Over the holiday, James Cameron transported audiences to the mythical land of Pandora courtesy of his Avatar sequel, where the Na’vi – and a rebel soldier named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) – fight off human invaders to protect the natural resources of their environment. The storyteller says that he has enough narratives to sustain at least five more sequels, and thanks to the way he uses his motion capture techniques, he might be able to keep using the same cast members over and over again. Because when Kevin Smith found out that Sigourney Weaver was playing a teenaged Na’vi in Avatar: The Way of Water, it damn near blew his mind.
Many of us spent the holiday tracking the box-office results of Avatar: The Way of Water around the world, seeing if the sequel could rejuvenate the box office and bring audiences back to the multiplexes in droves. And for the most part, it did! But while we focused on the impact of the anticipated sequel, fellow filmmaker Kevin Smith was marveling over the craft. As part of his Best of 2022 episode of Fatman Beyond, Smith marveled over the fact that Sigourney Weaver, a member of James Cameron’s original cast, returned for Avatar: The Way of Water 13 years later… but this time played a Na’vi teenager named Kiri. This fact melted Smith mind. He told his audience, and his co-host Marc Bernardin:
You know what I found out that I didn’t fucking know about Avatar this week? The little magic blue cat, who could fuckin jedi that shit. I had no idea that was Sigourney Weaver. That was pretty astounding, I was pretty astounded by that. I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s crazy.’ Then when I thought about it I was like, ‘She did kind of look like her.’ Then I saw online the behind-the-scenes, they were shooting her and then turning her into a teenage blue girl cat. [James Cameron] is a mad genius, man.
Kiri is the daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s character, Grace, from the original Avatar. Though, it is a mystery who Kiri’s father is in Avatar: The Way of Water. The question is raised, but is never answered. No doubt, Cameron is sitting on that secret reveal for the sequels. During the run up to the release of the sequel, Weaver talked about the preparation that went into the role, which included her studying teenagers at a local high school. And when Kevin Smith elaborated on the process that had to occur to turn the 73-year-old Weaver into a teen, the writer-director said:
That was nuts, man. You’re just setting yourself up for all sorts of complications when you’re like, ‘We’re going to let Sigourney play the teenage girl.’ But what an astounding feat it was, it was kind of cool. … In the piece I saw, she studied, she trained to get her voice (higher). I thought they put her through a processor. They didn’t. That’s her doing a teenager’s voice. She practiced and shit like that, and worked on her vocalizations so that she could do the voice. … She don’t get enough credit, man.
No, she don’t. James Cameron kept a number of his original cast members around for Avatar: The Way of Water, cooking up a method for bringing Stephen Lang back as Colonel Miles Quaritch, and reuniting Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana as his leads, Jake and Neytiri. The cast has stayed so busy between Avatar movies, they had no clue how many movies they’d appeared in between 2009 and the release of Avatar: The Way of Water. Hopefully they won’t have to wait as long for the rest of us to see what they have in store for Avatar 3.
Avatar: The Way of Water is playing in theaters as we speak.