Avatar: The Way of Water perfectly inverts the concept of James Cameron's 1989 sci-fi movie The Abyss. After years of planning and development on Avatar 2's advanced underwater filming technology before even entering principal photography, Avatar 2 is centering the underwater side of Pandora as its main environmental focus. James Cameron has quite a bit of experience with movies based in ocean settings, most famously his 1997 blockbuster Titanic, but underwater storytelling began for Cameron with The Abyss.
Following a group of scientists on an underwater in which they discover alien life, The Abyss was one of the most bitterly difficult film productions to date. Cameron's ambitious plans for The Abyss set the production in a deactivated nuclear reactor filled with water, while it was also a massive leap forward in visual effects to create the aliens the human team meet. Funnily enough, Cameron has made a return of sorts to The Abyss with how the impressive Avatar 2 Pandora ocean effects and the film's premise directly flip the role and environment of the alien characters in the story to their home world.
While The Abyss had the extraterrestrial visitors on Earth in the depths of the ocean, Avatar 2 perfectly flips this by applying the oceanic setting and involvement Na'vi characters of Pandora, with the human characters, like in the original Avatar, being the aliens in its story. The effects of both The Abyss and Avatar 2 are also both historically advanced for their time, but there is an even bigger connection at play between them. In a very unexpected way, Avatar 2 builds not just on the first Avatar (re-releasing ahead of Avatar 2), but just as much on The Abyss.
Avatar 2 Is The Perfect Follow-up To The Abyss
The Abyss was not one of Cameron's more colossal blockbusters, but its significance to film history cannot be overstated. The advance in visual effects it represented as well as filming a movie in an underwater setting were both incredibly daunting milestones that the movie achieved. The scope the production of Avatar 2, back-to-back with Avatar 3, is even more massive for the exact same elements, which ties the film to The Abyss as a kind of spiritual successor.
Avatar 2 also widens the scope of the alien visitors in The Abyss by taking the underwater concept to the Na'vi's home world of Pandora along with Sam Worthington's Jake Sully having become a Na'vi. That is an exponential increase on what The Abyss did, which itself still plays like a true trip to another world while remaining on Earth. Avatar 2 is a literal journey to another world, but one that has the same type of environment of The Abyss with visual effects that are just as seminal.
Avatar 2 might not be a literal sequel to The Abyss, but the connection they share in their technical aspects makes the return to Pandora a follow-up in its own way to The Abyss. With an environment of the ocean brought to life by the most state-of-the-art effects around, the Avatar 2 trailer reveals alone show it to be a kindred aquatic spirit of The Abyss. Even better, Avatar: The Way of Water is also expounding the scope The Abyss with the Na'vi as the lead characters on a world far removed from Earth.
