Avatar: The Creature of Water now on Blu-ray, Blu-ray Steelbook and DVD!

Thirteen years ago, with the breathtaking Avatar (2009), ^Oscar® winner James Cameron introduced viewers to a world unlike anything they had ever seen before. Now, with the long-awaited film Avatar: The Creature of Water, the visionary cinematographer invites viewers on a whole new journey. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña return to their legendary roles as Jake Sully and Neytiri, who now do their best to protect their family as loving parents.

As a result of unforeseen events, they are forced to leave the house. Traveling across the vast lands of Pandora’s moon, they eventually find themselves in the territory of the Metkayina clan, which lives in harmony with the surrounding oceans. There, the Sully family must learn to navigate both the dangerous water world and the uncomfortable situation of gaining acceptance in a new community.

Making a sequel to the most spectacular film of all time is a daunting task, but if anyone could do it, it would be James Cameron. He wrote and directed two of the most successful and beloved sequels in film history: Alien: The Final Showdown and Terminator 2: Judgment Day .

Avatar is a world that has accompanied the director for a long time. He wrote an initial draft of the script for the first film as early as 1994, although he had not yet had a chance to raise funds to realize his vision. Going into production more than a decade later, the pioneering filmmaker drew on the wealth of knowledge accumulated on the sets of his earlier blockbusters – including unforgettable hits like Titanic and Terminator . He created a film that turned motion capture technology into performance capture, and that opened up new possibilities for visual effects. However, Cameron was careful at every step to ensure that the revolutionary technology invented for the film never overshadowed the acting, the emotions of the characters or the plot.

With all the achievements of Avatar (2009) in mind and the budding idea for its sequel, Cameron and his longtime producer Jon Landau decided to take the unusual step of convening a technology summit with the heads of the most important departments of the film crew. In February 2010, everyone met to discuss which aspects of the filming process worked best and what could be improved. The meeting provided a rich food for thought for Cameron, who was pondering the future of Pandora.

I don’t think making Avatar: Beings of Water would have been possible at all without this event,” Cameron says now.

The director set to work writing down the ideas swarming in his head and soon came up with more than 1,500 pages of notes and plot patterns. Then, together with the producer, they decided that it was material for more than one story. They engaged an elite group of Hollywood’s best screenwriters who, along with Cameron, turned the notes into a concept for four films that would continue the adventures of Jake, Neytiri and the new family they created. There was no shortage of ideas, and the process of searching for a story for not one sequel, but a series of films, lasted several months. These were supposed to be extremely ambitious projects, but all focused around one main theme: the importance of the family.

As Landau notes:

I used to say that Jim writes movies that transcend the genre and that’s why his viewers find themselves in his work. And there is no more important, more universal theme than family.

Prior to production, Cameron wanted scripts for all subsequent films ready:

We had to write four films before starting work on the first sequel. I wanted to outline all the themes so that I could then connect the different stages of production – creative capture, stock photography and post-production.

At the beginning of Avatar (2009), we meet Jake Sully as a paralyzed Marine mourning the death of his twin brother and desperately seeking a new way of life. In the opening of the new film Avatar: Beings of Water, we see him as a happy husband, head of the Omatikaya family and clan, fully accustomed to his Na’vi body. Family is our stronghold – often reminded of Neytiri’s wife and their children, Neteyam (James Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and adopted teenage daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver). Much to Jake and Neytiri’s distress, their children often hang out with Spider (Jack Champion), a human child orphaned by war.

The Sky People are returning to Pandora not only to exploit the precious mineral known as unobtanium . The Resource Acquisition Authority (APA) has the additional goal of colonizing the entire moon for humanity as Earth is almost uninhabitable. They destroy large tracts of forest to build a gigantic walled city on the ocean’s edge called Bridgehead. The head of the UAC mission is the relentless General Francis Ardmore (Edie Falco).

Jake successfully leads the clan warriors on raids against the UPC. However, when he realizes that he himself is the target of Quaritch’s unit, he and Neytiri make the difficult decision to flee their homeland and take refuge in the remote atolls of Pandora. Despite the Sullys’ disappearance from the forest, Quaritch continues to track down rebel Jake Sully, which will eventually lead to their inevitable reunion.

With the story in place, Cameron and Landau challenged the heads of key departments on the team to come up with new methods and technologies to create even more vivid and engaging characters on screen, and to set them in a world that, despite the fantastic design, felt real. As a result, when production began, the director had a set of completely new technological tools at his disposal.

The methods we use now are much more advanced compared to the first film,” says Cameron. – Does this make the film better from the viewer’s perspective? Definitely not. The general audience is only interested in the story, the characters and the feelings the film evokes in them. This is the most important thing I never forget.

Landau explains that each of the four subsequent Avatar installments has its own ending and emotional resolution, but when viewed as a whole, they form a larger, interconnected epic saga. Instead of succumbing to the external pressure of making a sequel to a giant box office hit, the makers are pushing themselves to just make the best movies possible.

You’re under pressure every day when you’re making a movie, but we put it on ourselves,” says Landau. “We want to push the boundaries of storytelling and audience engagement. It just means we have to work harder.

As Cameron says, having devoted many years of his creative life to the Avatar films, he is determined to make them a good, entertaining show that is both moving and emotional. The filmmaker also woven into them motifs important to him, led by concern for the natural environment and, of course, the importance of the family:

Looking at the plot, the new landscapes and characters, and the questions being asked, I don’t feel that from a cinematic point of view, there’s still something I need to say that I won’t say in these four films.

In Poland, Avatar: The Essence of Water will be released on July 5 in the following editions: DVD, Blu-ray™ 2-disc (movie + specials) and Blu-ray™ Steelbook – Limited Edition. Avatar (2009) reissued on Blu-ray™ will be released on July 10 .

Over three hours of special features on the Blu-ray™ editions of Avatar: Essence of Water :

• New heroes
• Pandora’s Water World Challenges
• Reviving Pandora
• Pandora heroes
• … and many others

Specials on the Blu-ray™ A Vatar (2009) release:

• Memories
• Avatar : looking back
• Avatar – the birth of an idea
• Reports

You can read our review of this production at this link .