A final full-length trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water has been released, and it is a real feast for the eyes transporting viewers back to Pandora’s dazzling underwater world.
In vivid blues, greens and purples, audiences are reintroduced to Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), who now have a family, as they navigate life on the blue moon Pandora and as they continue to face human threats.
“Why do you come to us?” says a member of a new Na’vi tribe to Sully. “I just want to keep my family safe,” he replies, and then the trailer shows clips of Sully embracing his family.
Unlike the first full length trailer, which had more of an emphasis on Pandora’s landscape and on the forthcoming overarching storyline, this final trailer focuses more on the relationships - between Sully and his family, between the Na’vi, and between the Na’vi and the natural world - before teasing the battle which takes place between the Na’vi and humans.
The first film boasted cutting-edge 3D technology and went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, and by the looks of the trailer, part two has all the makings of another mega-hit.
Characters swim through exquisite shimmering blue oceans next to giant purple jellyfish and blue whales, walk through colourful rainforests, and ride great flying leonopteryx beasts through the sky. But the harmony does not last long, with the second half of the trailer showing scenes of battleships, fire and destruction.
Fans were bowled over by the new trailer. ”Absolutely beautiful,” commented one on the trailer. “Really looking forward to this masterpiece,” said another.
Over the last couple of months, director James Cameron has been hard at work dropping teasers for what we might be able to expect, 13 years down the line.
In addition to shooting the entire film in 3D – a move that has been praised by critics – he has said that “you won’t be able to predict” the sequel.
“What people hate the most is to go and see a movie and say, ‘Oh… predictable,’” he told IGN recently. “This is not predictable, I don’t think. I defy anybody to predict where this story goes."
The film, which will see the return of stars Worthington, Saldaña and Weaver, also introduces new faces including Kate Winslet (who apparently broke the free-diving record on set), Jermaine Clement, Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis.
But the journey to the big screen wasn’t easy: in another interview with the Times, Cameron said that he’d worked on the script for The Way of Water for a year – before throwing it out and starting again.
“All films work on different levels. The first is surface, which is character, problem, and resolution,” he said. “The second is thematic. What is the movie trying to say? But Avatar also works on a third level, the subconscious.”
“I wrote an entire script for the sequel, read it, and realised that it did not get to level three. Boom. Start over. That took a year.”
In the run up to the release of The Way of Water, the original film was re-released for a limited two-week run in September where it garnered a whopping $76 million worldwide – showing that audiences are very much still excited about the franchise.
This will be a relief for Cameron who said to Entertainment Weekly last December that he was worried about the second instalment making any money. “Maybe those [box office] numbers will never be seen again. Who knows? It’s all a big roll of the dice,” he said.
