Audiences have been waiting over a decade for a sequel to the historical cinematic hit, Avatar, and it sounds like all that patience may well just pay off. Speaking with Kevin McCarthy, returning star Zoe Saldaña, who played Pandora native Neytiri in the first Avatar outing, has revealed that she has seen a small slice of Avatar 2, but it was more than enough to bring her to tears. In a good way, of course.
“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.”
Released in 2009, the first Avatar dropped audiences onto the alien world of Pandora and introduced us to Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a disabled former Marine who enters the Avatar program. Inhabiting a synthetic body similar to that of the native Na'vi, Sully begins to explore the planet and begins to question the motives of the human visitors.
Many years in the making, Avatar 2 will continue to delve into the depths of Pandora, taking audiences into the plane’s mysterious underwater world. The sequel will also introduce us to Jake and Neytiri’s new family, and it certainly sounds like things are going to get very emotional indeed.
“He’s also a big crier,” the actor added about her director. “He does have a very delicate heart, which is why he protects it so much. And I think that he’s able to have an outlet through the stories that he creates.”
Avatar 2 Will Take Us Under the Seas of Pandora
We have known for some time that Avatar 2 will heavily feature the underwater world found on Pandora but, according to Saldaña, it took some time for returning director James Cameron to craft the right technology for the task. “Jim was finally able to crack that challenge — that whole thing that you can’t imitate water, virtually, through performance capture,” Saldaña explained. “That was just a challenge that he had taken upon himself, and it took him years, and he did it. He did it. It’s powerful, it’s compelling.”
Avatar 2 is just the first of several planned sequels, with the long-awaited follow-up set to pick up some 13 years after the first record-breaking outing, introducing audiences to Jake and Neytiri’s new family. This will include several native Na’vi children, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuktirey (Trinity Bliss), as well as the human child Miles Socorro, also known as Spider, played by The Night Sitter star Jack Champion. Spider is taken into the brood of Avatar heroes Jake and Neytiri after being born at the now-abandoned military base on Pandora. Too young to be returned to Earth, Jake decides to take the child in as one of their own, much to the chagrin of Neytiri.
Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, CCH Pounder, Matt Gerald, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Michelle Yeoh, Jemaine Clement, Oona Chaplin, Vin Diesel, and CJ Jones, Avatar 2 is scheduled to be released on December 16, 2022, by 20th Century Studios.