by Gill Pringle

It’s good to have James Cameron as your pal, because he has the power to grant immortality, as in Sigourney Weaver’s new Avatar, Kiri, and Stephen Lang’s all-new enhanced blue warrior, Quaritch, both inexplicably resurrected.

There’s even a role for Cameron’s Titanic leading lady Kate Winslet as Ronal, pairing her with Cliff Curtis’ Tonowari as leaders of ocean clan, the Metkayina, while Jamie Landau, son of Cameron’s producer Jon Landau, also returns as a Metkayina warrior, having worked as a production assistant on the first Avatar and as a stuntman on Titanic.

Coming 13 years after the original Avatar wowed audiences, Avatar: The Way of Water is the second in what will ultimately be a five-part franchise, also introducing a new young cast alongside Brendan Cowell and Jemaine Clement.

If the original film introduced us to the spectacular forest lands of the extrasolar moon Pandora, with its hanging islands filled with exotic fauna, then Avatar: The Way of Water focuses on an exotic and vivid marine life, almost like a fantasy Nat Geo documentary.

“I think it’s important for a sequel to honour what the audience loved about the experience the first time. But also, to get them off-balance, do things that they do not expect. There are a lot of surprises, in terms of where the story goes, in this film that we are not putting into the trailers or TV spots. You have to experience it,” says the water-loving director whose films have regularly focused on the oceans, including Titanic and The Abyss, also appearing in 2014 documentary Deepsea Challenge where he travelled to the deepest part of the ocean, a long-cherished childhood dream.

“But this new film also goes a lot deeper, in terms of the heart and the emotions. The characters and the stories were simpler the first time out. Then, I was inspired by the fact that both Zoe and Sam are parents – and I’m a parent of five – so we wanted to get into the family dynamics, and the responsibilities of having kids, and also what that is all like from the kids’ perspective,” says Cameron, 68, referring to his two stars, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña, reprising their iconic roles as forbidden lovers Jake Sully and Neytiri.

In this new film, we see the couple now happily married with a four-strong brood, coping with all the usual struggles of raising a family.

“I think in the first one, he says it in the voice over, ‘open your eyes’, and I think he’s opened his eyes to love, and the love of culture, the love of the planet and the love of Neytiri,” says Worthington who we see now fully inhabiting his blue Na’vi body.

“And with this one, it’s the natural extension of that. They have a family and, to be honest, it’s about the protection of that love and that world and that culture, at the simplest form. And his partner in crime is a very fiery person. He just tries to be the earth, and we just happen to have a lot of water. It’s very elemental,” says the actor who has three sons with wife Lara Bingle.

“Jake’s journey has always been about finding something worth fighting for. And in this one, his teenage boys are going through that as well. Teenage boys are displaced and, like most teenagers, they’re trying to figure out where they are in the world. But maybe sometimes, as a dad, you can’t find that empathy, or you’re learning to find that empathy, to actually help Lo’ak and Neteyam,” he says referring to Sully and Neytiri’s two oldest boys, played by Britain Dalton and Jamie Flatters respectively.

Meanwhile, the couple also have daughters Tyk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and Kiri (Sigourney Weaver).

“I think Sully relates more with Kiri, and can yield more. Jake’s a warrior, but sometimes you have to become a bit of a pacifist and calm down in order to listen to your kids. I think I have learnt that. But I think that’s how he can connect with someone like Kiri,” the actor muses.

Also returning to the franchise is Stephan Lang, now more ruthless in his Na’vi body. “I was just so honoured to be able to deepen and expand on the vision that Jim had for this character. I think in the first film he is very colourful; he has got personality and some great qualities. But essentially, he moves through things like a mindless shark, in a way,” Lang says.

“But in this iteration, there’s the absolute magnificent irony that Jim has written of coming back as the very thing he has been trying to destroy and having to adapt to that. It was a total pleasure for me to continue to massage this character, and find the depth, and maybe some of the humanity that is in him,” adds Lang.

Winslet knew she would have her work cut out for her in joining this close-knit cast. “With it being Jim, I expected the absolute best of everything. Because it’s precision, it’s thought through, it is thorough, meticulous, and I think the thing that pulled me in most of all, above everything else, is the characters that he has created,” she says.

“Jim has always written for women, characters who are not just strong, but they are leaders, they lead with their heart, with integrity, they stand in their truth, they own their power. They have physical power that is admirable. To be included was just so flattering. Jim does not suffer fools, and I knew that he was asking me because he knew I was too damn foolish not to say, ‘Oh, you see that in me?’ So, I am going to show him that I can do exactly that thing,” says the actress who passionately honed the water skills necessary for playing a leader of an ocean clan, even surpassing Cameron with her ability to hold her breath underwater.

“I am still pissed off, because I’ve been a free diver for fifty years. And you smoked past me and everybody else. But Sig was very close, we have to say,” responds the Oscar-winning filmmaker responsible for blockbusters The Terminator, T2, Aliens and True Lies.

Fiercely competitive, Winslet managed to hold her breath for 7 minutes 15 seconds versus Cameron’s 6 minutes 30 secs.

“Actually, what I want to know is, people keep going on about smashing Tom Cruise’s record, which people are saying is six minutes something. How do we know that you have not actually beaten Tom Cruise as well?” she asks Cameron when we meet with the director and cast.

Winslet says she was only able to keep track of her times after her husband snuck a camera onto set.

“I actually have a video of when I surfaced from that breath hold, because my husband snuck in. I can see me surfacing saying, ‘Am I dead, am I dead, have I died?’ And then going, ‘What was it?’ Straight away I wanted to know my time. And I could not believe that it was seven fifteen,” she says.

While closely competing with Winslet for times, Sigourney Weaver even went back to high school to explore her new alter ego as a teenage girl.

“Luckily, there was a long time to prepare, and I went to high school classes and a few other things so I could hear the pitch of their voices.

“All power to Jim, for wanting to create a complex character. There are wonderful things about Kiri, but she also has some deficits, and so I loved that I had the opportunity to play someone I consider a real adolescent in most ways, and then she has these other bright spots that she is learning about,” she adds.

Avatar: The Way of Water is in cinemas now

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