Filmmaker James Cameron doesn't do things by halves, and Avatar: The Way of Water will be no exception. Clocking in at a whopping 3 hours and 10 minutes, the sequel will be one of the longest big-budget movies in recent memory, and the director has now shared his thoughts on why the Avatar sequel needs to be so bum-numbingly long.
"The goal is to tell an extremely compelling story on an emotional basis," Cameron told Total Film (via SFFGazette.com) during a recent interview. "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’s more characters to service. There’s more story to service."
We've been hearing for a while that Avatar: The Way of Water is a family story, but the filmmaker was quick to assure fans his sci-fi franchise hasn't been Disney-fied. "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."
Of course, there's going to be a fair bit of action to go along with that, and some newly released stills offer a first look at the RDA's Na'vi marines. We know the memories of fallen soldiers have been put in these alien bodies, and it looks an awful lot like Jake may have to battle himself at some point.
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, the sequel begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
Avatar: The Way of Water splashes down in theaters worldwide on December 16.