A 2022 blockbuster has knocked Tron: Ares off the #1 spot of the Disney+ global top 10 list. Notably, Tron: Ares debuted on the streaming platform following a disappointing run at the box office, but found considerable success on the streaming service, topping the charts.
Avatar 2 takes top spot ahead of Fire and Ash’s Disney+ debut
Avatar: The Way of Water is the current leader on the global list of Top 10 movies on Disney+, according to FlixPatrol. The film has a popularity score of 260. The Way of Water’s sudden spike in popularity comes as expectations build around Avatar 3’s potential streaming debut in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Tron: Ares currently occupies the second position on the chart, with a popularity score of 246. Some of the other entries on the list are The Muppet Show revival (237), The Devil Wears Prada (237), Despicable Me (186), Up (146), The Princess and the Frog (143), Inside Out 2 (141), Avatar (122), and Avengers: Endgame (114). While the data from Flixpatrol isn’t complete, it does offer a broader picture.
Avatar: The Way of Water is the second entry in James Cameron’s Avatar film franchise. A direct sequel to 2009’s Avatar, the movie quickly became one of the highest-grossing films of all time, earning over $2.3 billion at the global box office. It presently has a 76% score from critics on the review-aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes after 455 reviews.
Tyler Treese of ComingSoon wrote in his review, “Avatar: The Way of Water is the one film you truly must see in theaters this year. It’s remarkable getting to see a master of the craft still doing what only he can do, which is blending this level of spectacle with heart and technical marvel.”
Cameron wrote the screenplay for Avatar: The Way of Water with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, based on a story the trio developed with Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno. The film’s cast includes Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri, Sigourney Weaver as Kiri, Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, Kate Winslet as Ronal, and Cliff Curtis as Tonowari.
Avatar: Fire and Ash includes a crisis lifeline in the end credits for a good reason.
James Cameron and 20th Century Studios’ Avatar: Fire and Ash, also known as Avatar 3, opened in the United States this past weekend. The sequel to Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water sees Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, and Stephen Lang reprise their respective roles as Jake Sully, Neytiri, and Colonel Miles Quaritch.
Some Avatar audiences have noticed that there’s a suicide prevention hotline in the closing credits of Avatar: Fire and Ash. While this confused some and led others to make jokes, there’s actually a good, narrative-related reason as to why this is in there.
Why is there a crisis lifeline in the end credits of Avatar: Fire and Ash?
In the first half of Avatar: Fire and Ash, there’s a scene where Jake and Neytiri’s Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) briefly puts a gun to his head and considers pulling the trigger. This is shortly after he gets into a fight with his father, as both of them are still in various stages of processing the death of Jake’s son/Lo’ak’s brother Neteyam (Jame Flatters).
Filmmakers are strongly encouraged to include suicide prevention hotline numbers or other resources whenever a project, be it a movie or a TV show, addresses this subject matter. Per the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, “We do know that suicide on screen can cause significant distress, and can, in some cases, lead to vulnerable viewers becoming suicidal. If you’ve lost a loved one to suicide, struggle with suicidal ideation or have attempted suicide in the past, you deserve a heads up so you can make the best decision for yourself. If you need to give these shows or movies a miss, there’s no shame in that! Self-care means checking in with yourself about how you’re feeling and what you can cope with, and making the best decisions for you.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash is now playing in theaters.
Originally reported by Brandon Schreur at SuperHeroHype.
With Avatar 3 hitting theaters this weekend, there are a few things fans of the first two movies might want to know about Fire and Ash before stepping into the theater.
James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash will be the third film in the Avatar franchise, which began in 2009. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña are reprising their respective roles as Jake Sully and Neytiri in the film, while Oona Chaplin will play a villain named Varang.
What should people know about Avatar: Fire and Ash before seeing the movie?
Fans should know that Avatar: Fire and Ash differs from many other blockbusters in that one of the main themes of the film is faith and grief.
ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim wrote in his review, “Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) finds himself questioning his belief in Eywa after the death of his son, struggling to reconcile his loss with the idea of a guiding spiritual force. Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), on the other hand, clings fiercely to her faith because it’s the only thing keeping her grounded. Their emotional divide is subtle but powerful, representing two very human responses to tragedy. Neytiri’s grief is further complicated by her deepening prejudice against humans, whom she holds responsible for her son’s death. The film doesn’t shy away from the uglier sides of grief, allowing resentment and anger to coexist with love and devotion.”
Additionally, Sim and many other critics have noted that some narrative elements in Fire and Ash can feel similar to the previous two Avatar movies, along with other Cameron movies.
Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri said, “Cameron remixes a lot of his favorite motifs in Fire and Ash: There’s bits of Aliens, Terminator: Judgment Day, and The Abyss in here, and a whole lot of Titanic (again). There’s also quite a bit of Way of Water in here, too, which may feel to some like a franchise cannibalizing itself.”
Lastly, it’s worth knowing that Avatar: Fire and Ash may very well be the last film in the franchise. While there were initially plans for Avatar 4 and Avatar 5, and no decision has officially been made as of yet, Cameron has been open about other projects he wants to make and has said that he’s willing to walk away from Avatar if this doesn’t wind up being a major box office hit.
“After [Avatar: The] Way of Water came out, I started to reevaluate and change things a little bit to answer kind of what the audience was responding to,” James Cameron told io9 recently. ‘Who are they interested in? What parts of it are they interested in? I even wrote some new scenes, and we went back, and we redid some stuff.”
Cameron said that to us a few weeks ago talking about Avatar: Fire and Ash, which is now in theaters. It was an intriguing tidbit that was missing one key piece of information. What, specifically, did he change after he saw the audience reactions to The Way of Water?
Well, in a new interview with the Wrap, Cameron did answer that question. And our speculation was right on the money for one of the things. He added more of the space whale Payakan because audiences loved him so much. “There was such a strong emotional response to Payakan as a character that I had to build up his part in movie three,” Cameron said. “If any breakout star emerges from a movie, you’d build up that part in the subsequent film.”
Beyond beefing up Payakan, Cameron also changed a key moment between Jake Sully and his new water tribe, the Metkayina.
“In the original script, he asked the question [whether or not they want to use guns] three times, [and] they finally answer in the affirmative, because they’ve got to defend the Tulkun,” Cameron said. “And I thought it was important to say, ‘All right, you could be a pacifist, but at some point, there are things that are worth fighting for.’”
But that notion changed after the film was released, partially because of the Uvalde school shooting in 2022.
“I did not want to glorify or fetishize the assault weapon,” Cameron said. “Now I’m a little bit trapped, because I got a character who defines himself as a Marine. And the Marine’s ethos is a Marine and his rifle are the most powerful weapon in the world. That’s how they think. And so I thought, ‘All right, I’m going to keep it singular to Jake and his way of doing things, but I’m not going to let him contaminate the Na’vi way, and their value system.’ These are things that were fluid going along.”
Because Jake wasn’t arming the Metkayina, though, Cameron also shifted the expected reunion between Jake and Toruk, the huge, dragon-like creature he befriends in the first film. That was going to come in a later movie, but Cameron moved it up to give the Na’vi added firepower against the humans. “That was an adjustment on the fly,” Cameron said.
Avatar: Fire and Ash is now in theaters. Check back Monday, December 22, for our full, spoiler-filled breakdown.
James Cameron prefers not to revisit his movies after they’ve opened in theaters. “I usually have a moratorium of a couple of years where I just don’t want to think about it,” he says. “There’s a certain point when you’ve been away from where you could start to be more of an audience and less of a picky filmmaker.”
The filmmaker had to break that rule, however, with 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” because of the impending release of the third film in the series, “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” in December.
“We’re going through the finish of the VFX now [on “Fire and Ash”] — we have been, really, for the last two years, but we’re really coming down to the wire now,” he says. “And I want to be thematically consistent about the way music was used and underscore during dialogue scenes and things like that. So I have rewatched it. It’s a pretty good ride, I have to say!”
Audiences will have their own chance to re-watch “The Way of Water” on the big screen on Oct. 3, with the film — which grossed $2.3 billion worldwide — is re-released into theaters in anticipation of “Fire and Ash.” The former film traces the family saga of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) after the events of 2009’s “Avatar,” when they defeated the military assault on the Na’vi by Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). In the sequel, set 16 years later, Jake and Neytiri have a clan of five children, including an adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), born from the inert Na’vi avatar of Weaver’s deceased human character from the 2009 film, Dr. Grace Augustine, and a quasi-adopted human son, Spider (Jack Champion), who was orphaned when his biological parents, including Quaritch, died in battle. Quaritch is resurrected in “The Way of Water” into his own Na’vi avatar, and he resumes his relentless pursuit of the Sully family, which puts Spider in the middle of the conflict.
In an interview with Variety, Cameron discussed what else from “The Way of Water” will pay off in “Fire and Ash,” the major change he made to “Fire and Ash” after he’d finished filming, how the future of the “Avatar” franchise (Disney has a fourth and fifth film dated for 2029 and 2031) could affect his plans to direct a feature adaptation of the book “Ghosts of Hiroshima,” and why he is working to make the visual effects process a more “creative culture.” (Note: This interview was conducted on Sept. 26, before the controversy started over AI performance simulation Tilly Norwood.)
James Cameron on the set of “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
Mark Fellman / 20th Century Studios
When you re-watch your films, do you find that allows you to discover new things about the movie that you hadn’t noticed before?
It does in the sense that you start to realize how much of filmmaking is subconscious and can’t be quantified. My job all day long is to quantify minutia. I’m looking at a VFX shot: “OK, you see the way his foot comes down on that one fern and the way it brushes aside. I’m not quite buying that. I think you should re-sim that.” I mean, it’s endless. It’s every detail, every blade of grass, every flicker of fire, all of the lighting interactions, and you get so down into the weeds that it takes stepping back and seeing the film to realize that there’s a big unconscious driver that’s running underneath all of that detail that’s telling you when you’ve got the essence of the moment. And so when I see the film, I go, “Oh, that actually works. I actually feel what I’m supposed to be feeling.” I guess what I see after the fact is, yeah, I get sucked down the rabbit hole of the details, but I don’t sacrifice the essence.
How is the VFX process going for you now?
In fact, as I’m working with the VFX people, I’m trying to create a new culture around that — not a technical culture, but a creative culture. When I’m talking to the effects sequence supervisors and the animators and the lighters, it’s like, “What is the most important thing about the shot and why? What is its narrative purpose? What are we saying with this shot? Now, don’t think in shots. Think in flow.” I’m trying to get them to think in flow. Why does this shot exist? I could do anything. I could not have it in the movie. I could have done a completely different shot. Why do you think I did that shot?
What’s the goal for you?
I want them to internalize for themselves that storytelling process. They go way down the rabbit hole, much deeper than me, on the technical side, and are far more capable technically than I am. So I want to give them a little bit of that storytelling magic dust to own for themselves. And it’s working. It started on “The Way of Water,” and it’s continued a lot more on “Fire and Ash.” It’s what I call a first look final. It’s the craziest thing in the world. The creative culture is so strong across all these artists that I can look at a shot for review for the very first time and say “It’s done.” That is the craziest thing. Anybody that’s worked in VFX is going to be saying “Whaaaat?”
Now, they may be on version 400 but they’ve had enough input previously that they’re now working within a culture that encourages the creativity and the specificity of our “Avatar” world and our characters. So this idea of really encouraging them to think as storytellers is really paying off. And this is why the Gen AI stuff is never going to take the place of that. We need our artists. It’s artists in control of the process, right?
So it’s actually become a kind of crazily joyful finish. You know, it was a fraught production, let’s face it, but it’s been a kind of a joyful finish, because it’s really starting to resonate and fire on all cylinders, and we’re getting a lot of first look finals, which is nuts.
You shot most of the material for “The Way of Water” and “Fire & Ash” from 2017 to 2019, right?
Yeah, we started September of 2017. We went for 18 months, but we did both movies, all of it, other than some planned reshoots and some places where I got creative and wrote some new scenes. But the vast majority — call it 95% — was shot in that 18 month window. That was Sigourney playing 15-year-old Kiri across both movies, which actually worked great, because she’s got a story arc across the two movies. There was a kind of a major story arc, where 2 and 3 really tell one big story. And then ultimately, if I get so lucky and I make 4 and 5, 4 and 5 tell one big story. So it kind of stops for a beat after the end of 3. I don’t mean we’ll necessarily stop in production, but the story kind of stops and then it jumps forward in time a little bit.
So how that distance affect your relationship to the material? With the kids especially, they’re much older now than when you were first filming.
It creates this weird cognitive dissonance, where I’m always shocked by how long it’s been since we actually captured the moment. Because there’s a sense of immediacy. I’m in the story, working on this scene. It feels very immediate. I can remember where everybody was standing. I can remember even secondary characters in the background, which of our troop characters played each one of those secondary characters. It feels like I did it last week. It was five or six years ago.
Fortunately, the cast are just as energetic. I just was doing press with them last week. They’re just as pumped and passionate about their characters and what we’re doing as they ever were, and can’t wait to get on to the next one — if we should get so lucky as to make some money with these now that are being re-released and being released. So the energy is there, the excitement’s still there, but it’s a weird cognitive dissonance.
Sam Worthington in “Avatar: Fire and Ash”
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Does that dissonance wind up affecting the film?
The good news is I don’t really second guess my creative impulses. Unless, and this happened a little bit on “Fire and Ash,” I’m looking at it going, you know, I’m not that much of a genius screenwriter. There’s something a little off here in the storytelling. And so, our Toruk is back [in “Fire and Ash”], right? You know, the big bird that Jake rides [in the climax of the first “Avatar”]. I’ve always been waiting for the question, “Why doesn’t he just go get the big red bird and kill everybody like he used to do?” Because that doesn’t exist in “The Way of Water” at all.
I got a big scoop here. It didn’t exist in “Fire and Ash.” And I went, “Oh, he’s got to go get the bird.” Come on! I was saving it for a later film. I was like, “Fuck that! He should get the bird. Get the Toruk.” There’s something in Jake’s destiny that requires it, right? So I just re-wrote it, and we went back and we shot two or three scenes around that concept, and I threw some stuff out and stuck that in. And we’re at three hours, big surprise! But it works beautifully, and the actors were super-excited about that idea. It’s like, oh, okay, that feels right, you know?
So it’s not set in stone. It’s a constantly evolving creative process. And that’s what keeps you vigorous and engaged.
Based on the “Fire & Ash” trailers, it’s clear that Spider and Kiri play crucial roles in the third film. Are there any other elements introduces in “The Way of Water” that audiences should especially pay attention to when re-watching the film?
You’ve got the primary couple, Jake and Neytiri. Obviously at the end of “The Way of Water” — three years in, I don’t think we have to worry about spoilers — their eldest son dies. In the typical universe of superheroes and so on, grief is not really dealt with, because it’s an impediment to all the cool stuff you want to see. But I thought, Nah, I want to be very authentic about these people emotionally. I want them to be real. I want that to inform and put pressure on their relationship. Because in the real world, when parents lose a child — I’m a parent of five. Sam has three. Zoe has three sons. You know, it’s the inconceivable thing for all of us that we all fear. What would that do? In the real world, it tears marriages apart. There’s blame, there’s grief that gets in the way and a lot of marriages don’t survive that. So we got the ultimate love story, kind of Romeo and Juliet, you know, Smith and Pocahontas on another planet. And then it gets challenged. Are they going to survive as a relationship?
Anything else?
You’ve got these new characters, Spider, Kiri, Lo’ak, they all come to real fruition in movie 3. But the beautiful thing about this re-release is you get to remind yourself of how important all these relationships are, and then we pay them all off — sometimes for good, sometimes not so good. But the point is, they’re on a greater arc. Kiri’s arc, very important. Spider’s arc, I think you could tell from the trailer, we’re going places with him. He’s also the glue that glues all the other relationships together. Jake and Quaritch, they’d just be two guys trying to kill each other for six hours of two movies. Sorry, that’s boring. Where it gets nuanced is when they’ve got this kid between them, and they’re the two different father figures, and sometimes they have to work together to keep him alive. It becomes much more nuanced as a result of these younger characters. And by the way, if you’re a kid, you’re going follow them. It’s not a family movie about the parents. It’s a family movie about the kids.
Jack Champion in “Avatar: The Way of Water”
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Finally, what is the timeline for you to direct “Ghosts of Hiroshima”? You’ve said that right now, there’s nothing keeping you from directing the next two “Avatar” movies.
Well, I first of all, “Ghosts of Hiroshima” was written by a friend of mine. I gave them permission to announce that I had bought it to turn into a film, but I haven’t written a script yet. So once I get a script I like, then I can answer that question, but that’s not the case right now. Now, I’ve got a couple of other things that haven’t been announced that I also want to do, and it’s a question of — that one [“Ghosts of Hiroshima”] I will direct. Doesn’t matter when I do it, I’ll direct that one. There are others that I may or may not direct. And the big swing in all of this is, do we make any money with “Avatar 3”? I mean, we’ll make some money. But the question is, what kind of a profit margin, if any, is there, and how much of an inducement is that to continue on in this universe? Or maybe we wait a while until we figure out how to bring costs down. Because production costs have spiraled over the last few years, especially in VFX. Everything’s gone up an enormous amount, and it’s starting to close out the type of films that I like to make.
So there’s an argument for taking a pause and figuring that out. There’s an argument for going out and doing some smaller, more personal film in the meantime, while that gets figured out. There’s an argument, in wild success, for us just launching and just going straight into [“Avatar 4” and “Avatar 5”] and I figure out a production methodology where I have a bit of a hiatus where I can make another film. And there’s another argument that says just go make those two damn movies and figure everything else out when I’m 80.
So where are you in those arguments?
If you’re interpreting from that that I’m at a bit of a crossroads here — it’s not all mapped out. You know, life isn’t like that. I am at a bit of a crossroads here, and I’m going to have to see what draws me to what as I go forward. The only thing I can tell you right now, I’m not going to stop being a director and a storyteller. That’s the only thing I can confirm at this stage.
With that blistering Avatar: Fire and Ash preview arriving this week, fans are shifting into extreme excitment mode over the December release. To capitalize on that, the previous film in James Cameron’s series, 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, will be bringing some Fire and Ash with it as part of its theatrical re-release next week—but there’s a catch.
Sneak peeks at the much-anticipated new movie will play after The Way of Water screenings. But as Variety explains it, “Not every screening will offer the same experience. There are three different, brand new clips from Fire and Ash that will play after The Way of Water, but each screening will only play one of the three.”
For most fans, this won’t be a big deal; it’s a little bonus on top of getting to spend three-plus hours with The Way of Water on the big screen again. But Avatar megafans might be a bit bummed, since there’s no guarantee returning to the theater for multiple viewings will yield a different Fire and Ash clip.
The good news, however, is that you won’t have to wait too long just to watch the whole damn movie. Avatar: Fire and Ash will at long last hit theaters December 19.
Avater: The Way of Water returns to theaters October 3-10.
Longtime film producer Jon Landau passed away at 63 years old. Per TheWrap, sources explained that he’d been battling cancer. Landau is best known for being the producer on a number of films at 20th Century Fox like the Avatar movies and Titanic.
Born July 30, 1960, he was the son of Ely and Edie Landau, who were film producers themselves. His first producer role was the 1987 film Campus Man from Paramount. By 1997, he became EP of feature film production for Fox, in turn making him a collaborator with James Cameron. The two have been a successful duo thanks to the aforementioned films, which became box office hits and awards darlings (Titanic was the first film to ever cross $1 billion worldwide), and some of the biggest movies of all time. He also produced 2002’s Solaris (directed by Steven Soderbergh), co-produced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Dick Tracy,and oversaw Fox’s Power Rangers movie, True Lies, and Last of the Mohicans.
Landau became a steward of the Avatar franchise in recent years, and helped Cameron and Disney come up with the sequel movies and the Avatar theme park attractions. As COO of Lightstorm Entertainment, Landau led Avatar’s transmedia expansion into comics from Dark Horse and video games, including 2023’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorafrom Ubisoft.
io9 Senior Reporter Germain Lussier recalled being on the set of Alita Battle Angel (which Landau also produced) and being in awe of him. “He sat us down in a room and went over the whole movie with us,” Lussier recalled. “Even though it was already in production, it almost felt like he was pitching us on it. Explaining the story and why it meant so much to him. He was so assured and smart and articulate, I walked out of the room thinking two things. One – if the movie is half as good as that, it’s gonna be fantastic. And two – no wonder he’s one of the best producers in the world.”
At time of writing, Titanic star Frances Fisher was one of the first people to memorialize Landau on social media. Cameron has yet to say anything about his passing, but we’ll update when he does. Until then, we extend our condolences to Landau’s family and otheer loved ones.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” continues to dominate the box office, maintaining the No. 1 spot for the seventh consecutive week.
To date, the long-awaited sequel has brought in $620 million at the domestic box office and $2.117 billion globally, breaking the record previously held by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.071 billion) to become the fourth-highest grossing movie in Hollywood history.
The only movies that have made more in worldwide ticket sales are: “Avatar” ($2.92 billion) in first place, “Avengers: Endgame” ($2.7 billion) at second, and “Titanic” ($2.19 billion) at third.
This puts director James Cameron in the uniquely unmatched position of having directed three of the four top-grossing films of all time.
Meanwhile, the success of the second “Avatar” film means that Cameron will be making good on his plans for more sequels.
“It looks like with the momentum that the film has now that we’ll easily pass our break even in the next few days, so it looks like I can’t wiggle out of this and I’m gonna have to do these other sequels,” he said during an appearance on “Who’s Talking with Chris Wallace”. “I know what I’m going to be doing the next six or seven years.”
It’s not often that sequels really go up for serious Oscar consideration… and it’s never been the case that two are up for Best Picture at the same time. Both Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way Of Water have managed to get Oscar nominations, but they face some stiff competition.
Both films are up for a variety of other nominations. For Avatar: The Way Of Water, we have nominations for Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, and Best Production Design. On the other hand, Top Gun: Maverick is sitting pretty with a few more nominations and in some weightier categories. It’s in the running for Best Original Song, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.
Both films made a ton of money at the box office, received rave reviews from critics, and were well-liked by the general public. Unfortunately, when you’re up against such great films, that’s not always a guaranteed win. Luckily, both of these films also arguably have a pretty huge cultural impact, and that can really give them a leg up. Top Gun: Maverick also has nominations in some pretty key categories like Best Film Editing. Even if it doesn’t win Best Picture (which is very unlikely), it could still take home some Oscars in other categories.
Regardless of how this goes, everyone involved with both movies should be excited to know that they were part of breaking an Oscars record. People frequently push back against the sequel-wave that Hollywood has been riding, but these nominations show that sometimes, sequels really are good.
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Filming the sequel to “Avatar” wasn’t easy on the actors.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, director James Cameron revealed that actor Jack Champion, who plays the human character Spider in “Avatar: The Way of Water” had to shoot his scenes twice.
“The beauty was, we got to do it twice,” he said. “So [cinematographer] Russ [Carpenter] would light the scene, so everything that we did with Jack photographically, we did previously with him in terms of capture.”
Shooting twice was necessary so Champion could be a reference for his co-stars’ motion-capture performances as the film’s Na’vi characters, before doing his live-action takes.
“Jack did his entire performance twice, once for all the other actors like Sigourney and Britain [Dalton] and Sam, so that he was there kind of off camera,” Cameron said. “And he was like 13 at the time. And then later when we shot, he was 15, so he changed in size and vocal range a bit, but we capped him and then we had these capture scenes.”
Champion wasn’t the only actor who went through real challenges during the shoot.
Many of the actors learned to hold their breath for minutes at a time for the film’s underwater sequences, including Kate Winslet, who held her breath for over 6 minutes.
In a December interview with French website 20 Minutes, James Cameron called Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water an “introduction” to future Avatar films, implying that we haven’t seen the main meat of the story yet.
In the interview, which is in French, Cameron says, “I can say that the [upcoming movies] will be the best ones. The others were an introduction, a way to set the table before serving the meal. But, obviously, everything will depend on how Avatar 2 is received, if it finds its audience.”
Cameron doesn’t need to worry about whether The Way of Water is successful. As of this writing, the film has earned $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office, overtaking Top Gun: Maverick to become the 10th highest-grossing film ever made. It looks like the sequels are a go.
And what will be in those sequels, exactly? Avatar 3, which Cameron has reportedly already shot, will feature a more sinister group of Na’vi called the “Ash People.” After that, Cameron has plans for two more Avatar films, for a total of five.
Assuming that each of the three sequels will have a runtime similar to the first two movies … whoo, that’s a lot of Avatar. If Avatar 3-5 are the main course, I might duck out of the meal early.
Because, seriously, how is almost six hours of storytelling “setting the table?” I gave The Way of Water a 3 out of 5 in my review because the story was fine. It’s problematic, but it’s narratively competent, and the characters are just interesting enough to keep my mind off the back pain I get from sitting in a theater for three hours. But setting the table shouldn’t take this long. Significant events have happened in both movies, yet nothing in the franchise feels significant. It doesn’t even feel like setup for something bigger. The Avatar series, so far, feels like folding and refolding a napkin.
I like to imagine that someday, someone will make a saga sort of like Avatar, but they’ll do it much better. They’ll do it from an Indigenous perspective, instead of trotting out the white savior trope. The story will be streamlined. The forward momentum will be apparent from the start. And the plot will tap into deep truths while still feeling fresh and interesting.
In the meantime, though, we’ve got about nine more hours of Avatar ahead of us. Hope you saved room.
Everything you see in Avatar: The Way of Water is mesmerising, to say the least. From Pandora’s newly introduced CG creatures to the realistic water, the sequel film of Avatar (2009), directed by James Cameron is an absolute triumph of visual effects. Much of the film’s breathtaking shots came from WÄÂÂÂtÄÂÂÂ FX, the studio behind some of the film’s splashy scenes. Their Visual Effects Supervisor, Pavani Rao Boddapati has been a part of Pandora’s decade-long journey since the original film and the sprawling sequel was her return to the exosolar moon. That is when she wasn’t working on films like The Hobbit Trilogy and Maze Runner: The Sorch Trails.
In an exclusive chat with Filmfare, Pavani Rao Boddapati opened up about working with James Cameron, Avatar’s underwater world and more.
Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time. Did the anticipation around the film affect you?
That feeling first came in 2009 when I came to New Zealand from Los Angeles to work on the first film. I’m a huge Pandora nerd. Every time there was a Pandora-themed project, I was the first person to sign up. In 2018 when I started on Avatar 2, it was hugely exciting. I want to work on every single movie Jim’s (James Cameron) making.
When it comes to such a massive project, do you ever feel like you’re nearing completion?
We knew that it was going to be a project that has been in the works since 2009. There’s a technology that was developed so we already knew that it was going to be a very complex film. So 3,000 shots and 2,200 water shots are a very big number for a visual effects project. We started five years early to deliver this project. Out of which 2 years were just research and development. So all we did was evaluate what kind of shots we had to work on, plan for it and shoot references. We knew when we finally started that we had the recipe and the crew to get this project.
What are some of the cues you got from James Cameron and his team?
It’s very extensive and it’s very collaborative. This was a collaboration that began with Dylan Cole the concept art director, Deborah Lynn Scott and the crew we’ve been working with since 2009. They give us something and we can always go back with our shots and designs. Jim is extremely accessible in New Zealand while shooting the movie. We’ve had a lot of discussions. The goal is that we’re a part of a bigger picture and we need this movie to hit Jim’s expectations. To give an example – Deborah Lynn Scott, our costume designer would often shoot very extensive references of movement study like adding air or water and whenever we did the CG version of those costumes, we would always be in touch with her to discuss when we put the costume on to check if the colour is right or if the movement is right in the water.
What does a typical piece of feedback from James Cameron look like?
Jim is very generous with praise. There are things he would say when he loved the shot. It was pretty quick when he loved it – there was no critique and you’re through. But he would say “you nailed it’ or “bingo bongo” and every time he said something like that, the crew would go crazy because it meant that he was loving the shot.
Avatar: The Way of Water has so many underwater sequences. How challenging was that?
We knew that with this movie the water was going to be a major part of the 2,200 shots and in the last five to six years we started working on getting the water right. There are a lot of movies that came out in the past couple of years featuring water and the audience critique was important. Humans are very sensitive and anyone can figure out if the water looks fake. You don’t have to be a visual effects artist or know films to realise that. You see that it’s wrong and people can immediately tell. So the first underwater sequence that we worked on is where Jake Sully’s kids dive into the water and they are learning how to breathe. That was going to be our first shot at fantastical world-building. I remember when I watched Avatar (2009), the sequence where Jake follows Neytiri into the forest and it’s all lit up and I thought what is this place? I want to go there. And this underwater shot was meant to be that. It’s the first time you go into the water and you see these beautiful corals and kids swimming and you want to be there and feel like you are there in stereo. We did a lot of work into making the water look believable and also making it look like you’re in there with stereo. So we used a high frame rate, added tiny particles, and put gel on the camera. And Jim, who has spent so much of his life in water, was there to tell us “Well that looks like something I’ve seen in real life”. That was one of the first sequences and the one we put a lot of time and effort into creating this beautiful moment.
It takes something like an Avatar sequel to get audiences into a 3D theatre. Do you think the medium has been losing relevance?
There have been a lot of projects that aren’t native 3D. They’ve had a stereo that’s converted in post where the movie itself wasn’t designed to be stereo. I think what’s unique about Jim’s movies is that he designs the movie in stereo. It’s not a post-conversion, it’s not an afterthought. He has designed every single shot to be an immersive experience. So for me, that’s a very successful stereo. When we could get these crude templates from Jim of hots that are representative of a camera or performance, the first thing we do is to put on our glasses and see the visual representation of the shots. And we see exactly what he’s trying to do, there are little nuances with depth perception, where the characters are, little particles in the water and even the high frame rate. That is also something that Jim has used very successfully in the film. Even in Avatar which was not high frame rate – looking at the movie, at things which usually strobe, underwater scenes usually look a bit chunky, the 48fps combined with the stereo here is hugely successful because it’s designed with that in mind.
What can we expect from the sequels?
I haven’t read the script because I want to be surprised by it when I start working on it. But I’ll tell you this, before 2018, Avatar was the most beautiful movie I was involved in. But now I’ve changed my mind and I think The Way of Water is the most beautiful thing I’ve been involved in. And I’m sure if we have a chat after the next sequel, that’s gonna be the most beautiful movie I’ve worked on. These are just great films and I’m very happy to be a small part of the big picture.
Avatar: The Way of Water is currently in theatres.
James Cameron‘s Avatar The Way Of Water is performing extremely well at the box office in India. The film packed a very strong first weekend of over Rs. 128.5 cr nett and the film is far from slowing down as it has a lot of business left to do. The holiday season is yet to start and it is certain that the film will not slow down, courtesy the not-so-strong local competition, atleast for another three weeks, looking at the advance bookings.
Avatar: The Way Of Water held very strongly with a 50 percent drop from the first Friday, which only goes on to indicate a strong hold. The film added a figure in the vicinity of Rs 19 – 21 crore on its fourth ticketing day. Interestingly, the first Monday of the film is higher than the opening of all Hollywood releases of 2022 in India, barring Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. With a hold like this, one can be sure that the Christmas and New Year holidays are going to be bumper for the film. It will be fancying its chances to record a higher eighth day than the first day of the upcoming Bollywood release Cirkus and that will be a huge achievement.
Avatar grossed over Rs. 435 million dollars in its very first weekend worldwide. India emerged as the third biggest global market, only behind USA and China in terms of number of tickets sold. It is to be seen how many tickets India is able to contribute in the film’s full run. Based on projections, a number of 1.5 crore tickets should be a reasonable ask, given that total sales have already surpassed 80 lakh.
Have a look at the day-wise box office collections of Avatar: The Way Of Water:-
The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia are deriving strength from within with their persevering single, “Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength).”
Part of the soundtrack for James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, the new single sees the two musical powerhouses notching another exciting chapter in their collaborative saga, where we last left off with “Moth to a Flame.”
The track marks Swedish House Mafia’s most cinematic production yet, pairing the crisp coordination of marching drums with languid strings and splashy cymbals. The Weeknd brings the full weight of his signature soaring vocals to the track, bracing for existential challenges that are seemingly do-or-die in nature.
From a music production standpoint, “Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)” is a far cry from the ravey sensibilities of Swedish House Mafia long-awaited debut album, Paradise Again. But the cathartic track meets the occasion for Avatar: The Way of Water, the biggest tentpole of 2022. The film is said to have a budget of roughly $400 million, ranking it as one of the most expensive movies ever made.
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The original Avatar, released in 2009, remains the world’s highest-grossing film in history, netting nearly $3 billion worldwide. Needless to say, Cameron’s sequel has big shoes to fill.
Avatar: The Way of Water is in theaters now. Check out the trailer below.
We’ll say one thing about the full-length Avatar trailer: it’s visually stunning.
On Wednesday, a new trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water — the sequel to James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi blockbuster — was released to much hype and fanfare.
The film, set to clock in at over three hours in length, sees the return of original stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña and Sigourney Weaver. It’s been more than 10 years since the first movie showed in theatres.
“Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure,” the official synopsis reads.
The Avatar sequel has been in the works for many years; the movie was produced simultaneously with a third film in the franchise, which is expected to be released in 2024.
