Avatar: The Way of Water, the long-awaited sequel to James Cameron's 2009 mega-hit, is finally hitting cinemas this year.
Avatar: The Way of Water, the long-awaited sequel to James Cameron’s 2009 mega-hit, is finally hitting cinemas this year.
Game of Thrones’ Oona Chaplin will also star as Varang, a character who’s expected to span across all four sequels.
The first teaser trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water got an exclusive theatrical release with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness earlier this year. It has since been released online, and you can watch it below.
The breathtaking trailer doesn’t give much away in terms of plot; if anything, it’s meant as a reminder of Cameron’s prowess, and why we should all be very excited to return to Pandora. The visual effects are of a calibre we’ve never seen before – yes, that shot of the hands in the water is entirely CGI – and the music is spellbinding. Simply put, movie water has never looked this good.
The official synopsis reads: “Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the planet of Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na’vi race to protect their planet.”
The trailer shows glimpses of Jake Sully and Neytiri’s children: Jamie Flatters’s Neteyam, Britain Dalton’s Lo’ak and Trinity Bliss’s Tuktirey, as well as their adopted human child Miles Socorro, also known as Spider, played by Jack Champion.
Speaking to Collider, producer Jon Landau said each film would be a standalone movie, rather than the sort of serialized storytelling seen in the MCU, but each movie will create a “connected saga.”
“Each movie is a standalone movie that we would want to go see. You don’t need to have seen the first Avatar to see Avatar 2. It sits there and we’re gonna take people on a visual and an emotional journey that comes to its own conclusion,” he said.
“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.”
Given the titanic success (sorry) of Avatar, most moviegoers would have expected a follow-up by now. Well, in true Cameron fashion, the movie was originally planned for a 2014 release date, but the technological advancements required to make The Way of Water a reality have made the project endure several delays; eight, to be exact.
As the title suggests, Avatar 2 will be largely set in and around water. This has proven to be a huge factor in the film’s lengthy production, as Cameron had to develop technology to nail motion-capture underwater. “It sounds kind of nuts, the process. I mean, if Avatar hadn’t made so much damn money, we’d never do this – because it’s kind of crazy,” he said.
There’s also the 3D element, a major selling point of the first film. Up until 2016, Cameron was talking about theoretically filming using a non-glasses form of 3D, but later admitted the technology wasn’t quite there yet.
After showing off the teaser trailer at CinemaCon, Cameron said: “[We’re] pushing limits even farther with high frame rate, higher resolution 3D and greater reality in our visual effects.
“I wanted our return to Pandora to be something really special. Every shot is designed for the biggest screen, highest resolution and most immersive 3D available. I think we pulled it off.”
In addition to the complications of global restrictions in recent years, Cameron hasn’t just been working on Avatar: The Way of Water – he’s been working on them all at the same time.
He told Vanity Fair in 2017: “It was highly optimistic that we could start quickly until scripts are written. If there’s no scripts, there’s nothing, right?
“The scripts took four years. You can call that a delay, but it’s not really a delay because from the time we pushed the button to really go make the movies [until now], we’re clicking along perfectly.”
Also speaking to Empire in 2014, Cameron made a big claim for Avatar 2: “You will s**t yourself with your mouth wide open.”
Avatar: The Way of Water will hit cinemas on December 16, 2022.
This article will be updated upon further announcements.
Avatar The Way of Water: release date, cast, trailer, and everything we know so far View Story