Zoe Saldana Gets Real About Avatar Director James Cameron

Are you acceptable to spell backmost to Pandora, moviegoers?

Only 13 years aft Avatar opened successful theaters and sailed past Titanic to go the worldwide highest-grossing movie of each time, and 8 years aft its tentative archetypal merchandise date, Avatar: The Way of Water is nary longer unobtanium. It has arrived astatine a large surface adjacent you successful each its visually superior glory—achieved, conscionable similar its predecessor, utilizing technological marvels that had to beryllium invented oregon fine-tuned expressly for this production.

Not that James Cameron wants you to absorption connected that part. (Or the three-hour, 12-minute tally time.)

"I conscionable privation everybody would recognize the past happening successful the satellite I privation to speech astir is the technology," the director, who penned the screenplay for the original and past turned implicit 800 pages of world-expanding notes to married writing partners Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver to enactment connected the sequels, told the South China Morning Post. "I'm a writer, I privation to speech astir the characters, I privation to speech astir the actors, I privation to speech astir the formed and however they interpreted those characters, and the melodramatic and affectional interaction that that creates."
 
In fact, helium added, "I'm bored with the technology! You can't ideate anybody sitting astatine location and saying, 'Honey, let's spell to the movies, they got immoderate caller technology!'"

As with the original, the show seizure sequences for Avatar: The Way of Water were shot chiefly successful Los Angeles, portion the peculiar effect work was done by Peter Jackson's Wellington, New Zealand-based Wētā FX (formerly Wētā Digital). Avatar had 2,500 ocular effects shots, portion the sequel has a reported 3,250, worked connected by a squad of 1,300 artists.

In 2012, Cameron spent a reported $16 cardinal connected 2,500 acres of farmland by Lake Pounui successful New Zealand's Wairarapa Valley to service arsenic his location basal for the making of his still-planned four Avatar sequels—though astatine the clip helium was inactive engaged penning astatine his Malibu home.

The reigning King of the World told E! News that twelvemonth portion promoting the Blu-ray merchandise of Titanic that helium was "in the precise aboriginal stages" of making the as-yet untitled Avatar 2 and 3.

In July, the New Zealand Film Commission said the Avatar sequels had, each told, received much than $140 cardinal from the government's Screen Production Grant. In effect to critics outraged by the thought of taxpayers backing a series of mega-movies, Film Commission Acting Chief Executive Mladen Ivancic told NewstalkZB that the productions had provided jobs, promoted tourism and different injected plentifulness of wealth and intangible benefits backmost into the section economy.

"Productions similar Avatar besides radiance the spotlight connected New Zealand," Ivancic said, "raising the capableness and acquisition of the New Zealand crews moving connected them, exposing them to starring exertion and innovation from astir the world."

Besides, Cameron is practically a hometown lad by now.

That would beryllium woman Suzy Cameron, née Amis, who played Rose's granddaughter in Titanic and fell for the director. Eventually.

"People ever inquire if it was emotion astatine archetypal sight," she told Woman's Day in 2018. "It wasn't, but helium was truly cool. We're some thrill-seekers, and emotion scuba diving and flying planes."

And those expeditions would beryllium Cameron's forays to the bottommost of the ocean, the filmmaker a what-lies-beneath enthusiast successful existent beingness arsenic good arsenic successful his cinematic endeavors. He and good person Bill Paxton teamed up for an excursion to the existent murky resting spot of the Titanic that was chronicled successful 2002's Ghosts of the Abyss, and Cameron aboriginal starred successful the documentaries Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron in 2012 and Atlantis Rising successful 2017. 

The 68-year-old is besides 1 of the fewer radical live who's been to the Challenger Deep, a information of the Mariana Trench that contains the deepest h2o connected earth.

And, arsenic it was erstwhile rumored, truthful it came to walk that overmuch of the enactment of Avatar: The Way of Water takes spot beneath the aboveground of the Pandoran oceans.

Cameron called his Avatar stars successful 2015, Saldaña recalled to E!, to invitation them to travel to the workplace for an update connected his vision. "And that's erstwhile we learned it's not conscionable a sequel," said the MCU star, who since the archetypal has go a parent of three. "It's 4 much chapters of this beauteous saga."

Cameron told GQ recently that successful summation to Avatar: The Way of Water he had besides changeable the 3rd movie and the archetypal portion of the fourth, and had a publication for the 5th (now each respectively slated for 2024, 2026 and 2028).

"All of that clip helium took surviving and catching up with his beingness is what inspired him," Saldaña said, "and gave him the quality to beryllium revisited by this story—when the communicative was acceptable to beryllium told again." She was "sobbing" arsenic Cameron explained Neytiri's affectional travel arsenic a wife, parent and warrior, she recalled, "and I could not hold to get backmost to Pandora."

Speaking of actors who, when Cameron points to a vessel of water and says "Get in," they inquire How deep?": New franchise summation Kate Winslet—playing Na'vi escaped diver Ronal—broke the six-minute grounds antecedently acceptable by Tom Cruise (while making 2015's Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation) by holding her enactment nether h2o for 7 minutes and 14 seconds.

"There was conscionable nary mode I was going to accidental no," Winslet said astir signing connected to enactment with Cameron again, 20 years aft Titanic, telling ScreenRant, "When helium archetypal talked to maine astir playing this part, and helium described Ronal, helium said, 'Look, she's the matriarch, she's the pistillate goddess warrior person of her clan.' I mean, who writes roles similar that for women? And it's not conscionable that they're beardown women, it's that these women that helium conceives of successful his caput are physically bionic."

And past they look successful the signifier of Winslet practically sprouting gills connected set.

Performance-capture filming is usually all connected adust land, the Oscar victor explained, calling it the "purest signifier of acting due to the fact that you person cameras each implicit the studio." Shooting underwater, however, "is decidedly a batch much challenging. Because of people you're holding your breath, you can't merchandise your bubbles, different it's conscionable a bubbly aged messiness and the camera doesn't spot anything. So it was, yeah, a batch to learn, but we were each doing it together. So yeah, it made everything consciousness precise benignant of collaborative and fun."

And nary exertion tin replicate that.

Avatar: The Way of Water is successful theaters now.