James Cameron: the “miracle” of Avatar, the vegan diet he imposed on the set and why the saga is a plea disguised as entertainment

Next December 15, and after a thirteen-year hiatus, everything will be ready for the premiere of Avatar 2the ambitious project of james cameron which will continue the adventures of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family in the fascinating world of Pandora.

As a kind of prelude that invites you to refresh your memory, this Thursday the first piece of the saga returns to theaters. And, regarding this revival and as a preview of what will be seen in the long-awaited sequel, the Canadian director spoke with THE NATION about the keys behind the successful science fiction epic.

“There are literally millions of viewers who were maybe too young to watch. Avatar in theaters in 2009,” says Cameron, excited by the idea of ​​a new generation enjoying the film on the big screen for the first time. “For those viewers, who were perhaps six or seven years old at the time, being able to see the film in theaters compared to having seen it in streamingit is as if they added colors to a story that they always saw in black and white”, adds the faithful worshiper of what the cinematographic experience implies.

The film is a traditional colonization story centered on a soldier named Jake Sully, who arrives on Pandora, and through sophisticated technology, is able to transfer his mind to the body of a Navi, the native race of that world. And although his mission was to infiltrate the indigenous tribe to advance on it together with the military forces of Earth, Jake ends up falling in love with a culture that lives in deep harmony with his environment. In this way, the protagonist changes sides and confronts his former allies, until making that planet his home, and from that borrowed container his true body and spirit.

Undoubtedly, the classic structure of the story has a charm that transcends fashions and trends. “In many countries there is a history linked to European colonization, and that is part of our collective past as a race. I wanted to make an invasion story, and compared to the usual science fiction movies that show the Earth invaded by aliens who own superior technology, I decided to tell another story: that of an original people that is colonized“, Explain.

Finally, and regarding the look of that first film from a distance, Cameron concludes: “The primary objective of the film has to do with the importance we give to the environment and our bond with nature. And today we, responsible for having degraded nature through the centuries, need to fight for it and be guardians of the environment.”.

Avatar It seemed impossible to do back in 1995, the year that Cameron began to dream of this story. The director was involved in a project of incalculable proportions (and costs) as it was titanica when he began to sketch in his imagination the adventure of a planet called Pandora. But the technology was far behind the look that the filmmaker wanted to capture, and he had to wait several years to consider the possibility of making it a reality. “Special effects back then were not possible for Avatar. And a firm called Digital Domain was key, because it pushed the limits of what was established when it came to generating characters by computer.”, he comments. However, from creating heroes in digital to developing an epic of almost three hours, the jump was considerable.

I will always say that Avatar It was a great commitment on our part, but especially on the part of the studio”, underlines the director, recalling the titanic effort that meant bringing his vision of the Navi to the screen. And on the way to achieving that goal, there was a very important link: “I think they would not have bet on us without the success of titanica. It took me fourteen years to make Avatar, and it was only three years until I was able to see the first of his finished images. Only then did I think yes, that maybe I was going to be able to make this film”.

With great emotion, the director recalls that first image of the film, which allowed him to trust in the potential of that adventure: “I remember sitting in the editing room, and staring at the beauty of that image. It was the moment when Neytiri appeared for the first time. She had these big yellow eyes, like a cat’s, and I’d look at that shot over and over and think ‘we’re really going to do this.’ It was a very scary process.”

The sequel to Avatar It is one of the great tanks of 2022 and, according to its manager, the plot will lead the public to meet Jake and Neytiri once again, but in a very different situation. “The story takes place fifteen years later, and the leading couple now has a family with four children. In this story, there is a lot about how much your life can change when you have children. I am a father of five, and as an artist I work from my experience in family dynamics, what is healthy and what is not. And I place this proposal on this dramatic and beautiful alien planet that is Pandora. So it’s all about the challenges they face as a family, and trying to fight to preserve their culture and natural world.”, synthesizes.

The possibility of a new installment of the saga has in its favor the power to delve into different aspects of the attractive world of Pandora. And that was one of the aspects that most excited the director: “Here we follow Jake and Neytiri through a different culture, and in a place where the water, the surface, the different climates and the creatures are very important. This is something very beautiful, and doing it was a great technical challenge. We had to hone our skill at capturing expression motion, and from there additional challenges arose.. An example of this happened to us with the character of Sigourney Weaver. She is an actress in her late sixties who here plays a 15-year-old navi teenager. She did that performance beautifully, but the challenge was whether we could recreate a character from that work and dignify that performance as a Navi girl. And finally I think we did it, and hers is one of the interesting roles.”

One of the most important requirements that Cameron asked his team, in the framework of the filming of Avatar 2was to request that everyone follow a vegan diet. Far from being an eccentricity, the director considered that, due to the nature of the story, it was pertinent to put into practice philosophies opposed to what he calls “devouring the planet”.

“I spoke to my team through a piece I produced called The Game Changers. I thought I couldn’t preach to people about animal cruelty and harm to nature, so I showed them this movie about a group of vegan athletes who are faster and stronger because of their diet. I wanted to break the myth that we need to eat meat to survive. And I did this because Avatar is environmentally conscious, we actually put in a solar electric system while we were working, because I felt I had to lead by example“, Explain.

Relying on a vegan food system as a framework for filming, Cameron knows, has nothing to do with the result of the film, but with a philosophy and behavior that he describes as follows: “The question I ask myself is the next: ‘Will the feature film be better because of this?’ I don’t think so, but it did make our lives better for those of us working on this project, and it brought awareness to a very important issue. Avatar 2 It’s not about vegan culture, because the Navi hunt, but they live in perfect harmony with nature and their existence doesn’t apply to ours. We are billions of people who are completely devouring our planet.

Cameron is one of the last representatives of a race that, like the Navi, fights to survive. He is an author in the most traditional sense of the word, an artist given over to a look that dots all of his work, and that reveals him to be the owner of a sensibility that matures and that forms a theoretical body that expands in each new piece. . In times of great franchises, and tank movies that seem to erase the relevance of directors, Cameron can impose an authorial look that goes hand in hand with an impressive box office.

“I believe that cinema is an artistic expression with people with an artistic perspective, something that influences a film regardless of its dimensions. When I was working on the new AvatarI was focused on pushing the limits within this saga, on making its logic and what this story meant to me, and that’s how I worked the whole project. So we need artists, we need authors, and it will never stop being that way. But I understand that there is a debate regarding corporatism in film tanks, such as what happens in movies set in the Marvel or DC universe”, he reflects.

Before closing the talk, Cameron once again highlights his intention to propose with Avatar and that universe a look at the importance of a balance in our bond with the planet. Increasingly mimicking those issues that obsess him, that look led him to experiment in his work and his life (which, after all, are the same thing) a philosophy that goes beyond the screen. In many aspects, Avatar it is that ultimate love letter (or seen in a less romantic way, the most desperate plea) to preserve the world around us. And as a prophet in his own lands and others, Cameron is confident that the power of his word can only be transmitted through his art.

“Let’s face it: far more people are willing to watch an entertainment story than a documentary. People don’t want sermons, people want to be entertained. Viewers can be entertained and enjoy a film based on its beauty, and connect with nature through an emotional reaction to what they see on screen. So I think this is art and entertainment, and maybe also a call to wake up and fight for our environment,” he says. “We have to fight for nature, change the way we feed ourselves, and the way we relate to each other as human beings. We cannot talk about saving a country without taking into account the rest of the planet, because everything is a connected system. And so Avatar it refers to a land that is fully connected.”