“I have been dreaming of relaunching it for years” – Publimetro Chile

When “Avatar” hit theaters in 2009, it was a hit and made history as the first film to gross $2 billion at the box office. A milestone that was achieved in part because of its visual spectacularity by showing the conflict of a marine who arrives on the moon Pandora between following orders or protecting this world inhabited by the Na’vi.

Today, the film starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña and Sigourney Weaver returns to theaters, but remastered at 4K in order to prepare the ground for “Avatar: the path of water”, a sequel that arrives on December 15. James Cameron, the brain behind “Avatar” spoke with Publimetro and a handful of media in the region about the original, why he re-releases it for an entire generation -including his children-, and more.

“I’ve been dreaming of re-releasing it, as part of the sequel release, for four or five years. I’ve been waiting for this moment because I knew there were going to be literally millions of people who are fans of the movie now, but were too young to see it in theaters,” he tells Metro. After that, the man behind “Titanic” and “Terminator” looks for a reference: “It’s almost as if they had seen the film in black and white, and now we turn on the color. It really is that big of a difference between having seen it streamed and seeing it in 3D on the big screen with full sound and total immersion in a good theater.”

Although Cameron admits that “Avatar” looks at the collective history by showing the attempted colonization of Pandora, from the indigenous perspective, he assures that the main purpose was “to send an emergency flare over our environment and our relationship with nature” by doing Emphasize how you used to love nature as a young child.

Cameron believes that we are all collectively to blame for what happened to the planet and that we have to fight: “We need to be guardians of nature.” As for whether he sees differences in the relationship with the environment since the original debut, he says he sees a improves, but clarifies to Metro: “’Avatar” wasn’t meant to be about the weather or any specific problem, pollution or anything like that. It was just meant to spark our sense of belonging or connection to nature, but hopefully that would translate into activism and choices we make as a civilization. (…) Now this has become a significant part of political discourse and political action. So I think ‘Avatar’ is just as relevant today, if not more so, and that we will continue to resonate with people as well as it did the first time around, maybe even more.”

The also documentary maker has just released with his wife, Suzy Amis, “Super / Natural” (on Disney +) about nature. But he thinks the “Avatar” movies are a way to show him in a fictional world: “Let’s face it, more people will go see a fictional piece of entertainment than tune in to documentaries. People don’t want to be lectured, they want to be entertained.”

Looking back, the director is struck by how remarkable a gamble with ‘Avatar’ was for the team and the studio. “I think they wouldn’t have taken a chance if we hadn’t made an equally big bet on a movie called ‘Titanic,’” he says. “’Avatar’ took four years to make and I spent three years in that process before I saw a final shot that we could include in the movie. And when we got that shot, I thought, ‘Maybe just maybe it’s possible to make this movie,’” he recalls of first seeing Neytiri.

“In the new movie we don’t feel that level of angst. We knew that we were refining techniques that we had already tried with the first one, but now I look back and think ‘We were crazy’”.

The three-time Oscar winner is finishing “Avatar: The Path of Water,” which focuses on Jake Sully (Worthington) and Neytiri (Saldaña), now with four children and, as the father of five, uses his experience on family dynamic: “setting that in this beautiful, dramatic, unknown alien setting of the world of Pandora.” And, of course, there is the fight to preserve his culture and natural world.

Therefore, go ahead, a large number of creatures, underwater environments and tropical reefs are shown.

“We had additional challenges like, for example, Sigourney Weaver, who was in her 60s when we were doing the capture job a couple of years ago, but plays a 15-year-old,” he explains. “It was very challenging from a technical point of view, much more so than the first film, we also refined our ability to capture facial performance – we knew we can’t just make this up later.”