James Cameron is going bigger in every way with the upcoming “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and that includes the film’s runtime.
As previously reported, the new film clocks in at 190 minutes for the theatrical cut – half an hour longer than the 161-minute original and just four minutes shy of Cameron’s “Titanic”.
Speaking with Total Film as part of the new issue’s cover story, Cameron says the sequel has been designed to address a criticism lobbied at the original – an imbalance regarding character and storytelling over spectacle:
“The goal is to tell an extremely compelling story on an emotional basis. I would say the emphasis in the new film is more on character, more on story, more on relationships, more on emotion.
We didn’t spend as much time on relationship and emotion in the first film as we do in the second film, and it’s a longer film because there are more characters to service. There’s more story to service.”
A big part of that is a shift towards a family story. With events unfolding fourteen years later, Jake and Neytiri are now the proud parents of five children. But just because it’s about family, don’t expect it to be a ‘family film’ per se:
“People say, ‘Oh my God, a family story from Disney? Just what we want…’ This isn’t that kind of family story. This is a family story like how The Sopranos is a family story.”
As parents, Jake and Neytiri are now a little different because they have children and have to care for their welfare, as a result, actor Sam Worthington says: “They’re the parents from hell if you have a go at their kids!.”
