Zoe Saldana Saw 20 Minutes of AVATAR 2 and Says It Moved Her to Tears and Audiences Should Brace Themselves
A lot of movie fans are curious about what to expect from director James Cameron’s Avatar sequels. It’s just been so long since the first film was released, are people even interested in going back and exploring that world again and the characters that fill it? I am! Cameron is a hell of a talented filmmaker, and I’m rooting for him and these films! I hope they are great and that they completely blow audiences away!
Franchise star Zoe Saldana has already seen the first 20 minutes of Avatar 2, and it was such a powerful experience that the footage she saw moved her to tears. She told People, “It’s definitely a leap from the first Avatar, so you have to brace yourself for it. It’s going to be an adventure you won’t forget.”
She went on to say, “I can get choked up just talking about it. I was able to see just 20 minutes of the second installment, right before the year ended, last year. And I was speechless. I was moved to tears.”
She went on to that about Cameron doing performance capture in water saying, “Jim was finally able to crack that challenge — that whole thing that you can’t imitate water, virtually, through performance capture. That was just a challenge that he had taken upon himself, and it took him years, and he did it. He did it. It’s powerful, it’s compelling.”
That’s exciting to hear and I can’t wait to see some actual footage from the movie. With the sequel coming out this December, I imagine a trailer is coming soon.
Saldana also revealed that Cameron is a “big crier” and said, “He does have a very delicate heart, which is why he protects it so much. And I think that he’s able to have an outlet through the stories that he creates.”
Producer Jon Landau previously talked about the upcoming sequel and teased the story saying, “This is the story of the Sully family and what one does to keep their family together. Jake and Neytiri have a family in this movie, they are forced to leave their home, they go out and explore the different regions of Pandora, including spending quite a bit of time on the water, around the water, in the water.”
Avatar 2 is set several years after Avatar. “At the center of each of our four movies will be the Sully family. Each sequel will play as a standalone movie. Each movie’s story will come to its own conclusion… However, when looked at as a whole, the journey across all four movies will create an even larger connected epic saga for audiences around the world.”
When talking about the setting for the upcoming sequels, the producer said, “It’s a continuation of the same characters, but what happen when warriors that are willing to go on suicide charges, and leap off cliffs on to the back of big orange toruks, what happens when they grow up and have their own kids? It becomes a very different story. Now the kids are the risk-takers and the change-makers. So, it’s interesting, but it makes sense to me. Everybody’s either a parent, or they had parents at the very least, and if you look at the big successful franchises now, they’re pretty much uninterested in that.”
It was also revealed that there are different clans of Na’vi all over Pandora, “We’re going to go to totally different environments, we’re going to meet different cultures. Just like our planet is as diverse culturally as we are environmentally. We want to introduce people to different cultures. In the first movie, we only met the Omaticaya clan, and they are the clan here allowing us to come to the Valley of Mo’ara. But as we venture out we’re going to different environments and different clans.”
Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 have already finished shooting and they are both in the post-production process. Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 are currently set for 2026 and 2028. It’s explained that these films are being made on a much bigger scale and they are putting much more detail into the performances of the actors, bringing more diversity to the world they have created and are building.
Avatar 2 is set to be released on December 16th.