If you walked out of “Avatar” with the lingering thought of not only what happened to Jake Sully, but if he spawned a family and what their fates might be, then the sequels to the upcoming movie might be up your alley. For everyone else, the direction is a bit of a headscratcher.
While the “Avatar” sequels will undoubtedly explore new worlds, with James Cameron likely utilizing some kind of new technical wizardry to lure audiences back to Pandora, right now he’s selling a saga more than a spectacle. With the announcement that the three sequels will shoot in New Zealand, Cameron sat down with The Associated Press to talk about what he has planned. “It was very Jake-centric. His story seen through his eyes,” Cameron said of the first film. “We spread it around quite a bit more as we go forward. It’s really the story of his family, the family that he creates on Pandora. His extended family. So think of it as a family saga like ‘The Godfather.’ “
Uh, okay then. But don’t worry, there will be a lot more Pandora too if that’s your thing, and while Cameron calls claims that “Avatar 2” will be set underwater as inaccurate—”There are underwater scenes and surface-water scenes having to do with indigenous ocean cultures that are distributed across the three films”—there will be new lands to discover.
“It’s going to be a lot of new imagery and a lot of new environments and creatures across Pandora,” he explained. “We’re blowing it out all over the place. At first I thought I was going to take it onto other worlds as well, in the same solar system, but it turned out not to be necessary. I mean the Pandora that we have imagined will be a fantasy land that is going to occupy people for decades to come, the way I see it.”
So, are you ready for this? “Avatar 2” is planned for release in 2016.