James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has an official trailer.
Director James Cameron has spent more than a decade filming the first of four planned sequels to his blockbuster 2009 film Avatar. We got our first look at the first of those sequels, Avatar: The Way of Water, back in May with a short, visually stunning teaser that showcased Cameron’s undisputed world-building skills. But despite the enthusiasm for the optics, the overall response was quite muted. Perhaps now that we have the full official trailer, there will be more audience excitement for the upcoming film.
As we previously reported, Cameron wrote a treatment for Avatar back in 1994, and it would be the director’s next big project after completing his blockbuster Titanic. But Cameron realized the technology didn’t yet exist to make the film he envisioned. He spent several years developing what he needed, including a state-of-the-art virtual camera system to direct the motion capture scenes. (He likened it to “a big, powerful game engine.”)
The finished film set new box office records upon its release; It was the highest-grossing film until 2019’s Avengers: Endgame briefly took the top spot. (A Chinese re-release in March 2021 put Avatar back on top.) Critics were mostly positive, praising the technological achievements, although some pointed out that the storytelling suffered. Cameron also consulted with several scientists when designing the world of Pandora (a moon orbiting a gas giant exoplanet called Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri A system). Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, eventually winning Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects.
Even before the release of Avatar, Cameron expressed his hopes of doing two sequels and expanding the scope of the story to include other moons of Polyphemus. The first would show Pandora’s ocean and include deep sea submersible footage of the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But once again, he needed a technology that didn’t exist — to film motion capture scenes underwater.
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Enlarge / Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) passes down some useful skills to his offspring
YouTube/20th Century Studios
Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana reprise their roles as Jake Sully and Neytiri, respectively. Jake decided to permanently merge with his avatar at the end of the first film so he could be with Neytiri and start a family on Pandora. The official synopsis states: “More than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water takes place and begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri and their children), and the troubles that follow them , the lengths they go to to protect one another, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.”
Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton and Trinity Bliss play the couple’s three children (Neteyam, Lo-ak and Tuk), while Jack Champion plays a human-born teenager named Spider who is rescued and adopted by the couple. Sigourney Weaver (Dr. Grace Augustine), Stephen Lang (Colonel Miles Quaritch) and Matt Gerald (Corporal Lyle Wainfleet) will also return, although all three of their characters died in the original. And CCH Pounder returns as Mo’at, Neytiri’s mother and spiritual leader of the Omaticaya clan.
This new trailer doesn’t give us much more plot detail, but Cameron has always known how to tell a compelling story. We know that when humans start causing trouble again on Pandora, the Sully clan will be forced to leave their homeland. This leads them to seek refuge with an underwater tribe of Na’vi, who are initially reluctant to take in the newcomers lest they bring “their war” to this other tribe. The trailer shows the Scully family adjusting to their new surroundings, despite some tensions at being “outcasts.” But another clash with humans is inevitable.
Avatar: The Way of Water hits theaters on December 16, 2022. Avatar 3 (shot concurrently with The Way of Water) is scheduled for release on December 20, 2024.
Promotional image by YouTube/20th Century Studios