Filmmaker Cameron talks about the return of ‘Avatar’
NEW YORK: Thirteen years ater James Cameron plunged moviegoers into the cosmic world of “Avatar,” the lush, distant moon of Pandora is finally orbiting back into view. Cameron’s “Avatar” industrial complex has been whirling in high gear for some time; production on the upcoming sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” began back in 2017. But ater shuffling through half a decade’s worth of release dates, Cameron’s science-fiction epic is poised to again blanket movie screens and transport willing travelers back, in 3-D, to the land of the Na’vi.
For even the visionary filmmaker of “Titanic” and “The Terminator,” the relaunch of “Avatar” is, as Cameron said in a recent interview from Wellington, New Zealand, “a big bet.” A third “Avatar” is already in post-production, and production has begun on a fourth. The record-breaking $2.8 billion in box office that “Avatar” grossed made the coming “Avatar” armada a far-from-risky wager. But a lot has changed since the original’s release, when Neflix was still renting DVDS by mail and Cameron was working for 20th Century Fox. To whet moviegoers’ appetites ahead of the Dec.16 debut of the three-hour “Avatar: The
Way of Water” — and remind them of a movie world they may have lost touch with — the Walt Disney Co. on Friday will rerelease “Avatar” in a remastered, 4K, HDR version that he says is “beter than it’s ever looked.”
It’s an opening salvo in Cameron’s ambitious plan to sketch a yet-grander sci-fi saga, and to again conjure a cinematic experience, as he says, “that you simply cannot have in the home.” Taking a break from all the “Avatar” juggling, Cameron talked re-watching the original, his expectation for “The Way of Water” and why
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dP he nearly quit the “Avatar” business. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Does ‘Avatar’ seem like a long time ago to you?
It feels like yesterday at times and then obviously it feels like more than a decade other times. The time has passed quickly. I’ve been doing all sorts of interesting things. Deep ocean research. Building submersibles. Writing four epic movies. Now finishing up “Avatar 2” and we’re mid-process in post on “Avatar 3.” So “Avatar” has never been far from my mind. I constantly go back to it, obviously in the remaster process making it beter than it’s ever looked before. I’m kind of just living on Pandora right now.
When you went back to watch “Avatar,” how did it look to you?
I see a lot of good work by a lot of good people in terms of the production design, the visual effects, the groundbreaking strides that were made at that time in capturing the performances of the actors, and the great work of the actors. It was tough to live up to. We had set the bar very high for ourselves back then and we had to live up to that bar this time with the new films. I remind our VFX team all the time: “Look at the bugs in the forest in the first movie. We had beter bugs!”
Moviegoing rebounded this summer but there’s been a late-summer lull that the ‘Avatar’ rerelease may help jumpstart. How do you see the health of theatrical right now?
It’s shown resiliency that I don’t think we expected. The pandemic, quite rightly, scared everybody. There was a period of time where you were basically risking your life to go to the movies. People did it anyway. Now, we feel like we’re past the hump or at least it’s a manageable problem. We’re seeing a resurgence back in cinemas. It’s not where we were before. Streaming has taken a bite. The pandemic has taken a bite. We’re probably down 20, 25% from where we were pre-pandemic. I think it’s going to be a very long tail on this thing before we’re back to where we were before. It’s incumbent on us to double down on showmanship.