Zoe Saldana says Avatar 2 left her in tears, reveals how James Cameron ‘cracked’ a big challenge: ‘Brace yourself’
Hollywood star Zoe Saldana says her upcoming Avatar 2 is going to be leaps ahead of its prequel. Zoe shared that the second installment is going to be compelling and the audience needs to “brace themselves” for what director James Cameron is set to give them.
In an interview with Kevin McCarthy on the sidelines of promoting her latest release, The Adam Project, Zoe revealed that she got to see 20-minutes of Avatar 2‘s footage that moved her to tears. Zoe saw the chunk “right before the year ended” in 2021.
“I can get choked up just talking about it. I was able to see just 20 minutes of the second installment right before the year ended last year and I was speechless…I was moved to tears. One thing nobody really knows about Jim is that Jim is also a big crier. He really has a heart of gold, and he is a firm man and he’s very focused, but he does have a very delicate heart which is why he protects it so much. I think he’s able to have an outlet through the stories that he creates and this story is going to be compelling,” Zoe told Kevin.
The actor, who’s set to reprise her character Neytiri also spoke on the several production delays Avatar 2 faced and the reason behind it. She revealed that James Cameron took time to crack the technique to photograph underwater sequences using motion capture technology. The director refrained from using VFX in Avatar, which released in 2009.
“He was finally able to crack that challenge, that whole thing that you can’t imitate water virtually through performance capture. That was just a challenge that he had taken upon himself, and it took him years, and he did it. It’s powerful, it’s compelling,” Zoe added.
Avatar is a science-fiction film set in the future where humans colonise Pandora in order to mine its valuable mineral unobtanium. The movie flipped the traditional alien invasion premise of most films involving extraterrestrials. Instead of aliens invading earth, the humans invaded Pandora, populated a race of nature-loving, blue-hued species called Na’Vi.
Avatar is set to have four sequels. Its second and third parts were shot back-to-back over the last few years. Avatar 2 will be released on December 16, 2022, with every new sequel arriving each year until 2025.
Avatar 2 will be set 14 years after the original and will star original cast members including Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver.
