Zoe Saldaña “moved to tears” by the first 20 minutes of Avatar 2

Fans have been waiting a long time to see the sequel to James Cameron’s groundbreaking film Avatar, which came out all the way back in 2009. It’s currently the highest-grossing movie of all time, thanks in part to how it incorporated 3D technology in a way that no movie before or after has managed to replicate. Seeing Avatar in movie theaters was an event, and nothing outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come close to equaling it since.

And Cameron has been promising sequels pretty much since Avatar first came out. They’ve been delayed time and again, leading many fans to lose hope that we’d ever actually get to return to Pandora.

But just last week, 20th Century president Steve Asbell insisted that yes, we will definitely see Avatar 2 this year. There shall not be another delay! Now, Zoe Saldaña, who plays the Na’vi Neytiri, is adding more fuel to the fire. It turns out Saldana has actually seen part of the movie, and it was so good she was “moved to tears.”

Why has Avatar 2 taken so long to come out?

Speaking to Kevin McCarthy, Saldaña revealed that she had the opportunity to watch part of Avatar 2 back in 2021. And apparently it made quite an impression. “I can get choked up just talking about it, because I was able to see just 20 minutes of the second installment right before the year ended, last year,” she said. “And I was speechless, I was moved to tears. One thing nobody really knows about Jim [Cameron] is that Jim is also a big crier, so… [laughs]”

"This story is going to be compelling. Avatar 2 is definitely a leap from the Avatar 1, so I think you really have to brace yourself for it, but it’s going to be an adventure you will not forget."

So, the movie is real, and at least part of it exists in a watchable form. We’ll take it.

In addition to discussing what it was like to actually get to see the film, Saldaña talked about some of the reasons it took such a long time to produce. One is that Avatar uses an enormous amount of cutting edge CGI performance capture technology, but figuring out how to make it all work under water has been a huge challenge. We’ve known almost since Cameron first teased Avatar 2 that it would explore the oceans of Pandora and feature lots of underwater scenes, but apparently the performance capture technology simply doesn’t work well in simulating the natural movements of someone underwater. According to Saldaña, Cameron spent years trying to solve this particular challenge, and he finally managed to do it.

Avatar 2 is due out in theaters on December 16, 2022.

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