When Hot Press catches up with Avatar: The Way Of Water’s young stars Jack Champion (who plays Miles ‘Spider’ Socorro, the adopted teen son of the film’s warrior hero Jake) and Trinity Lo-Bliss (who plays his sister Tuk) in London’s Corinthia hotel, they are in buoyant mood about the imminent release of the movie.

The sequel to the biggest movie of all time, James Cameron’s eagerly awaited sci-fi blockbuster sets incredible new technical standards for filmmaking. How did Jack and Trinity find the challenge of making the movie?

“Well, we filmed in performance capture,” explains Trinity. “Jack as a human had to do everything twice and went to New Zealand. Filming in performance capture was a lot like typical acting.”

“It seems like it would have changed a lot because of the gunk and stuff,” adds Jack. “But honestly, you forget about it, and you even forget that there’s a camera in your face. Once you’re locked in with another actor, and you can feel the scene and the acting energy or what have you, it becomes very natural and easy.”

How did they find shooting the movie’s spectacular underwater sequences?

“They weren’t easy, but they were fun,” enthuses Champion. “We had a lot of preparation.”

On set of 20th Century Studios' AVATAR 2. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

“It was a big part of our training,” adds Trinity. “We trained with Kirk Krack, John Garvin and many other amazing coaches. Then we’d get to the stage on filming days and see the tank, and be like, ‘I’m gonna be down there, and we’re gonna be doing the scene, and it’s gonna be great!’”

“But it’s always intimidating,” considers Jack. “Cos you’d walk into the soundstage where they had this giant tank. They had this half-cylinder metal thing that would slam into the water to create these fake waves. Every time you’d go to the stage, you’d have to walk up three flights of stairs just to get to the top. You’d hear the machine loudly cranking up, and you’d be like, ‘Okay, good morning!’”

“It was beating like our hearts,” chuckles Trinity.

Given their youth, were Jack and Trinity aware of the first movie’s legacy?

“It’s really an honour,” replies Trinity.

“It is,” nods Jack. “We didn’t really think about making the sequel to the highest grossing movie. It was more, ‘This is our lives.’ She was seven/eight, I was 12/13, so we were just having fun as kids. We knew we were working on a big movie, but it never had that kind of intense pressure.”

Tuk (Trinity Bliss) in 20th Century Studios' AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Overseeing all of the technological elements, of course, is Cameron, who continues to push the cinematic medium to the nth degree - and then a little further for good measure. The Canadian director is celebrated for his technical knowledge, but his long-time producer Jon Landau says it’s all accumulated in service to the final product.

“Jim knows how to do a lot of the jobs on-set,” he notes. “But he also knows that the experts are better at it than he is. Still, it allows him the ability to challenge them. That could be lighting, or set design - Jim came out of the art department. He speaks enough of their language to be able to tell them they’ve done it wrong, and there’s another way to do it. And they go out and find it.

“It’s one of the great things to see, and I’ve learned a lot from Jim over the years. Sometimes I deal with Weta special effects seven hours a day, and I challenge them on where they’re wrong, because of my experience. Our virtual second unit director, Richie Baneham [an Irishman from Tallaght], has learned from Jim. That’s the strength of it and we really now have a group of people who are passionate about what we do.”

“They understand the responsibility of taking on a sequel to Avatar, and they’ve taken great pride in what they’ve accomplished.”

(L-R): Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in 20th Century Studios' AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

How has Landau seen Cameron grow over the years?

“The way I’ve seen him grow as a person is really represented in the story of the film,” he suggests. “This is a story about family. I’ve seen Jim while he had a daughter during Titanic. It was with Linda [Hamilton] and they weren’t together, so there wasn’t really a family structure. Now with Suzy [Amis], they have three kids together, and they bring his son into the fold from his relationship with Linda. So Jim is much more of a family man now than he was when we made Titanic, or even than when we made the first Avatar. I think that comes across in how he interacts with people on a daily basis.”

Is Avatar: The Way Of Water Cameron’s most personal film?

“Every film is personal!” says Landau. “Jim will have to speak to whether it’s his most personal film or not. One of the great things is that it deals with themes that are very personal to both Jim and I: family, the environment, diversity of cultures and acceptance of people for who they are. These are important elements to us in our lives, and we try and instil that in the crew who we surround ourselves with, and how we conduct our business.

“We want to practice what we preach, so we try and instil all those ideals in how we set up the company and run the production.”

Avatar: The Way Of Water is in cinemas December 16th

You can read the full interview in the Hot Press Annual 2023 – out now.