Although it has been nearly a decade since the 2009 movie Avatar dominated the box office. But since Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened ‘Pandora – The World of Avatar’ I feel like I’ve visited it again and again. Now I can’t wait for the sequel.
In a new interview on the Empire Podcast director James Cameron reveals where the second movie picks up. Jake Sully’s transferred to his Avatar body to join Neytiri and live among the Na’vi at the end of the first film, but the second film will start years later when Jake and Neytiri have started a family with an eight year-old Na’vi daughter of their own.
Having kids in the film has given Cameron some interesting options for point of view. In one scene when Jake and Neytiri are bickering and Cameron shoots it from the point of view of their daughter.
The youth from Avatar’s two sequels visited Pandora – The World of Avatar in 2017
“There’s a three-page argument scene between Jake and Neytiri, a marital dispute, very, very critical to the storyline,” Cameron explains to Empire. “I wound up shooting it all from the point of view of the eight year old hiding under the structure and peeking in […] Having gone through the experience with [Sam Worthington] on Avatar, I now knew how to write the Jake character going forward across the emotional rollercoaster of the next four movies. It’s been tough on him. He’s done two pictures back to back now, because we did 2 and 3 together. He had to go to some dark places.”
According to Cameron, the performance capture elements from the next two Avatar movies are finished, although some pickup shots are expected later, now the productions have moved on to live-action elements.
“[Performance-capture] is the vast majority of the characters, and that is the vast majority of the running time of the film,” claims the filmmaker, “but that pesky little live-action component is going to cost me five months of my life, across the two movies.”
Read the whole interview here on Empire or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud.
Let us know how much you’re looking forward to seeing the two Avatar sequels in the comments below!