“Avatar: The Way of Water” producer Jon Landau has confirmed that if James Cameron is able to get around to making his proposed fifth and final “Avatar” film, a bunch of it won’t unfold on Pandora.
The first “Avatar” film included over four-and-a-half minutes of Earth scenes that were originally supposed to be included in the film’s opening sequence.
Cameron opted to cut them, leaving only brief flashbacks of Jake meeting the two RDA agents. Later, the Extended Collector’s Edition Blu-ray and DVD restore the brief cut scenes. Even so, Earth has barely been glimpsed in this screen universe.
Speaking with io9 as part of a recent press day for the film, Landau confirmed the final film will shift action to Earth:
“I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I’ve now subsequently heard that Jim has talked about it a little bit. In movie five there is a section of the story where we go to Earth. And we go to it to open people’s eyes, open Neytiri’s eyes, to what exists on Earth.”
Landau says part of the reason is to show Neytiri that, like the Na’vi, not all the people on the planet want to pillage her homeworld:
“Earth is not just represented by the RDA. Just like you’re defined by the choices you make in life, not all humans are bad. Not all Na’vi are good. And that’s the case here on Earth. And we want to expose Neytiri to that.”
Of course, this requires that the other films perform very well in order to continue. According to Landau, if they have to end the films earlier then the team have prepared for that:
“I think right now we want each movie to do exactly what the first movie did. We want [audiences] to go, ‘Wow. Where else could they go? They just showed us everything on Pandora.’ Then you go, ‘Holy cow. They’re going to the oceans. Wow. The oceans are amazing.’ Okay, that’s over. Where can it go?
Same thing from an emotional story. We end the [first] movie with Jake and this transformation. But we’ve suffered the loss of [Sigourney Weaver’s character] Grace, and we’ve suffered other things. We want people to come out of this movie with an emotional resolution that both calls for a yearning to go back to those characters and to the world.”
Landau also shot down that report a while back of the leaked titles for the other sequels, the one which accurately indicated “Avatar: The Way of Water” was the second film’s title. Landau says: “We have decided on titles, but I would not go by those other three titles that were out there. You know, if you roll the dice one in six times, you’ll pick the right number.”
“Avatar: The Way of Water” opens in cinemas on December 16th.
