Thirteen years after Avatar first hit theaters, the story continues with the upcoming Avatar: The Way of Water. Director and writer James Cameron tells a new story featuring Jake Sully and Neytiri as well as their family. When the humans return to Pandora, it will be more dangerous than ever, and Jake and Neytiri must do whatever it takes to protect the family they have built.

Over the course of the last thirteen years, Cameron has been developing Avatar: The Way of Water, Avatar 3, and Avatar 4, fully creating each story before bringing the world of Pandora back to the big screen. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña will reprise their roles as Jake Sully and Neytiri, respectively, in Avatar: The Way of Water. Stephen Lang will return as a different version of his character, and Sigourney Weaver will be playing a new character altogether.

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Screen Rant spoke with James Cameron about Avatar: The Way of Water. Cameron explained his extensive development process, which included writing 800 pages of notes before even beginning the screenplay. Cameron also shared his passion for the ocean and how he hopes this movie inspires people to fight for ocean conservation.

James Cameron on Avatar: The Way of Water

Jake Neytiri and family in Avatar The Way of the Water

Screen Rant: Fantastic film.

James Cameron: Alright, let me ask you a question. What were you expecting versus what you experienced?

I didn't know what to expect because I didn't know what the story was or anything like that. But the thing is, when I saw the first film, I was 27. Now I'm 40, and I have a 7-year-old daughter, so I completely related to these characters.

James Cameron: It's different, right? It's different. As you know, being a father changes your entire perception of life. That's kind of what I was dealing with when I wrote this.

James, I am almost convinced you shot this on a different planet.

James Cameron: We did. Alright, the secret's out. The whole thing about the CG, that's just a smoke screen.

Yeah, exactly. It seems like it, but the world of Pandora and Avatar is just so immersive, beautiful, and imaginative. Can you talk to me about the developmental process going from the script and to shooting underwater?

James Cameron: Technically, we didn't shoot underwater. We captured underwater, which is a whole different set of problems. So we had to solve that. But starting from development, I thought that this time I want to work with a team of writers. We are doing multiple scripts. I’d already decided I wanted to do a trilogy, turned out now I guess it’s a quadrilogy, if that’s the right word. But I had to have a starting point.

I set down and just made a bunch of notes for six months. Literally, just every day sitting at my desk, talking about the world, the characters, trying to fill in what happened the day after Jake woke up in a Navi body, and just was carrying the story forward. I knew I had certain goals in mind.I walked in on the first day with the whole writers room, and I plopped down 800 pages of notes, single spaced. I said, “Do your homework, and then we’ll talk.” And then we got together, and the first thing I challenged them with was, "Before we start talking about new stories, let’s figure out how the first story worked. What were people keying into, what was working for them?" We had a lot of discussions about that, and every idea we came up with as we went along had to measure up against that standard.

It had to hit the heart, had to hit the mind, had to hit the imagination, and it had to hit something even deeper, which we had a hard time quantifying. Something you could call spiritual, or you could call subconscious. Some kind of connection that you can’t even really describe in words. And I said, "If we can’t do that again, then we are going to fail." and they were like, "Okay." But we did it. I mean, I think we did. As you go along, you look at images, you look at scenes, you look at moments with the actors, you say, "How's this working?"

I know you're very knowledgeable about the ocean, and you're a huge advocate of conservation. What about the ocean inspired this story and the new culture that we find in Avatar: The Way of Water?

James Cameron: I've been in love with the ocean since I was a kid. I've [been] a scuba diver since I was 16; I've spent thousands of hours underwater all over the place. I've seen how the reefs are being degraded; I've seen how the ocean is suffering and failing as a result of our presence.

We're now eight billion people. When I was born, we were three billion people. Now, it's eight billion people. We have to change how we operate. There's no reason why we can't have beautiful, wonderful, fulfilling lives as human beings; we just have to do things differently. I feel that our guardianship of the ocean is something that we all have to share. Everybody everywhere has to share it. Even if you live inland, your downstream runoff from your agricultural fields that's making your food [is] going in the ocean. Every time you eat fish, that's affecting the ocean. It's all connected.

Maybe a movie like this can make people feel connected to the ocean, and maybe that makes them think a little bit. I'm not saying just send 10 bucks to Greenpeace. I'm talking about how we can work together to conserve this wonderful, beautiful, amazing thing that we have right here on planet Earth. We don't have to go to Alpha Centauri to see a cool ocean.

About Avatar: The Way of Water

Jake flying in Avatar The Way Of Water

Over a decade after the events of Avatar Jake Sully and Neytiri are living on Pandora with their family leading their people. However, when a familiar threat returns to restart a war they thought had ended years ago they must once again work together to protect their planet, their people, but most importantly their family.

Check out our other Avatar: The Way of Water interviews here:

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Avatar: The Way of Water will be playing in theaters on December 16.

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