James Cameron: 'I think this is the riskiest Avatar'

With Avatar: Fire and Ash, James Cameron returns with his biggest and longest Avatar adventure to date, a 71-year-old who still has the energy of a 10-year-old on their first visit to Funderland and who, by current estimates, could sign off with his final film in the franchise at the age of 77 in 2031.

On the list of the highest-grossing films of all time, Cameron is in first (2009's Avatar), third (2022's Avatar: The Way of Water), and fourth (1997's Titanic) place, so, once again, it's all eyes on the box office as Fire and Ash arrives in time for Christmas.

Below, the legendary director discusses the challenges of bringing his latest blockbuster to the big screen, the visual effects work of Irish double Oscar winner Richard Baneham, and why Fire and Ash is "the riskiest" of the Avatar films to date.

Harry Guerin: Physically and mentally, was Avatar: Fire and Ash the hardest Avatar film to get over the line?

James Cameron: Interestingly enough, we had spent a lot of R&D time and money in between the first film and then the sequels, because two and three together were one production. They're one big story. The story ends with this film. And that actually paid off, such that as we were finishing film two, The Way of Water, you know, there were still a lot of people running around with their hair on fire, but we got it all worked out. So now, it became a much smoother system as we were finishing film three, which became Fire and Ash when I finally thought of a title for it. (Laughs)

But 3,500 visual effects shots - every single shot in the film being a visual effects shot - that really paid off, that technical development really paid off. And I could really focus on the editing and the telling of the story. I didn't have to worry about the making of the shots. I could worry about the telling of the story, which is good, because this one got very snaky on me in post[-production]. I started to question some of my assumptions, and I went back.

I asked the actors to come back, and I said, 'Let's do this. Let's do that.' And we actually shot some new material, which we're quite excited about. I realised that the beauty of performance capture is we can recreate any location, any set, any scene very, very quickly - I mean, in a matter of a couple of hours - so it allowed us to go back. And the actors always love to come back. Avatar is kind of their home base from which they go off and make the other films, but it always... it kind of grounds them, and they look forward to coming back. [It's] Kind of like getting the band back together. So, it was a little bit of a journey, I would say, in post-production.

You're reunited with your Irish colleague, Avatar's two-time visual effects Oscar winner Richard Baneham, on Fire and Ash. Can you talk to me about how that relationship has evolved over the years and his work as an executive producer on this film?

Yeah, well, we're not reuniting, because Richie never went anywhere! We've been working together pretty much non-stop since, let's see, 2005/2006. I did go off for a little bit and do a deep-ocean expedition. I call it 'time off for good behaviour'! But more or less consistently, for about 18 years, [Richie and I have worked together].

Over time, what I've found is I'm a bit of the bottleneck of the production, because everything flows through me. I operated all of the virtual cameras and all the live-action cameras, except for Steadicam, on the first movie. I started to relax that standard on the second film, and much more so on the third film, and give a lot of that to Richie.

I still operate the live-action [camera], but in terms of the virtual camera, he's become my sort of virtual second-unit director, if you will. So, a lot of the shot creation falls onto him as well. He supervises the animation and the character development in the CG pipeline and all that. And he's there when I capture with the actors and seeing what they're doing. Then it's kind of his responsibility to make sure that nothing is lost through that long and arduous pipeline of facial capture, body capture, all that sort of thing, and stay very, very true to what Sigourney [Weaver] or Kate Winslet or any of the other actors have done.

So, he's got that responsibility, and he also works with me and we share the task on shot creation. So, he's moved into taking on essentially part of the directing role. And I'm grateful for it, because now I'm less of a bottleneck and I can focus. I can slow down a little bit, and I can focus on editing. I really love the editing. To me, that's where the film really tells us what it's trying to be. I've been talking to other directors about this recently and saying, 'Don't you guys find that the film in post[-production] is... it's almost, like, received? It's almost like it's finding its own path and we're just a conduit for it?' Which is, you know, my new kind of perspective on the whole process. Richie and I are great mates. We work well together.

I was fascinated in this film how you worked in grief with the environmental message and the action. Can you talk to me about that, please?

I think that the way to engage people is not just through the visual, not just through the visual imagination, but through their heartfelt connection with the characters. I wanted to take the characters into places where they felt challenged, where their relationships were at risk. You know, where they were dealing with hard things.

It's kind of an interesting aspect of cinema that we'll go to the cinema, and we'll go through hard problems with the people on the screen, and yet that is an escape from our daily lives. It's not just about frolicking through the beautiful fields and forests of Pandora. It's about engaging the mind and the heart - not just the visual cortex, but the heart - with the audience. To me, that's a true theatrical experience. The same way that Titanic was. I felt the first Avatar film had a lot of... It was gorgeous, it was unexpected, but it didn't take you deep the way as a dramatist - as somebody who writes these things as well - that it didn't go as deep as I wanted to go.

The cast were ready. We trusted each other. We were ready to launch into a lot of territory where maybe the audience would be a bit challenged. The audience loves Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldaña). She's great; she's this fantastic warrior; she's this loving mother. I wanted to push her to a point where the audience felt she was at risk, really at risk of becoming a racist, of being hateful and 'downtwisted' to the point that she was on a path to become like Varang (played by Oona Castilla Chaplin) and the Ash People. That's why they exist in the movie, to show what that outcome could look like if you take that hate and that intolerance to the conclusion.

As Lo'ak (played by Britain Dalton), the youngest son, says, 'The fire of hate leaves only the ash of grief.' But the part that he doesn't complete is, 'And that ash of grief leads to the fire of hate again in an endless cycle.' And that cycle is referred to with the Tulkun (Avatar's whale-like creatures) talking about the endless expanding spiral. And we see that. We see that in Ukraine. We see it in Gaza. We see it in Sudan. I mean, this is going back throughout human history. It's always amazing to me that people will escape their lives into an otherworldly story that takes place in this phantasmagorical universe, and yet what they confront there is a mirror of ourselves.

When you've completed all the Avatar films, what do you think the riskiest thing you could do as a director is, as someone who always loves a challenge?

Right. Well, I love to take... I mean, there are financial risks. The whole business model of the Avatars is risky, because we're spending a lot of money to make a lot of money on a narrow margin, right? I feel kind of done right now. I feel this kind of button's off, in a nice way. If we're going to leap into that again, I want to think about what I really have to say and need to say with any future films. And I'm not at that point yet.

So let me answer your question as if I'm done right now as a director. I think this is the riskiest of the films. The first film and this one. The first film because it was an unproven technique. It was a new form of cinema. It was new physics, right? That was risky. And we spent a lot of money doing it, and, fortunately, it worked. This film is riskier dramatically, because we're not doing what the audience thinks they want, which, of course, they don't really want. What they really want is to be surprised and taken on a swerve to some new place. The riskiest thing is not to take the risk - in any form of cinema, in any form of storytelling - and I always say that. But the question is: are you taking the right risks?

Avatar: Fire and Ash is in cinemas now.

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