“Avatar: Fire And Ash” is the third entry in the “Avatar” franchise from Academy Award-winning director James Cameron, that continues the story of Jake Sully, Neytiri and their children as they continue to face opposition from Quaritch and the RDA on Pandora. The film utilizes state of the art technology, visual effects and performance capture to bring the world and its characters to life in a way that has so far amassed over $5.2 billion worldwide, becoming a global phenomenon and further solidifying Cameron as the kind of not only Hollywood, but of the world. Cameron was kind enough to spend some time talking with us about his work and experience making the third film, which you can watch, read, or listen to below. Please be sure to check out the film, which is now playing in theaters from 20th Century Studios. Thank you, and enjoy!
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
James Cameron: Hey Matt, how’s it going?
James Cameron, king of the world.
Haha
Sir, it is an honor and a privilege to have you here. Thank you so much.
Yeah, good talking to you. Did you see the film?
I did yesterday.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, as a child of the nineties, I can’t thank you enough for all the cinematic experiences that you have brought me both at home and in the movie theater. “Avatar: Fire And Ash” obviously adds to that legacy and continues the “Avatar” story in such an epic way. But what I find very interesting is that, while there was a huge technological leap from “Avatar” to “The Way of Water,” it really feels like from film two to film three: there’s an emotional leap.
Yeah. That’s a GREAT way to put it. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Can I use that?
Haha. Yeah, definitely. So, I’m really curious how you and your writers worked out all these character dynamics, particularly there’s a climactic scene between Jake and Spider where I was on the edge of my seat, not knowing exactly where the story was going to go, and realizing you and your team could take it in any number of different directions. So, what themes were you guys trying to hone in on to communicate through the storytelling?
Yeah. I’m going to try to dance around this so I don’t actually spoil the outcome, but you know, Spider is a human in the mix, in the midst of this tribal community that’s at war with the humans. And he desperately wants to be part of a family, all of whom are Nav’i or mixed-race. They look like Nav’i, but some of them have an extra finger, which indicates they’re of human lineage and so on through Jake, obviously. So there are many dynamics at play here that skirt issues of race and belonging. And so, I think of Spider as a kind of glue that holds all the storylines together. There’s the Quarticch, Spider father/son complex relationship.
Jake, meanwhile, is going through a complex relationship with his son Lo’ak, whom he subconsciously blames for the death of his elder elder son. And there’s a big disconnect there. But what connects Jake and Quaritch, beyond just wanting to kill each other, is Spider, which puts them in a weird triangular configuration where they’re actually having to work together to keep Spider alive. So, Spider is very much the glue that ties the whole story together. Neytiri’s hatred of the sky people, because of the death of her son, Neteyam, now finds a focus on Spider. Spider is longing to be part of the family. The other kids want to bring him in. Neytiri is saying, “That’s never going to happen.” And then it gets to the point where it actually could be quite dangerous for Spider. But hopefully, as an audience, we like him, and we want to see this work out. We like Jake, we like Neytiri, we like Spider, we want to see it all work out. But how is it going to work out? And obviously it comes to a head in that scene, and there’s a big catharsis there.
There are several cathartic scenes throughout the film, but you led with a significant technical jump between films one and two and a big emotional jump between films two and three. And that I think is part of the architecture of what we were trying to do. Right? So yeah, we introduced this new world in movie one, and people are just stunned by how new it is, right? Now, in movie two, we keep the amazing sort of epic scenery coming. We’ve shifted to the ocean. Now, with movie three, we’re going go between the forest, the ocean, and the volcanic wasteland. We’re going to pop around to these different places. Our throughline now is not about going to a rainforest or the ocean; it’s about going to new depths and new conflicts within the characters. Now you throw Varang into the middle of that, and she’s the wild card, and she and her culture are the wild card that you don’t see coming. So a lot of the storytelling is extrapolated from movie two, and then it just kind of goes pear-shaped; it all goes to hell.
And we introduced the Ash clan, and then we regrouped around the principle of humans are coming as this implacable force, and here’s Spider in our midst, and we’re at war with those guys. And then Varang’s alliance with Quaritch. I mean,I think story-wise, we knew what we were doing, right? I mean, this came out of many discussions.
If I can go back to the evolution of the screenwriting…I came in with a thousand pages of notes, including every creature and a lot of these dramatic confrontations. And then I workshopped it with the other four screenwriters. And there are specific ideas that just immediately leaped to the top of the pack, so to speak. And one of them was what we always called the “Abraham/Isaac” scene. And we knew that was in the story somewhere. We didn’t know if it would be in film two or three because we were trying to break a story arc across multiple films. And then it got even more complicated after those writers had finished their work. I suddenly realized that tovie two didn’t work, and I split it into two and three. So, funnily, this film ends a very defined story arc, right? So, at the end of two, we feel resolved, but there are still many unfinished threads.
Yeah.
And in movie three, we deal with a lot of those threads, and we resolve them, and we come down kind of pretty resoundingly on an ending. You know, I’d be perfectly comfortable stopping here. I’d like to be able to do four and five if that business model still exists, but everything’s changing. The landscape is changing in terms of theatrical attendance and so on. So I think this film is an opportunity to, hopefully, if it works out, prove that business model again, and then we can proceed, or not.
Are we still looking at films four and five, and then that’s it? Or are things changing on the fly with the reception of each film for you?
Yeah, I think it changes on the fly. I believe my appetite to continue will be based on other projects that I’ll have to sacrifice and not do versus the fan demand. If people are kind of over it…Then I’m happy to be over it. And if people aren’t over it, then there’s a question of how close I am to the front line, producing versus directing hands-on. I’m very hands-on as a director, as I think most people know. I like to operate the camera and all that sort of thing.
Right.
There’s just a lot of factors right now, and it’s a thing where if anybody says they know what the theatrical or the entertainment business at large is going to be like a year from now or two years from now, they’re blowing smoke. They don’t know.
Yeah.
Nobody knows.
I completely agree with you. And as we get to the end here, I’m really curious, because, as you said, this feels like the culmination of what began in films one and two, and who knows what the future holds. But I’m curious, for you, in terms of these action sequences…Do these also feel like culmination moments for you in terms of I’m taking everything you’ve ever learned from every film you’ve ever done and throwing it in here because there are so many elements at play from water, visual effects, aerial, fire, you name it, you’ve got it all in this movie.
I love it all. You know, that’s my big problem, because those action sequences could have been twice as long. You know? I mean, the discipline is trying to orchestrate it so that there’s an emotional throughline and battle scenes are always very difficult. So I chose in this film to have this big battle, then there’s this kind of interregnum where the characters get very quiet for a while, in kind of the eye of the hurricane.
And then there’s another big action sequence after that. That whole first part is seen through the eyes of the kids who are watching from the sidelines, and then they get sucked into it. So, it’s a little bit different from “The Way of Water.” There’s a very much a point of view. Then we follow Jake and Neytiri within the battle, but we’re also in the minds of these kids. And then the baton sort of gets passed to them, whether they like it or not. And they’re the ones who are actually responsible for resolving the situation, which I think is kind of fun. And that’s another part of the culmination of that story. When their parents finally see that they are capable, that they are young adults, and they’re not just their children anymore.
It changes the dynamic for the relationships moving forward, too, which will be interesting to see, and hopefully, we do get a chance to see it.
Well, hopefully, you know…Look, I mean, I know where the story goes in the sense. I sort of novelistically ran way out ahead and created this much, much bigger, longer story arc. And you know, it’s like…
Plotting for seasons of television, but for the big screen.
Yeah, exactly. That was kind of the metaphor. That’s why we put together a writers’ room with multiple writers so we could break pieces off and let them run ahead and work on some of that stuff.
Yeah. Well, Jim, thank you so much for your time here. I really appreciate it, and I hope audiences go out and see “Avatar: Fire And Ash” so we can keep getting more of these.
All right, good. Well, thank you very much.
“Avatar: Fire And Ash” is now playing in theaters worldwide
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