seen how you do it right, how you learn as you go along – Jake’s still on that curve and he isn’t quite there yet. He’s a pretty authoritarian dad because of his military background and because of the survival stakes that they’re in in the middle of a war as refugees. In a way it is personal – but I think that’s good and that’s a strength as an artist to get your own stuff out there. You speak from authority and you have conviction – you’ve got to have conviction as a filmmaker, it’s got to be instinctive.'
‘I can hear echoes of thing’s I’ve said, I can hear echoes of things my kids have said, in the dialogue when I watch the movie. They think it’s hysterical – “Dad, you think you’re doing me but that is so not me.”’
Avatar: The Way of Water releases in cinemas on December 16.
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