More>>>>>>>>>>>
Asking people to fundamentally change their behavior patterns, it’s like asking them to change their religion. We’re seeing this ongoing series of greater and greater manifestations of the consequences, like with these heat waves in China and North America and Europe, the flooding in Pakistan, which is horrific. And eventually we will change or we’ll die out. “Avatar” is not trying to tell you what to do specifically. It’s not telling you, Go vote for so-and-so, buy a Prius, put down the cheeseburger. It’s just reminding us of what we’re losing. And it puts us back in touch with that childlike state of wonder about the natural world. As long as that beauty still resonates within us, there’s hope.
Are you concerned that in the time between the original and the sequel, audiences will have lost their connection to the story or its characters?
I think I could have made a sequel two years later and have it bomb because people didn’t relate to the characters or the direction of the film. My personal experience goes like this: I made a sequel called “Aliens,” seven years after the first movie. It was very well received. I made a sequel called “Terminator 2,” seven years after the first movie. It did an order of magnitude of more, in revenue, than the first film. I was a little concerned that I had stretched the tether too far, in our fast-paced, modern world, with “Avatar 2” coming in 12 years later. Right until we dropped the teaser trailer, and we got 148 million views in 24 hours. There’s that scarce seen but wondered at principle, which is, Wow, we haven’t seen that in a long time, but I remember how cool it was back then. Does that play in our favor? I don’t know. I guess we’re going to find out.
In the era of the original “Avatar,” we learned that you possess a baseball cap bearing the letters “HMFIC” (a boastful if family-unfriendly personal description). Did that get any use on the making of “The Way of Water”?
I would either wear that hat on the first day of a new shoot, or I would wear my T-shirt that says “Time becomes meaningless in the face of creativity.” Just to shake up the studio a little bit. I don’t think I [wore] the HMFIC hat on the new “Avatar.” This is the kinder, gentler me. This is the mellow, Zen nice guy, sensitive to everybody’s needs and emotional requirements. No microaggressions here. Which is usually good for about the first two weeks.
Hates that movie.
I seriously doubt that James Cameron is less woke than he was back 12 years ago.
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