#avatar sequels
Just watched a chat between James Cameron and Denis Villeneuve (the director of Dune) and here are some interesting snippets from JimCam:
- As the story evolves, part of Avatar will take place on Earth
- The 3rd movie is way too long right now and JimCam is struggling to cut it down
- Movies 2 and 3 have basically been produced like a 6 hour miniseries. They were filmed 100% concurrently. A few scenes from the 4th movie were also filmed at the same time
- The child actors are “allowed to age 6 years in the middle of the story on page 25 of movie 4.” Completely unrelated reminder that it takes a little over 5 years for the ISV to travel from Pandora to Earth :3c
- James Cameron mentioned that one of the advantages single movies have over movie franchises is that the audience can’t be sure if the characters are all gonna survive. When movies are serialized with no clear end in sight, the audience knows the characters are gonna survive because the characters have to be in the next movies…
which I agree with considering I felt absolutely nothing at the death in Spider-man: No Way Home because I was so sure they would just undo it- “I’m not afraid [of the advent of streaming services], I like change. I’m a child of the 60s, I like it when things are chaotic. But, uh, what we cansee is an expanded form of cinema. I wanna do a movie that’s 6 hours long and2½ hours long at the same time - the same movie. And you can stream it for 6 hours or you can go and have a more condensed, immersive version of that experience in a movie theater. Same movie - just one is the novel and one is the movie.”
- They spent 6 years developing simulcam technology for the first Avatar so they could film the actors directly in the CG environment. Part of the reason the sequels were so long underway is just that simulcam technology wasn’t good enough for JimCam’s vision and all the underwater stuff he wanted
- The sequels have a “messianic throughline” that’s partially inspired by Dune. There’s a scientific explanation for every single thing that happens, but you don’t have to accept the events in a secular way. You can choose to believe in spiritual explanations instead/in tandem with the scientific facts.
