13 years ago, 'Avatar 2' was impossible. Inside the groundbreaking plan to pull it off
In the long-awaited sea-quel "Avatar: The Way of Water," now in theaters, James Cameron delivers on his promise to explore Pandora's glittering oceans 13 years after the historic success of 2009's hybrid live-action/motion-capture epic "Avatar." But bringing the blockbuster follow-up to life required the Oscar-winning filmmaker, cinematographer Russell Carpenter and a team of actors, experts and technicians to achieve the "impossible" yet again.
Their biggest challenge? Hint: It covers 71% of Earth's surface.
In 2013, Cameron, armed with thousands of pages of notes expanding the world of Pandora, decided on the aquatic setting and set a team of writers to pen the sequels. But Jon Landau, who has produced all of Cameron's films since "Titanic," immediately foresaw a problem: The technological processes used to capture actors playing Na'vi on dry sets did not yet exist for capturing them wet. "Right away we started doing R&D," he said, "because no one had ever done performance capture underwater."
Set years after the events of "" in a new corner of Pandora, "The Way of Water" finds ex-Marine Jake Sully (), Omatikaya warrior Neytiri () and their four children taking refuge with the seafaring Metkayina clan, with whom they must adapt to ocean life to survive. Characters swim, bond and battle beneath the surface for more than half the film,
