The Metkayina clan's chief and his wife.[Photo provided to China Daily]
Avatar is back, so are Chinese moviegoers. Despite the chilly weather and recent spike in COVID-19 cases, James Cameron's long-awaited Avatar sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, which opened in theaters nationwide on Friday, has rekindled the enthusiasm of domestic audiences, with its presale box office surpassing 100 million yuan ($14.3 million) in just three days — quicker than any other movie this year.
Twelve years ago, the first Avatar film stirred unprecedented interest among Chinese theatergoers, sending many rushing to join long lines to purchase tickets to one of China's 14 giant 3D IMAX screens. The first Avatar was released in the United States in 2009 and imported to the Chinese mainland in 2010.
Over the decade since, China's film industry has seen a burgeoning expansion in various fields, from the rising number of advanced cinemas, to the progress of self-developed cinematic techniques.
It is thanks to these huge changes that The Way of Water, the 192-minute epic which takes fans back to the fantastic planet Pandora, can be now seen in a variety of ways, varying from IMAX, currently offered in 716 cinemas in 202 Chinese cities, to CINITY, a Chinese screening system recommended by Cameron as it's capable of screening the movie at its original 3D, 4K, 48 frames-per-second format, compared with the 2K and 24 FPS in regular 3D cinemas.
Jake Sully fights against human invaders to protect his family and their newfound oceanic home.[Photo provided to China Daily]
As of Monday, the sci-fi epic has grossed more than 400 million yuan, with 27 percent of its opening weekend box office taken from IMAX venues.
The new story picks up more than a decade from the end of the first tale, unfolding with Jake Sully, the former US Marine who chooses to become a member of the native Na'vi, leading a happy life with his wife, Neytiri, and their three children, as well as an adopted daughter.
However, a new threat emerges as the human invaders land on Pandora again. Miles Quaritch, the main villain in the first movie who is killed by Jake and Neytiri, lives on in a cloned Na'vi body in which his memories are implanted, and gathers a squad to hunt the protagonist.
To protect his family and avoid bringing harm to his forest-dwelling clan, Jake and his family flee, embarking on a journey that sees them find asylum with the Metkayina — an oceanic Na'vi tribe that can swim like fish and communicate with "Tulkun", a species of whale-like creatures.
The whale-like "Tulkun" is one of the star creatures in Avatar: The Way of Water.[Photo provided to China Daily]
Actor Sam Worthington and actress Zoe Saldana reprise their respective roles as Jake Sully and Neytiri, and the movie also casts new faces, with Titanic actress Kate Winslet playing the pregnant wife of the Metkayina clan's chief. Winslet had special training for the role, enabling her to hold breath for seven minutes and 15 seconds underwater.
Accounting for a big part of the film, the underwater scenes are possibly the most eye-catching and technically challenging. A variety of fantastic creatures are featured, ranging from "skimwing", a large flying fish-like creature, to "ilu", an easily tamed creature which looks like plesiosaurs.
For director Cameron, who recently attended an online interview with Chinese journalists alongside producer Jon Landau, the sequel is his love letter to the ocean.
"I love being underwater. I love the oceans. I love these incredible animals. I love the beauty in the coral reefs or in a kelp forest, that sort of thing … I'm just putting together my two great loves in life: film — telling stories with images — and the ocean," says the director.
One of Cameron's most sensational news was his 2012 record-setting solo dive to get down 10,908 meters, reaching the bottom of Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the world's deepest frontier.
Describing himself as an explorer who has spent thousands of hours underwater, Cameron reveals that he has made eight deep ocean diving expeditions around the world, and made a lot of documentaries about the sea, exemplified by the Emmy Award-winning Secrets of the Whales, a TV nature documentary that has followed a variety of whales in 24 locations over three years.
Director James Cameron (top, left) injects his love of the ocean into his latest blockbuster, Avatar: The Way of Water.[Photo provided to China Daily]
Sharing the same hobby as Cameron, Landau, the director's longtime collaborator who also produced Titanic and the first Avatar movie, says: "One of the great things about diving is that every time you go diving, you don't know what to expect."
Shifting their passion for ocean into a visual spectacle, Landau recalls that they took the cast to rehearse in the rainforest and the ocean in Hawaii, training them to snorkel and hold breath in the reefs. Most of the actors and actresses had little diving experience before, so they were taught to scuba dive and free dive, helping them to feel comfortable in the water and to easily imagine the oceanic environment on Pandora.
"We did what could be perhaps the most Pandora-like thing you could do on Earth. We went on a night dive. We went down 30 feet (9.1 meters) and sat in the dark at the bottom," says Landau, adding that the stars were amazed to see a school of manta rays swimming toward them from the darkness.
Recounting the moment that the cast got to interact with these highly intelligent creatures, Cameron notes that Cliff Curtis, the New Zealand actor who plays the leader of the Metkayina race, has a manta ray tattoo on his chest, which, for him, holds a deep meaning.
"And then all of a sudden, he (Curtis) was having this almost spiritual relationship by touching these amazing creatures, as they were swimming around," says Cameron.
A father of five children, with the youngest turning 16 years old, the director, who is also known in Hollywood for his hot temper, shows his soft and caring side, injecting the personal emotion of being a parent into the tale.
"We put all of our energy into making it a great visual experience, like a journey. But we also put more energy this time into telling the story of family," he explains.
The underwater scenes are possibly the most eye-catching and technically challenging in the movie.[Photo provided to China Daily]
"I think if I were a young audience member hearing that, (I) would be like, 'ah, boring, I don't want to hear about family'. But it's very much told from the point of view of these teenage kids that are refugees. They're having to leave the home that they grew up in. They're going to a new culture, and they have to learn how to fit in and be accepted," Cameron adds.
The director reveals that the third Avatar film, which was previously announced to be released in December 2024, has wrapped up filming and is currently in post-production.
Earlier last year, China re-released the first Avatar film, triggering a nostalgic wave of theatergoing and helping the movie overtake Avengers: Endgame to reclaim the world's all-time biggest box-office title.
The new Avatar film, The Way of Water, has also formed a closer connection with Chinese filmmakers, with the first clip from the film screened through the CINITY projectors, self-developed by China Film Group Corporation, in Europe earlier this year.
Zhi Feina, a professor at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, says that China has around a total of 180 screens — respectively 110 CINITY and over 70 Dolby Cinema — that could screen the original format designed by Cameron, more than that of the US.
With the recent adjustment to China's pandemic control policy, Zhi says she believes the new Avatar film will be the first blockbuster of this chilly winter to provide some warmth and comfort to the struggling domestic movie market.
