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.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
