Teasing “Avatar: Fire and Ash” in a recent interview with Linsey Davis on “ABC News Live Prime,” filmmaker James Cameron said that “this one especially” of the three films holds a mirror to the human race.
“This one especially takes you outside yourself and allows you to look back at the human race and what we’re doing so badly, but also what we’re doing well, from nature’s perspective,” Cameron said in conversation with “Fire and Ash” stars Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang and Oona Chaplin.
Watch a clip from the ABC News interview in the exclusive video above.
“It also shows us ourselves through the lens of nature in terms of all of the greed and the extractive industries and the willful destruction of nature,” he continued. “It allows us to see ourselves through that lens.”
The director celebrated the “people of conscience” featured in the film — specifically citing Spider and the marine biologist Garvin — as well as those in the real-world cast.
“I think we all share that,” he said. “Sigourney, you’re involved in so many sustainability things and environmental things and, you know, there are people of conscience that do good, and we see some of those in the film.”
That doesn’t mean “Fire and Ash” lets its human characters down easy, though — just the opposite, in fact. It’s the alien Na’vi of Pandora that ultimately come to “represent our better nature.”
“We see our worse nature expressed by the humans in the story, most of the humans in the story,” Cameron said. “Where by the end you’re rooting for killing those bastard humans. How crazy is that? But that’s the kind of thing cinema can do. It can take you on a journey and project your mind into other characters and other perspectives.”
Saldaña, fresh off her Oscar win earlier this year for Netflix’s “Emilia Pérez,” expressed similar sentiment in the interview with Davis.
“What ‘Avatar’ does, it removes us from this human condition that we have that we don’t want to see something that upsets us. Jim travels us light years into this beautiful planet and shows us what we are doing to ours on a daily basis” she said. “Every time we buy things that come from the devastation and the exploitation of a living life, that has a consequence. It’s important to see sometimes what truly takes place and to do it in a way that is safe through storytelling. It’s safe. That makes you want to come home and sort of go, ‘Oh boy, am I doing enough? Am I saying enough?’”
“ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis” will stream the “All Access” interview with the cast and creator of “Avatar: Fire and Ash” on Monday, Dec. 15 at 8 p.m. ET. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” hits theaters on Dec. 19.
