Something new, something blue, and something a bit borrowed from James Cameron’s previous filmography is set to soar into Australian cinemas at the end of the year.
It’s the second Avatar movie, more than a decade after the last one was crowned the highest-grossing film of all time! And its trailer has finally been released in full, eye-popping CG glory for all of us to admire. Avatar: The Way of Water is now only months away, released in Australia on December 15.
Let’s break down the first footage, shall we? Not giving away much plot, the trailer is mostly desktop-wallpaper-worthy landscapes of Pandora, with the lanky Na’vi hopping along winding tree branches and skimming the surface of crystalline waters atop their mountain banshees.
Some of the most impressive moments take place in those oceans, with incredible authenticity in how a new characters’ hair and limbs move as they assess a freaky blue anemone. This is (literally) Cameron’s wet dream: he’s long been obsessed with underwater exploration, not just in The Abyss and Titanic but also in directing multiple sea-floor excavation docos.
The sole dialogue we hear is from Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, to wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) after a few clips of the couple racing around half-flooded military craft and tearfully embracing. “I know one thing”, he murmurs, “wherever we go, this family is our fortress”.
We can’t recognise any of the faces in the trailer as Michelle Yeoh, Vin Diesel, Kate Winslet, or Sigourney Weaver, any of the exciting new and returning stars listed in Avatar 2‘s fresh cast announcements. But what we do get is some nice glimpses of Jake and Neytiri’s “fortress” of kiddos: eldest Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), middle son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuk (Trinity Bliss), their eight-year-old daughter.
One piece of production gossip that we still can’t quite believe is the news that Kate Winslet, after taking free-diving lessons to play the fearless new character Metkayina, held her breath for over seven minutes, “a new record for any film shot underwater”. Tom Cruise only held his breath for six minutes for Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation! Suck on that.
