James Cameron is taking audiences underwater in Avatar 2 and is using new motion-capture technology to bring the oceans of Pandora to life. There are few things Cameron seems to love more than working in the water and pushing the envelope when it comes to filmmaking tech. Lucky for him, his Avatar sequels will allow to combine those ions in an attempt to match or maybe even exceed his accomplishments (both technical and, hopefully, storytelling) on his original 2009 sci-fi mega-blockbuster.
Part of the reason Avatar 2 is taking so long to make is because Cameron kept expanding his plans. He originally intended to make back-to-back sequels in the early 2010s, but is now in the midst of crafting a whopping four Avatar followups at once. The other big hurdle has been getting the motion-capture tech to where he needs it to be for his purposes. Because he's such a stickler when it comes to portraying the ocean realistically in his films (as evidenced by his work on The Abyss and Titanic), Cameron isn't pretending to film underwater the way James Wan did on Aquaman a couple years ago - he's doing it for real on Avatar 2.
Story details for Avatar 2 are currently under lock and key, but Cameron has confirmed a good chunk of the movie will take place in the depth of Pandora's oceans. It's the same reason why the majority of set photos released online so far have featured the sequel's cast (including, Avatar stars Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, along with franchise newcomers like Kate Winslet and Cliff Curtis) decked out in mo-cap gear and working in water tanks on the movie's New Zealand studio lot.
Those same photos have also offered some insight into how Cameron's underwater mo-cap tech works. To prevent the studio lights from messing with Avatar 2's underwater sequences during filming, the surface of the water tanks are covered in floating balls (like the ones pictured above). The actors' actual mo-cap suits aren't that different from the ones they would wear under regular circumstances either, and come complete with smaller cameras attached to their heads to capture their facial reactions and mannerisms. At the same time, one of the sets photos shows actor Britain Dalton (who's confirmed to be playing a member of the Na'vi) shooting an underwater scene while riding a motorized vehicle. Both he and the vehicle have yellow-and-black lining on them, with the implication being this could be how Avatar 2 will make the Na'vi actors appear to move very quickly and swiftly underwater (like the Atlanteans and other undersea beings do in Aquaman).
By his own ittance, Cameron had a hard time of suspending reality while watching Aquaman because he knows all too well how bodies actually look when they move underwater, saying in an interview the film required (for him) "this kind of total dreamlike disconnection from any sense of physics or reality. People just kind of zoom around underwater, because they propel themselves mentally, I guess. I don't know." Obviously, a fantasy-adventure like Aquaman isn't exactly concerned about realism and, for anyone who isn't overly knowledgable about the ocean, the movie is pretty stylish-looking. All the same, it'll be fascinating to see whether Avatar 2's version of the ocean is all the more convincing and immersive thanks to the tech Cameron's employing.
