The first images of Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron’s new blockbuster, appeared in a trailer released last month. We see the Navi people evolving in an aquatic environment. The Canadian director announces that he has once again pushed technological boundaries to offer a totally innovative movie. After having shaken up the film industry with movies that were precursors in the field of visual effects such as Aliens, Terminator 2, Titanic and Avatar, James Cameron promises a movie that will once again make history.
In 2017, the international press was abuzz with new information about James Cameron’s plan to release Avatar 2 in a glasses-free 3D format. Cameron has an exceptional reputation for turning the movie industry on its head, and from The Terminator to Titanic, this groundbreaking director knows how to keep the world on the edge of its seat. When the first entry in the Avatar series was released in 2009, Cameron added the planet’s highest-grossing movie of all time to his list of credentials. The film’s success was largely due to its innovative visual effects which brought moviegoers to the theaters in droves and earned the film several Academy Awards. Relying on cutting-edge stereoscopic technology, Cameron aimed to offer an immersive 3D cinematic experience capable of bringing viewers to the very heart of the luminescent Pandoran biosphere.
When this new information surfaced, the cinema and tech specialized press presented seemingly convincing evidence that Avatar 2 would bring a new, glasses-free 3D format to movie theaters around the world. In 2016, Cameron addressed the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers to confirm that his team was pushing for “better tools, workflow, high dynamic range and high frame rates, and with brighter projection as part of the package”. His project seems poised for success if these and other hurdles can be cleared.
Is 3D cinema without the 3D glasses a soon-to-be reality? For this technology to become a reality on the silver screen, it is necessary to create additional spatial cues so that our brains are able to reconstitute a projected image with enough depth and perspective so that it resembles a natural 3D image. To this end, Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment company is teaming up with Christie Digital to share information and collaboratively create an RGB laser projector capable of offering 60,000 lumens and faster-than-ever frame rates for images which appear sufficiently deep and nuanced to create a 3D effect without requiring the viewer to don 3D glasses.
With a $200 million dollar budget, Cameron’s team will likely have no problem developing enough state-of-the-art technologies to make Avatar 2 a game changer for the industry. And as if offering solutions for glasses-free 3D viewing was not enough, Cameron’s team also aims to develop underwater performance capture technology in order to invite viewers to explore the depths of Pandora’s aquatic environments in Avatar 2.
During the CineEurope 2022 held in Barcelona, Disney has unveiled new images of their upcoming productions, including Avatar: The Way of Water. Producer Jon Landau, who was present for the occasion, said that the film was in the final stages of post-production. The latter also presented a message recorded by James Cameron in which the director said that this second installment of the Avatar series was “pushing the envelope even further” and that “every shot [was] designed for the largest screen and highest resolution possible.”
