‘Avatar: the sense of water’ (Avatar: The Way of Water) is one of the most ambitious films ever attempted. But it is also that James Cameron has made three films at the same time. So much 2 as the entirety of Avatar 3 and the first act of ‘Avatar 4’ were shot at the same time. Now the director has commented that there was a good reason for this, beyond saving costs.
The ‘Stranger Things’ effect
Now, as Cameron has revealed to Entertainment Weekly, with such a young cast in the film, he wanted to avoid the pitfalls of kicking out audiences for not believing what they were seeing. For example, Jack Champion, who plays Spider, a human character, was cast when he was 12 years old.. He is now 18 years old and the movies are still being shot, although in reality he already looks like a much older boy. And let’s not talk about Sigourney Weaver playing a 17-year-old.
To justify your choice, Cameron referred to what happened in the most famous Netflix series.
“I love Stranger Things, but there’s a ‘Stranger Things effect’ where they’re supposed to still be in high school, and they look like they’re 27. Jack Champion grew like a tree when we were working with him. We shot with Jack when he was 14 and 15, almost to 16. So we see it over a period of 18 months.”
The issue of the pandemic brought more complications. Cameron had to appeal directly to the New Zealand government to allow the young actors to return to the country before they were too old to continue filming.
“I was imagining scenarios where we wouldn’t work again for a year and a half, and we’d be completely screwed because he’d be past his age, and then we’d have to shoot again with a different guy. We were able to appeal to the New Zealand government to to let a small group of our key players in so we could get the production back on track. We ended the first act in Avatar 4 with a huge jump in time, as many years as we needed to get to Page 35 of the movie 4 script.”