The LA Times has an exhaustive interview with James Cameron, and it was frankly hard for me to get through it all. The guy sounds pretty far up his own ass, but he does make excellent movies that bring in record bank. I also admire his stance on social causes and the environment, which he of course very heavy-handedly represents in his work.

Two main pieces of news in this interview stood out for me – that Avatar is going to be re-released in August in Imax with a whopping six minutes more of footage – being shot now, (that’s sarcasm, I don’t always convey that well) and that there will be a sequel, to focus on the ocean on Pandora. The sequel is news to me, although the news has probably already been out. I wouldn’t consider an Avatar sequel inevitable since there was no Titanic sequel (in that case they didn’t have anywhere to go though I guess) and since Avatar cost so much to make. Will the Avatar sequel be a pale version of the original that will spawn alternate titles like “Avatar: Waterworld?” and does it matter? Whatever they do with this film people will flock to see it. It will probably make more money in the re-release than most movies make around the world and in DVD sales.

PD: Will we see an “Avatar” theatrical re-release this summer?

JC: We’re working on finishing an additional six minutes of the film — which includes a lot of Weta work — for a theatrical re-release in August. We were sold out of our Imax performances right up to the moment until they were contractually obligated to switch to “Alice in Wonderland,” so we know we left money on the table there. And the 3-D really helped “Avatar” right up until the moment that it hurt it. And it hurt it at the moment “Alice” and then “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Clash of the Titans” came in and sucked up all the 3-D screens. We went from declining 8% a week to declining 50%. Clearly, it wasn’t market forces directly; it was the availability of theaters. So we’re going to wait until there’s a time to come back in, inject the new footage into the mix and see if we can interest people in the “Avatar” experience in theaters.

It’ll be interesting because it’ll be on DVD by then, but I think “Avatar” is kind of a unique category where people are enjoying the unique theatrical experience even though they may have seen it on the small screen.

PD: Is your interest moving from cinema toward public policy?

JC: Not specifically. Look, I’m an artist. I’m just going to be a big mouth and blather my opinions around, as artists are wont to do. That’s fine. In the particular case of “Avatar,” I found there’s a call to action and a sense of duty that’s emerged from it. It wasn’t my intention going into [the film] to do that. I figured I’d be on vacation right now. I figured I’d make my big statement with the movie and let everyone else sort out what to do. Turns out there aren’t that many people figuring out what to do. The leaders have been scared off, people of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won’t even use the term “sustainability” or “climate change” in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we’re all dealing with. The average American doesn’t even believe climate change is real, they think it’s all a hoax. Two years ago, 50% of Americans thought climate change was real and thought it was human caused. Now we’re down to a third. That’s the work of a very well-funded campaign to create a climate of denial in the media. You’ve got to work against that. Here’s my philosophy in life: If there’s a fire, you put it out. If there’s a flood, you fill sandbags and you build a dike. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work. I think we’re facing that kind of crisis and I’m not going to stand around and leave it to someone else to deal with it.

PD: When you embark on your next film project, do you know what the challenge will be? Something on par with filming underwater for “The Abyss” or perfecting the performance capture technology in “Avatar”?

JC: Well you’ve already defined what the challenge will be on the next “Avatar” picture, which is to do what we did before at half the price and in half the time. Again, that’s an impossible goal, we won’t accomplish that, but if we can reduce by 25% in both categories, we’ll have really accomplished something. We know our methodology works. We also know it took two years to come up with. It didn’t even become efficient until the last two months of the production. So we were four years into a project before we had this machine running smoothly. So we take a snapshot of that moment in our production and say that’s what we look like on Day 1, we’re going to do better. Now, none of that has anything to do with coming up with a great story or great characters or great new settings and so on. That all is a given. That’s not to say that it’s done yet, it’s a given that we have to do that. But for me, the technical challenge is in improving the process having proved that it works.

We created a broad canvas for the environment of film. That’s not just on Pandora, but throughout the Alpha Centauri AB system. And we expand out across that system and incorporate more into the story – not necessarily in the second film, but more toward a third film. I’ve already announced this, so I might as well say it: Part of my focus in the second film is in creating a different environment – a different setting within Pandora. And I’m going to be focusing on the ocean on Pandora, which will be equally rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it just won’t be a rain forest. I’m not saying we won’t see what we’ve already seen; we’ll see more of that as well.

[From The LA Times]

My son has a really fascinating little book called The Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs that I think we got at TJ Maxx. It’s an incredible look into the age of dinosaurs and how much different the earth was some 225-65 million years ago. I think that’s part of the appeal of Avatar – it offers an alternate, immersive look into a world not unlike our own. Life began in the sea and it sounds fitting that Cameron would focus the next film on the dinosaur-like creatures in Pandora’s oceans. Whether he’ll be able to do it with the same level of depth and characterization as the last film remains to be seen, but again when it comes to dollars it probably won’t matter.