Avatar’s magical return, 13 years on
It has taken 13 years for the hugely anticipated £200 million
sequel to avatar (still the highestgrossing film of all time globally) to arrive — and I got a first peek at the trailer this week
the small audience at the Odeon Leicester square in London were plunged back into the breathtaking world of Pandora, and it says something about the power of what we were shown that a significant number of the normally cynical pundits just sat and watched it on a loop for a full 15 minutes.
avatar: the Way Of Water picks up the story of human Jake sully (sam Worthington) and his Na’vi warrior love Neytiri (Zoe saldana), living on the distant planet Pandora. they have four children. One of them, spider (Jack Champion), is adopted and is shown wearing a mask which allows him to breathe underwater. the Na’vi don’t need masks.
James Cameron’s film, due out in December, will tell an epic dynastic story about the family and their struggle to survive.
the trailer shows the Na’vi riding flying creatures and dinosaur-like beasts that paddle in the sea, plus vast underwater whale-like animals and spectacular reefs. Neytiri is pregnant in some of the scenes.
It looks like the family go to live with another tribe who exist underwater on the habitable moon of Pandora.
Kate Winslet, who joins the cast as Ronal, one of the ‘water people’, spent around a month mostly submerged in a tank (she should be used to it having shot to stardom in Cameron’s titanic) and acting via motion capture technology.
the director insisted on presenting his vision in 3D this week, even though that has fallen far out of fashion over the years since the original film.
It will also be shown in other formats.
three further films were shot at the same time in New Zealand and will come out in 2024, 2026 and 2028 respectively.
and although sigourney Weaver as Dr Grace augustine and stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch both died in avatar, we
will be seeing them again.