What connects Avatar: The Way of Water to Daft Punk?

Water way to make a film

Avatar and its sequel … Composite: 20th Century Studios

Remember the new wave of 3D? It was going to save cinema by making the train on the screen feel like it was actually coming at you! Back in 2009, as the world reeled from the global financial crisis, James Cameron’s sci-fi environmental epic Avatar was his Titanic of the 3D age. So it seems fitting, as the world faces crises perma and poly, that the first of the director’s long-delayed sequels is finally out on 16 December.

Orinoco Kroyer flow

… follow in the animated fantasy footsteps of FernGully: The Last Rainforest, directed by Bill Kroyer, who cut his teeth on Tron … Photograph: Araya Doheny/WireImage

The aesthetic of Avatar is a souped-up melange of peak-era Enya and 1992 animated fantasy FernGully: The Last Rainforest. The director of the second of those was Bill Kroyer, who cut his teeth on animation sequences for 1982 sci-fi adventure Tron.

Da do Tron Tron

… which starred Jeff Bridges and whose sequel was scored by Daft Punk … Photograph: Cinetext/Disney

Directed by Steve Lisberger, Tron has cult-classic status. The plot involves Jeff Bridges and classic “that guy” Bruce Boxleitner beamed into a cyberworld. The sequel arrived in 2010, with Bridges and that guy returning alongside Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen and Garrett Hedlund. “Tron: Legacy is best enjoyed as a showreel of cutting-edge visuals – an extended Daft Punk video, perhaps,” wrote the Guardian’s Steve Rose.

Daft Punk is playing in Tron’s house

… whose Around the World was made by Michael Gondry, who also made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, starring Kate Winslet … Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Which is helpful, because Daft Punk did indeed score the film. An early classic was their 1997 clip for Around the World made by Michel Gondry. The French video director has achieved cult classic status with at least one film, too, his Charlie Kaufman-scripted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play lovers who avail of brain-zapping technology to erase memories of their relationship when the deal goes bad. Something, incidentally, I wish I could have done after seeing Avatar.

I am sailing

… who now appears in Avatar: The Way of Water. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Kate Winslet turns her hand now to Avatar: Way of the Water, where she joins up with original Avatars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver. This time the Na’vi race fight to protect their planet in an epic that may involve a lot of free-diving and scenes filmed in water. Sail Away!

Pairing notes

Watch This is not Cameron’s first sea-based epic: 1989’s The Abyss was a notoriously difficult underwater shoot.

Eat Cameron is vegan, and a plant-based entrepreneur, so let’s keep things simple: it’s a blockbuster, so we’ll take some butterless popcorn.