James Cameron's Avatar saga has only spanned two movies so far, but it feels like so much more. The franchise kicked off in 2009, and the first film quickly became the highest-grossing movie of all-time. The sequel, The Way of Water, aired in 2022. Next up is Fire and Ash, coming this December.
The Avatar movies are here for the long haul. Cameron has already planned out a further three movies, running all the way up to Avatar 5 in 2031. Water was a key theme of Avatar 2 and fire steps into the spotlight for Avatar 3. He's working his way through the elements.
With each movie comes an all-new story and new characters. In the upcoming threequel, Cameron introduces fans to the Ash Clan, a group of Na'vi aliens who have been survived against difficult odds. Speaking to Empire, the filmmaker teased the leader of the tough, battle-hardened Ash Clan, Varang: “Varang is the leader of a people who have gone through an incredible hardship. She's hardened by that. She will do anything for them, even things that we would consider to be evil.”
Varang is played by Oona Chaplin (Talisa Stark from Game of Thrones), who Cameron says “is so good that I didn’t quite appreciate how good her performance is until we got the Wētā animation back.”
Empire's interview also featured some concept art for the film, including a first-look at Varang riding through the skies. Check it out:
In the first two movies, the main threat comes from the human beings who have traveled to the moon of Pandora to try and mine it for resources. With the Ash Clan Avatar 3 will show a darker side to the Na'vi. “One thing we wanted to do in this film is not be black-and-white simplistic," Cameron explained. “We’re trying to evolve beyond the ‘all humans are bad, all Na’vi are good’ paradigm.”
James Cameron promises Avatar 3 will take the series to places it's never been
Speaking to Empire more recently, Cameron cautioned fans that the new film will take them to “places they won’t expect, but that will feel earned.” It almost sounds like a warning. “We’re just starting to riff on it and twist it and turn it,” the director said. “It’s a tricky thing. We could be getting high on our own supply here, and everybody who looks at it goes, ‘Fuck, that’s not what I signed up for.’ But if you’re not making brave choices, you’re wasting everybody’s time and money. That alone is not sufficient to create success, but it’s necessary. You’ve got to break the mould every fricking time.”
"Yeah, we’ve got some really clever action set-pieces. You can get your blood up in this movie. But what excites me as an artist who recently turned 70 and has kind of done all that stuff is not only the opportunity to get to do it again, but to get to a level of character and intrigue you haven’t seen before in an Avatar movie."
Whatever exactly he's talking about, Cameron promises that the movie is coming together nicely. “It’s in strong shape, I think,” he said. “We’ve doubled the number of shots finished at this stage of the game than we had on movie two [and] the films are about equal length. So that puts us well ahead of the curve, which is something I’ve never, frankly, experienced before...We’re getting to the point where we’re actually getting good at this.”
Avatar 3: Fire and Ash hits theaters on December 19.
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