Avatar producer Jon Landau on the secret to making blockbuster films
Avatar producer Jon Landau revealed the real-life inspiration for the fantasy underwater world introduced in the sequel Avatar: The Way of Water.
If the famous Hallelujah Floating Mountain in Zhangjiajie, China was the reported inspiration of the original film, the dive spots that Landau and director James Cameron visited in Asia and the Pacific, particularly Bali, Indonesia and Micronesia, served as inspiration for the second one.
“I think we chose the underwater world because of the incredible feeling that Jim (James Cameron) and I have gotten when we’ve been lucky enough to go diving. I went diving in Bali and Jim around the world and other places in Micronesia. It’s something that people can experience but not everyone can experience and part of Pandora is about giving people the opportunity to have experiences they could not otherwise have,” the Academy Award-winning producer said in a roundtable virtual interview with The Philippine STAR and other Southeast Asian press.
“The first movie was flying. People always dream of flying. They can’t really do it. Avatar provided a way for them to do that. Here with the water, we’re able to let people experience the oceans. But it also surfaces as a reminder that we have to protect our oceans, that we have to protect the life that exists in them. Because Avatar is a project that has an ethos behind it. It’s not just entertainment, but we think that we’re actually about something and a lot of that inspiration we’ve gotten from experiences that we’ve personally had in places like Bali.”
Though not mentioned as a direct inspiration, Landau also gave special mention to the “preserved” dive spots in the Philippines when it was this paper’s turn to ask a question. “You guys definitely have some great spots,” he said. “And you know what? They’re not that frequented by many. So, it’s great because they’re preserved.”
Back in theaters
Avatar: The Way of Water returns to more cinemas today, Jan. 8, after a break to give way to the annual Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) run.
In the film, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña, who reprise their iconic roles as Jake Sully and Neytiri, are now parents who will do everything to protect their family. When an old enemy reappears, the Sullys travel across the vast alien planet Pandora to find refuge in the water territory occupied by the Metkayina clan. There, the Sullys must navigate both the dangerous water world and the complicated dynamics of joining a new community.
With the release of the sequel in the time of streaming, Landau emphasized that the sequel is meant to be told on the big screen like its 2009 predecessor.
“Our expectation is that thanks to the hundreds of people that worked on the movie, we are delivering a product that is a must-see on the big screen,” he said. “I really think — I’m not saying this just because I worked on the movie — that if there’s one movie that’s ever been made to be seen on the big screen and in 3D, if you can, it’s Avatar: The Way of Water.”
Landau also recalled how the ground-breaking original movie didn’t just pave the way for the sequel but also “for what other movies could do.” What they did in the first one, like in terms of “creating photographically real characters on screen,” they got to use in subsequent films like Alita: Battle Angel (2019).
“We challenged the effects (team) even further with this movie. We challenged them to put up characters on the screen who are even more photographically real. Why is that important? Because we want the audience to feel something from these characters. The performances we’re able to get are much more nuanced.
“Jim was at the forefront of digital technology with The Abyss, and then Terminator 2, and then we used a little bit of it on Titanic, and then Avatar. (The Way of Water) is the whole next realm of what is possible. Hopefully, what we’re going to illustrate to other filmmakers is that if they can dream it now, they can make it a reality.”
Family Reunion
Landau said that they had stayed in touch with original cast members over the years and that bringing them back together for the sequel felt like a family reunion.
The STAR asked him the story behind the filmmakers’ decision to bring back stars, whose characters died in the first film such as Stephen Lang, who played Colonel Quaritch, and Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine.
“So the inside story there is, is that it came out of the story. What was the story that Jim wanted to tell? We needed a villain and what better villain in the world of Pandora than Colonel Quaritch. But he died in the first movie. So Jim came up with this conceit about the Avatar program, having been created at the same time as the first movie, something called the recombinant program. A recom. These are the same as Avatars, except they’re autonomous. They don’t need a host driver. They’re downloaded with the memories of the soldier whose DNA was used, and they picked their best of their best and Colonel Quaritch was the best of their best,” Landau said.
“As for Sigourney’s character. Grace, as it turns out from the first movie, she was impregnated, and Jake and Neytiri kept her alive after the scene so that she could give birth in an amnio tank and she gave birth to a baby girl. And that’s Kiri and the Sullys take it upon themselves to adopt Kiri and raise her as one of their own. And we thought if this is part of the story, why not allow Sigourney Weaver, a great actress to play a character she could not otherwise play except for our process of performance capture, the 14-year-old empath of herself, and I will tell you, she pulls it off flawlessly.”
One of the Avatar family members, on the other hand, is Kate Winslet, whom both Cameron and Landau worked with in Titanic. Here, she plays Ronal, the matriarch of the water clan. Her presence in the film led reporters to raise the possibility of Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate’s leading man in Titanic, to be part of future Avatar installments.
Landau said, “We would love to. Leo’s an extraordinary actor and we would love to work with him again. Right now, there’s no part that would fit for him. You know, Kate was the perfect fit for Ronal. And when she read the scripts, and she agreed to do the part, she dove into the character. She learned how to hold her breath (underwater), as I said, for close to seven minutes. She learned the Na’vi language, the Na’vi movement, and she nailed the performance the day she walked on the set. (With Leonardo)... time will tell.”
Producing blockbusters
Meanwhile, Landau is the only producer who holds the distinction of producing two of the highest-grossing films of all time, Avatar and Titanic. His more than 20-year partnership with Cameron has unlocked another achievement with The Way of Water, now the No. 1 worldwide release of 2022 and currently ranked 10th of all time with over $1.2B global earnings, as per Deadline.
Given his track record, The STAR had to ask Landau the secret to making blockbusters. He said, “I think what I’ve learned is that the art is really the audience and not what’s up on the screen. And that we have to make content that the audience wants to see and that the audience wants to get involved with these characters. And we need to create characters that create empathy, where the audience could see themselves in one of these characters, and out of that, get inspiration.”
That’s why when they were making the sequel, the focus wasn’t on duplicating or eclipsing the box-office success of Avatar.
“For us, it’s not about box-office. For us, it’s about creating a bigger, more immersive, more emotional, cinematic experience. We sit there and we make movies that we want to move people. I tell people that oftentimes our industry spends too much time talking about plot, and not enough time talking about the theme. The plot is what you leave at the theater. The theme is the emotion that you walk away from the theater with. So our goal is that those who choose to go to see it will walk away feeling something, emotionally, at the end of The Way of Water.”
Meanwhile, as reported by US media outlets, the Avatar franchise is getting three more movies in the next three years. After the success of Avatar 1, they began working on possible sequels, with Cameron writing 1,500 pages worth of notes and stories. Three teams of writers were hired to work with him and each spent six months breaking down the stories into four individual movies. All are “wildly ambitious” but anchored on the central theme of family.
Said Landau, “I tell people that Jim writes movies with themes that are bigger than their genre, and that’s why his movies resonate with people — and there’s no greater theme, universally, than family.”
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