Last week in an exclusive interview with ‘Nightline’, James Cameron allowed cameras on his private 100 acre ranch in Santa Barbara, California, offering viewers a look at the scenery that inspired the fictional world of Pandora while he spoke about what to expect with ‘Avatar 2’.
While the first ‘Avatar’ film showed the rainforests of Pandora being threatened with destruction, a nod to what’s happening now to our real environment according to Cameron, the sequels will focus on the oceans and how they are becoming inhabitable to a lot of species. As he told Bill Weir on ‘Nightline’, “…I’m really writing the second and third films together, so it completes a kinda three film story arc. And we will see the oceans of Pandora, which we haven’t seen at all and that’s an ecosystem that I’m dying to start designing because it’s going to look spectacular.” In order to help create this oceanic vision, Cameron is planning on taking a team down to the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans located off the coast of Japan in the Pacific Ocean.
But if you’re thinking ‘Avatar 2’ will be preachier than the last, don’t worry. Cameron does go on to say that to do so “would be a mistake because it has to be entertainment, first and foremost… I think it’s just a continuation of the same thing. I want people to feel that same sense of excitement about that world. You know, the fictional Na’vi people and I want them to feel that excitement of discovery of a new world that they’re going to see things that they haven’t imagined. All that sort of the perk package of the first movie is still going to be there. And the themes will be there and be played out in a way that I think people can accept.”
For most fans, that is a relief as many felt the environmental overtones of ‘Avatar’ were beginning to feel like the message was being shoved down their throats.
The big plus with Cameron is his ability to create the technology he needs to achieve his vision. He’s already spoken about creating a way to show the movie at a higher frame per sec so that the movie looks cleaner and more realistic. The question is, will he be able to achieve this before the scheduled release of ‘Avatar 2’ on December 14, 2014?
You can watch a segment of the ‘Nightline’ interview below where Cameron talks more about his plans for the sequel. In the meantime, what do you think of the storyline so far?
