A two-part documentary on how James Cameron, alongside a dedicated cast and crew, filmed Avatar: The Way Of Water, the sequel to the biggest film of all time.
“Avatar films,” says James Cameron at the beginning of Fire And Water: Making The Avatar Films, “are not made by computers.” This is as much a rebuke to the rise of artificial intelligence (Cameron insists that no generative AI is used in his films) as it is a powerful reminder of the vast people-power that goes into the making of the Avatar series. That seems to be the driving message behind this two-part documentary, a fascinating peek behind the curtain of the legendary filmmaker’s most recent obsession, and the blockbuster series that has earned the most superlatives: the biggest, the longest-filming, the most expensive, the most money earned, etc.
Unlike the films it documents, Fire And Water is not especially beautiful to look at, a very ordinary and old-fashioned blend of talking heads from cast and crew and some behind-the-scenes footage. But that’s part of the fun: this is the sort of doc which harks back to that glorious golden era of behind-the-scenes documentaries, which would have been packaged on DVD extras in the early aughts as standard. (It is directed by Thomas C. Grane, previously responsible for several earlier James Cameron-based documentaries.)
The insight offered here into The Way Of Water’s research and development phase is fascinating
For film nerds, this is gold dust, an effective two-hour film school. It begins by covering ground that Pandora-heads will already be familiar with, offering a quick primer on what performance capture is — the kind of explanation already covered, decades earlier, on the daddy of all DVD extras, The Lord Of The Rings Extended Editions. But soon it gets into the nitty-gritty of the film (despite the title, the focus here is really only on the first sequel, The Way Of Water).
“Nothing about water is ever easy,” says Cameron, with the pained expression of a man who has also directed The Abyss and Titanic. The insight offered here into The Way Of Water’s research and development phase is fascinating: the production considered at one point, we learn, using the “dry-for-wet” technique — filming the actors in performance-capture suits on a dry stage, pretending to swim, and adding the splashes later. There’s brilliant test footage shown of actors gamely making ‘breaststroke’ motions while being pulled on buggies or swung on complex wires and winches.
That approach quickly falls by the wayside when compared to actual bodies in water: the physical resistance of acting in water is clearly needed. Then the problem of underwater performance capture must be solved: how do you create clean computer data when there are endless reflections, refractions and bubbles underwater? How do you match and reconcile competing infrared and ultraviolet signals? How does the natural light get in if you cover the surface of the water with thousands of bespoke ping pong balls? In a film this expansive, one problem solved only creates another.
It’s not all geeky-boffin stuff. There’s some remarkably revealing footage of the actual performance capture being filmed, which underlies the true scale of these films.
The feeling of discovery and innovation really comes through here. You truly get a sense of Cameron as an imposingly intelligent polymath, a genius-brain jack-of-all-trades and master of about 20 different fields of science, engineering, design and creativity. His heads of department speak with wonder at the speed his mind works, his ideas extending from the technical (we see him tot up some pressure calculations to understand the exact impact an underwater wind tunnel will have on a door) to the essential (he designed, among other things, a safety gate for a wave machine).
But it’s not all geeky-boffin stuff. There’s some remarkably revealing footage of the actual performance capture being filmed, which underlies the true scale of these films: vast sets constructed — which will never be seen on screen, of course — for the actors to work with; some that are built on dry land and sunk underwater; and some that are sunk while filming, such as the climactic scene on the damaged RDA vessel where Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and Tuk (a then nine-year-old Trinity Bliss) slowly disappear under the water.
It is also, occasionally, unwittingly very silly, as performing in pyjamas and dots inevitably is. Take, for example, the highly emotional scene where Kate Winslet’s Ronal mourns the death of her tulkun, a space whale. “You would not believe what I was acting to,” Winslet tells us. “I was thinking: ‘Okay, gotta dig deep here.’” In one of the funniest jump cuts in cinematic history, we then see a heartbroken Winslet, emoting dauntlessly and powerfully to her fallen spirit sister — being played by a wire fence with a foam tube. “It was easier to imagine an iceberg passing by,” Winslet notes.
Finally, we get a brief glimpse of what’s to come, with just a smidge of the challenges that Fire And Ash brought, finishing up with a tense extended clip from the upcoming film. If your appetite isn’t sufficiently whetted for more things Avatar to come, then you’re truly a skxawng. Or, as stunt coordinator Garrett Warren puts it: “Don’t bet against Jim.”
This riveting documentary shows the true Payakan-scale effort that goes into making a film as epic as Avatar. For the Na’vi Nation, it’s essential viewing.