The director reveals to Panorama the vision, fears and titanic ambitions behind the latest chapter of the saga. Between mourning, tribal wars and visual revolutions, this is why it will still be able to fill cinemas.
Who got to see Avatar: Fire and ash he called it sensational, phantasmagorical, the most exciting and astonishing chapter of the series. In practice, another success for James Cameron, 71 years old, already triumphant at the Oscars in 1997 with 11 statuettes for Titanicholder with Avatars And Avatar – The Way of Water first and third place at the box office of all time (revenues of $2.92 and $2.34 billion), author of many other memorable films: The Abyss, True Lies, Aliens – Final Clash or Terminatorsjust to name a few.
«Will it be a success? It’s still early to say, for now we’ve sold a few tickets online”, jokes the Canadian director met by Panorama. «With this film we are certainly drawing on the threads of something that began in 2009 with Avatars: in the first film we created a world and focused on the war between humans and Na’vi and on a simple love story because our eyes were focused on everything that surrounded the protagonists, namely nature and extraterrestrial creatures. In the second film we started to explore that universe and introduced new characters, including the reef people, and the complexity of the film increased. Here a new tribe enters the scene, the ash people, and we start again from where we arrived: the death of Jake Sully and Neytiri’s eldest son.”
In the new film, still shaken by grief, the two parents try to put the pieces of the family back on their feet, when new tribes appear on the planet Pandora, among which the most dangerous and belligerent lives on the slopes of a volcano and is led by Varang, who will very soon ally himself with the invading humans to unleash a civil war, including spectacular fight scenes and echoes of political-religious conflicts that are so reminiscent of our planet Earth.
“The plot is fantastic, but the themes are deeply human and dramatic,” Cameron says. «Commercial cinema usually glosses over elements such as trauma, loss and pain, or downplays them to the point that, when a loved one dies, the protagonist overcomes everything in the space of a few scenes. I, however, wanted to make the emotional part more realistic: an example is Neytiri’s reaction to mourning, which darkens and becomes racist.”
In the film there are stars of the caliber of Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver who disappear behind the digital characters of these blue aliens…
I think disappearing isn’t the right verb. In reality, computer-generated characters are the embodiment of this and I think that everyone, unfairly, underestimates the performance of the performers given to pixel faces and bodies, both among film critics and in the acting community.
One of the always amazing aspects is the immersion in the alien world of Pandora.
We tried to make it a coherent ecosystem, taking inspiration from the rich and diverse biological systems of our Earth. And we applied some rules that would also be valid for an exoplanet: animals that live in herds, herbivores, predators and so on. And we created them referring not only to imagination, but to biomechanics. Of course, you also have to stick to narrative rules: if the Na’vi didn’t look a bit like humans but had ten eyes, no emotional connection would probably be possible for the audience. For me Avatars It’s not science fiction.
Why?
Arrival by Denis Villeneuve is science fiction. Avatars it belongs more to allegorical fantasy. This is why we talk about the problems that afflict us: hatred, mistrust, lack of empathy, violence and the wars that tear humanity apart.
These films cost a lot. How do you handle the hemorrhage of the public from the theaters?
What costs are the visual effects, because filming with actors isn’t that expensive at all. I am happy to spend a lot of money to give jobs to technicians and artists for 4 or 5 years: 3,800 people worked here. But then the film will have to reach the top 10 grosses of all time to be profitable. The moment is complicated, but I continue to believe in the great entertainment seen at the cinema. To compete with streaming you have to do something never seen before. Of course, the stakes are very high.
How do you see the advent of artificial intelligence in cinema?
It’s fine if used as a tool to lower costs, at the service of creatives, but I will never use it to replace screenwriters and actors.
