In the lead-up to the theatrical release of Avatar, when I was surrounded by skeptics who told me I was nuts for liking a movie about 3D blue aliens, I talked to both producer Jon Landau and director James Cameron, and was left startled by their confidence. Five years into the project, they clearly believed in Avatar with all their heart.
So getting the chance to meet up with them again surrounding the DVD and Blu-ray release of Avatar, which hits stores today amidst a big Earth Day campaign that involves the planting of a million trees that can be adopted by Avatar fans, I was eager to ask both if they now felt vindicated. After all, they promised a cinematic revelation to some pretty skeptical observers, but then delivered the goods.
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Landau told me pretty much the same – that he had been touring the world for years in the run-up to Avatar, trying to convince theaters to update their 3D technology, trying to bring partners on board. And he said when the movie finally opened, all his promises and guarantees came true. He didn’t feel as if he had said anything prior to the release that then didn’t turn out to be true once Avatar was in theaters.
The duo wouldn’t tell me much about what they were going to be working on in the immediate future. But all of the vague details about their long-term plans were plenty intriguing. Apparently in the build-up to Avatar, they were testing ways of converting Titanic footage – as well as footage from Terminator 2 – into 3D. And those tests were dazzling (I’ve also heard as much from DreamWorks’s Jeffrey Katzenberg). So plan on a 3D re-release of Titanic in 2012, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the sinking.
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Both Cameron and Landau are also well aware that, due to the unexpected 3D traffic jam that resulted when Alice in Wonderland hit theaters, there are many people who ran out of time to see Avatar in a 3D environment. Or ran out of time to see it a second, third or fourth time. They alluded to an August re-release of Avatar, during a gap between other 3D titles, and Cameron says his special effects experts are rushing to complete around six minutes of additional footage to be added back in for a re-release. “And this will be good stuff, not people sitting around a table talking, but meaningful footage,” Cameron said.
I asked if he could give us a sense of what the footage might show. His answer: “No.”
What he would go on the record about is the prospect of an Avatar sequel. Or should we say sequels. I told the director that all of us here are at Techland are bickering as to whether a sequel would take place on Pandora, or if Cameron would have to jump to another planet in this solar system. “Well, we definitely want to move forward with another story, and there are other planets and moons in this system and they will be featured in subsequent Avatar movies – plural,” Cameron said. “I think the second film will incorporate additional environments of Pandora, particularly the ocean ecosystem. I want to explore all that is going on in Pandora’s oceans.”
Cameron said the Earth Day peg for the Avatar DVD release was thought out a long time ago, and he expressed a clear and urgent passion for some of the ongoing environmental issues that led him to write the sci-fi film in the first place. “Avatar is an environmental film – that’s its reason for existing,” Cameron said. “And it’s been so rewarding, that it has advanced the world dialogue about environmental issues, asking people about what our responsibility is to the planet. I was down in the rainforest twice in the last three weeks, looking at all the logging and dam issues of Brazil, and what’s sort of ironic is that I wrote Avatar thinking about the Navajo and the Sioux and what took place 100 years ago. But then you see what’s going on in Brazil and it hasn’t changed at all. They are going through what we went through 110 or 120 years ago. This is a movie that’s still very relevant to today.”
Beyond the environmental issues, Landau told me about the ways in which Avatar’s 3D success has started to unleash a tectonic shift in the power structure of Hollywood. He said many of the people who mastered this technology on Avatar are now in high demand – and many of them went off immediately after Avatar to work with Steven Spielberg on Tintin. So mark that on your calendars now. I also asked Landau about what the next 3D title was, that looked to take the technology to the next plateau. Granted, we’ve all heard gripes about Clash of the Titans’s rushed conversion, and I wanted to know what movie was going to blow our mind next. “I think it’s going to be Tron,” Landau said. “That’s being authored in 3D, and that’s what I always look for, in terms of people who know what they’re doing. Martin Scorsese has also announced he’s going to work in 3D, so when you start hearing things like that, you know this is the future.”
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If Landau was more interested in looking forward to the future, Cameron seemed a little miffed about the present. Maybe not miffed. Pissed.
“It does get a little frustrating, but I’ve done all I can do. I can’t keep evangelizing about 3D. So while the rest of the industry is sitting around I’ll just go off and make another Avatar and make another billion,” Cameron said. “Hollywood has to bite the bullet. They’ve now seen a couple examples back to back, a good example like Avatar and then something like Clash of the Titans. You need to make 3D films, not just rush through conversions. And what’s most surprising to me is how this isn’t inspiring 3D filmmakers. All of the interest shouldn’t be coming from the studio side of things. Filmmakers should be saying: ‘I want to make my movie in 3D,’ but instead those decisions are all coming from the top down, with the studio saying: ‘You’re the filmmaker who’s caretaking this franchise for a year and you’re going to do it in 3D whether you want to or not.’ Filmmakers are asleep at the switch here, and there’s just nothing more I can possibly show them.”
So, for those keeping score, Cameron: Pro-nature, giddy over Avatar sequels, seriously annoyed by his colleagues. It must be lonely to be the king.
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