As the year comes to a close, the last Oscar contenders are finally heading for release. Monday’s Hollywood premiere of “Avatar: Fire and Ash” (which Disney’s 20th Century will release on December 19) clocked in at 3 hours 17 minutes (yes, it’s the longest “Avatar” yet) and continues “The Way of Water” war between Pandora’s blue Sully family and the “immortal” Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), as filmmaker James Cameron described him in his introduction.
No question, the latest “Avatar” installment, which is the ultimate action adventure, will continue to surf the top of the global box office. (So far, the two “Avatar” films, released in 2009 and 2022 respectively, have grossed $5.2 billion worldwide.) Cameron knows exactly what he’s doing, immersing the audience via state-of-the-art 3D in the ethereal Pandora dreamscape, as the simmering Sully family deals with the loss of their eldest son. Then Quaritch and his metal machines invade their peaceful universe — again.
On Monday night, Cameron initially took the stage solo and addressed the packed Dolby theatre as he brought out his cast, winding up with “Avatar” veterans Sam Worthington and Oscar winner Zoe Saldana (“Emilia Pérez”), who play Jake Sully and Neytiri, respectively.
Cameron’s Oscar campaign message is loud and clear: actors and artists made this movie.
“I want to reiterate what a joy it has been for me to work with these incredible actors — for some of you, for eight years, starting in 2017,” he said. “We [motion] captured the movie two and movie three together. So that was an 18-month process. And some people think, ‘Oh, well, you just come in and treat it like a voice part.’ Every single thing that you see their characters do they did, or possibly a stunt double, but it’s a very physical acting process. It’s whole body, whole heart, whole mind, everything. And that was 18 beautiful months working with these folks.”
“This has been a remarkable journey,” he continued. “You’ll see the story of a family, but we have our own family behind the screen, behind the film, the ‘Avatar’ family. And that involves not only these wonderful actors, but also… actors who play a lot of different characters and beyond that, 3,800 artists. People ask me about the technology. It’s not the technology. The technology is acting. The technology is art.”
Cameron also paid tribute to his long-time collaborator, the late producer Jon Landau. “There’s one person conspicuously absent on the stage tonight, and that is my producing partner of 33 years, Jon Landau, who passed away last year. Jon fought so hard to stay with us and to stay part of the film,” he said. “His spirit infuses all the ‘Avatar’ films, and when he passed, it was a blow, it was a shock. And it was not lost on us that we were making a film about how humans process their loss and their grief. And his spirit not only infused all the films, but I believe it caused us to step up and rise to a higher level to make a film that he would have been proud of. And so that’s what we did.”