{"id":126518,"date":"2022-12-14T06:38:52","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T06:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=126518"},"modified":"2022-12-21T12:59:23","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T12:59:23","slug":"avatar-the-way-of-water-sigourney-weaver-and-stephen-lang-on-returning-to-pandora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/cinema\/avatar-the-way-of-water-sigourney-weaver-and-stephen-lang-on-returning-to-pandora\/","title":{"rendered":"Avatar: The Way of Water: Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang on returning to Pandora"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirteen years after the original Avatar<\/strong><\/em> was released, James Cameron doubles down on pressing environmental and social issues with a visually impressive ocean-set sequel on the planet of Pandora. At times it plays out like a trippy episode of The Blue Planet.<\/strong><\/em> One of the major themes that really struck a chord with two returning actors Sigourney Weaver (playing a new role as teenage Na\u2019vi, Kiri) and Stephen Lang (a cloned Na\u2019vi version of Quaritch) was the theme of family. The film focuses on the displacement of Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri\u2019s (Zoe Saldana) large family who leave the rainforest and seek asylum with the sea-savvy Metkayina clan led by led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis).<\/p>\n

Weaver notes that the film \u201creflected Jim\u2019s love for his family. They were now the age that we are in the film, and he really wanted to make sure that our family dynamic included eye-rolling and putting each other down and stuff like that, but when it came to it we would do anything to protect each other and save each other. I loved that it was so personal for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The film reflects James Cameron’s love for his family.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Playing an adopted child to Jake and Neytiri, and getting back into the mind-set of a fourteen-year-old girl was a challenge Weaver relished. She spent time observing and interacting with teenagers at LaGuardia High\u202fSchool of Performing Arts while also diving back into her memories of how she felt at that age. \u201cLuckily I had a couple of years to develop Kiri and unearth my not-always-happy fourteen-year-old,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt was a great adventure to go back to my teenage self and a safe way to revisit it. What I recall is your sense of injustice is very strong at the age, and you see hypocrisy straight up.<\/p>\n

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In Avatar: The Way Of Water, Sigourney Weaver plays Kiri, an adopted child to Jake and Neytiri.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“What I hoped to achieve was seesawing between her great days with Spider (Jack Champion plays a human child left behind on Pandora as a toddler who Kiri adores) in the forest and all the fun and clowning around, and then of course this horror at what the imperialists were doing\u2026 and rage really.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Lang\u2019s aggressive marine Quaritch who perished in the original film shares many a scene with Champion\u2019s physically capable yet emotionally vulnerable Spider and they bond over gym sessions. There\u2019s a complex relationship between the two characters, and on the upcoming new actor, Lang says, \u201cI knew him from before he had the role because we brought him in and Jim sought out my opinion and Sigourney\u2019s opinion on having this young man in. Throughout the filming I kept my eye on him, yanking him on his tail. He became a gym rat also. He was a willing learner. In a sense, he was raw clay when he came to us. We were tweaking on the Quaritch\/Spider relationship as late as July, this past July, so we\u2019ve been working on it a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quaritch gets a lot of character development with time to reflect on his past misdeeds which is something Lang had fun with. In one scene he witnesses his own death: \u201cThat single scene meant a lot to me because it operates on a number of levels,\u201d explains Lang. \u201cIt\u2019s a fun scene in that sense because the concept of witnessing your own death, and finding your own body is macabre but it\u2019s also sort of cool. It\u2019s got a certain amount of existential depth to it as well because he really makes a choice in that moment. It\u2019s really the moment when he makes a choice to repudiate, in a sense, his past. Which is something you really can\u2019t do actually. He doesn\u2019t know that but he tries. He tries to eliminate that Quaritch in the end. That\u2019s the choice he makes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Quaritch (Stephen Lang) gets a lot of character development with time to reflect on his past misdeeds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cameron\u2019s love of underwater exploration and his ambitious underwater filming meant that many of the cast had to train in freediving for years.\u00a0 Weaver enjoyed this challenge: \u201cI love the business, because it does suddenly present you with challenges to do things you would never have thought of. We had a great teacher, and Jim doesn\u2019t ever ask you to do impossible things without the training that goes with it. By the time we shot those scenes, which was towards the end of the two years, we do look at ease in the water and I don\u2019t think we could have acted that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years both Cameron and Weaver have been involved with projects that are passionate about environmental and animal rights issues. One of Weaver\u2019s most memorable turns, following her iconic role as Ripley in Alien<\/strong><\/em>, was Gorillas in the Mist<\/strong><\/em> in the role of real-life conservationist Dian Fossey.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like Gorillas in the Mist<\/strong><\/em> introduced me to the reality of the conservation movement,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve worked with that group ever since and they do amazing work. I feel very grateful for that. I know that these films are about that but with Kiri she has such an instinctive, natural connection that she doesn\u2019t question\u2026 I\u2019m sure she feels like everyone is like that until she comes to realise that she\u2019s different and that makes her quite uncomfortable. In the beginning [of the film] when you see the imperialists land and they don\u2019t care at all what happens to whoever they fly over\u2026 it\u2019s heart-breaking. All of that enrages Kiri.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avatar: The Way Of Water will be released in cinemas on 16 December<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We exclusively speak to Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang about environmental issues, underwater training and returning to Pandora for Avatar: The Way Of Water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":126529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Entertainment","MSN_Publish_Option":true,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,1718,7],"tags":[7529],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/DF-107339_R2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126532,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126518\/revisions\/126532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}