Zoe Saldaña's Avatar 2 tease is the most promising sign yet from James Cameron's long-awaited sequel. It's no exaggeration to suggest Avatar changed the cinematic game upon release in 2009. Cameron's visuals were unlike anything seen before in a movie theater and spearheaded a regrettable wave of 3-D that failed to conjure the same sense of awe and wonder as Pandora. Having waited over a decade to release a sequel, Avatar 2 faces the challenge of dumbfounding audiences all over again, but given how far CGI effects have advanced during that time (digital de-aging is almost standard practice at this point), moviegoers will be harder to impress than Shania Twain.
Picking up 13 years after the previous Avatar movie ended, Sam Worthington's Jake Sully and Zoe Saldaña's Neytiri have started a family, but their peaceful life is disturbed when a ship from Earth arrives to once again deprive Pandora of its natural resources. The appearance of yet more human invaders pushes Jake and Neytiri's tribe to new locales of Pandora, where they encounter the aquatic Metkayina clan Kate Winslet's Ronal and Cliff Curtis' Tonowari belong to. Avatar 2's new cast members will be joined be the unexpected returns of Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, and Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch.
As Avatar 2's December 2022 premiere date edges gradually closer, Zoe Saldaña recently recalled to Kevin McCarthy how she was able to view 20 minutes of footage alongside Cameron... and both ended up in floods of tears. Now, obviously, Zoe Saldaña is not an objective voice in the Avatar 2 discussion. Not only is she emotionally tied to the characters and universe (James Cameron even more so), we can also assume the actress is being paid handsomely for donning the mo-cap suit across another 4 movies. Nevertheless, Saldaña championing Avatar 2's emotive impact suggests 2022's long-awaited sequel will fix the real problem with 2009's movie - the story.
Understandably, much of the focus surrounding Avatar 2 revolves around James Cameron's newfangled underwater technology. One factor behind Avatar 2's lengthy production period (though certainly not the only factor) is the cutting-edge techniques being employed to film motion-capture performances underwater. For all Hollywood's digital advancements over the decades, submerged filming remains somewhat of a nightmare to execute convincingly, but Avatar 2 promises to revolutionize the industry all over again with its watery wonderland. Cameron, Winslet, Weaver, etc. have described Avatar 2's groundbreaking diving shoots with giddy excitement, and there's plenty of hype around what the end product might look like. More than another visual gimmick, however, Avatar 2 needs to address the first film's story deficiencies, because once the 3-D excitement died down, Avatar's generic story and characters were very quickly pointed out.
By lauding Avatar 2's ability to move people (even if said people are involved in the film's production), Zoe Saldaña promises a depth of character and an emotional resonance that 2009's Avatar sorely needed. With a grand total of 4 sequels planned over the next decade, no amount of technical innovation will hold an audience's attention for Avatar's entire narrative (has Cameron even got another 3 gimmicks up his sleeve?) Only by investing in characterization and tear-jerking knockout blows can Avatar sustain itself through the full quartet of proposed sequels. Zoe Saldaña's latest tease suggests that might actually happen.
