They just don’t make ‘em like James Cameron anymore. The iconic filmmaker and mastermind of the Avatar franchise never phones anything in, spending copious amounts of time and resources to perfect his vision and translate it to the screen. And the results speak for themselves. Avatar: The Way of Water was a stunning feat, advancing the story of the first film in a new direction while raking in over $2 billion at the box office. It cemented Cameron as one of the most successful and profitable directors of all time, but that’s not apparent just from talking to the man — his commitment is to story and delivering a spectacle to audiences that they’d never expect to see on screen.

With Avatar: The Way of Water‘s return to theaters ahead of the next installment, we caught up with Cameron to speak about the challenges of making the film and, of course, to find out what fans can expect to see in the third film in the franchise, Avatar: Fire and Ash.

How ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Pushed Technology to the Limit — and Surpassed It

“Being underwater is a very, almost dreamlike experience that you can have in the waking world.”

JAMES CAMERON: Have we talked before?

COLLIDER: We have not. You’ve spoken to a lot of people from Collider before.

CAMERON: Yeah, yeah, that’s why I’m asking. Of course, you know I love Collider as an outlet. You guys always have the good stuff going on.

I appreciate that. We kind of pride ourselves on digging into some places where other people might not go. We’re big fans of yours, obviously, and your prolific career in Hollywood. It’s just been amazing to watch these movies grow over time. I’ve gotta ask, you’ve made so many exciting action scenes that really push technology in new and exciting ways, always at the forefront of innovation in Hollywood. Which one do you consider the hardest to pull off in your career?

CAMERON: Well, since we’re here to talk about The Way of Water, I think about some of the difficult scenes in that that were shot underwater that required enormous amounts of preparation. First, we had to teach the actors how to hold their breath for three, four minutes at a time because the characters are supposed to be holding their breath. The ones that are ocean-adapted are supposed to be like seals or dolphins that can hold their breath for ages. So we had to get actual human actors to be able to do that, like Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet. We also had to figure out how they’re going to ride these creatures.

There’s a classic image of a girl riding on a dolphin like it’s a horse. That would work for about two seconds until the dolphin accelerated, and she’d get peeled off. So we had to figure out how the creatures would move. We had to build real-world analogs for that, so we built these kind of big robotic vehicles that could actually race around underwater at 20 knots, even pop out of the water and fly over water. Then we had to use stunt people to figure out how to ride them, what positions actually worked. Not just to hang on for dear life, but to look like you’re in control, and you can handle a spear or an underwater crossbow, or even, in Jake’s case, a machine gun, and figure all that out. Then we had to teach the actors how to do that. Then we had to figure out how we were going to capture that.

Are we going to go race around out in the ocean? How are we supposed to do performance capture? So we built an underwater wind tunnel, literally built an underwater wind tunnel that could race the currents over the actors’ bodies while they flew around on these kinds of machines. Then we had to create these plausible and beautiful creatures to put into that. So it was this multi-layered preparation. Of course, actors love anything new, anything that they can use to prepare. Most of them had to actually ride these creatures. So I would say from a complexity standpoint, not from a dangerous standpoint, we weren’t blowing anybody up or something on fire. It was all done safely, but it was very, very challenging.

That brings me to one of my next questions. What’s the biggest misconception that you feel some filmmakers might have about filming underwater? Because you’ve had three major movies in which that’s a major set piece, and so you’re obviously well-experienced, and technology has changed over time. What do you feel is a big misconception about filming underwater?

CAMERON: Well, I think a misconception is that it’s impossible, but I think most filmmakers quite rightly understand that everything is harder underwater. Everything is more expensive. It’s more difficult. It’s more time-consuming. So you have to really want to do it, which I do. I spend a lot of time underwater myself, deep ocean exploration, in submersibles, more shallow work in helmets and masks, tactical diving, all that stuff. I love it. And I also believe that, done correctly, audiences love it. Maybe not some grim North Sea oil rigger kind of story, but a beautiful, transportive story like The Way of Water, where we’re in shallow, beautiful tropical waters with lots of sunlight and cool creatures and coral reefs and fish and a profusion of biodiversity. There are reasons to do it because it brings something very special into our lives.

Being underwater is a very, almost dreamlike experience that you can have in the waking world. You can have a very dreamlike experience. I think divers can relate to The Way of Water, but I think people who’ve never dived can still relate to the wonder of it. So you have to understand it’s going to be harder, but it’s going to be quite rewarding on screen. And it’s not for everybody. I don’t recommend that every filmmaker go out and try to do some of the stuff that we do. And by the way, I started filming underwater on The Abyss in 1988. It’s taken all of my experience, all of the things I’ve done between then and now, to be able to do the things that we do on The Way of Water. By the way, all the water scenes are not just in The Way of Water. There are a lot of water scenes in Fire and Ash as well, because we take what we’ve done before and we build on going forward. We’re just introducing new characters and new environments on top of the ones you would recognize from the first two films.

‘The Way of Water’ Fans Will Get a Special Surprise for ‘Fire and Ash’

“There might be a glimpse through the doorway there.”

It’s funny that you mentioned The Abyss because that made me very terrified of deep water. And so, you mentioned that you do your submersible and all that interesting stuff with your documentary and Titanic. I love snorkeling because of the beauty of it. So it’s really interesting that you created this really special, beautiful biome on an alien world that just really feels natural, but also is so spectacular, almost like just going and going snorkeling off a reef of a tropical island.

CAMERON: Yeah, I mean, look, the deeper you go, the less life there is. Generally speaking, it’s dark. It can be quite bleak in many places. If you want to experience the wonder and the beauty, a 15-foot dive snorkeling is all you need to be able to do. And I think that Avatar: The Way of Water is about beauty contrasted with ugliness and violence and hate, and all of that sort of thing, and beauty and that which we must protect. You know, I heard there was this kind of post-Avatar depression phenomenon in the first film, and I would say to people, “Just go for a walk in the forest.” You don’t have to go to another planet. Everything on Pandora is inspired by the natural world right here. If you have a post-Way of Water depression, just go snorkeling. It’s right there for you, just in the shadows where the sunlight hits the coral reef. I mean, you might want to go someplace tropical to do it, but even snorkeling in more temperate water can be amazing.

And it’s a very special thing, but people are going to go out to theaters to see Way of Water again, and it’s really cool. It’s coming to IMAX. It’s going to be on 3D screens. Is there anything special that you’re going to have for them, considering Fire and Ash is going to be coming out? Can viewers expect something special when they go to see it?

CAMERON: Well, we’re not announcing anything officially, but there might be some surprises for fans if they stick around to the end of the movie. And I don’t mean the end of the eight minutes of credits, it’s kind of right after the main title. There might be a glimpse through the doorway there.

That’s what I wanted to hear. Gotta hook the readers in with a catchy headline, you know. So, technology changes and advances all the time, and you have made a lot of advances in pretty much every single one of your films, especially the Avatar films. Is there anything that you could adjust from The Way of Water, knowing what you know now?

CAMERON: I think going into The Way of Water and Fire and Ash, which were shot together as one big production, we spent about four and a half, five years at a considerable amount of money to work it out, to kind of level up our technology on both facial and emotional. “How do we transfer that great performance from Zoe or Sigourney, Kate Winslet, Academy Award-winning actresses, how do we translate that perfectly to the CG characters?” I think we accomplished that. I think we refined it a little bit between two and three, but the quantum leap happened between one and, let’s call it two, three, if that makes sense. We kind of went there, and we’ve been operating at a very high level of truth and authenticity for the actresses’ performances, and I think you’ll see that in Fire and Ash.

I would call it a more emotional film if I could make a strong distinction between the two films. The Way of Water is beautiful and emotional and Fire and Ash has beauty in it, has underwater in it, but it’s more about taking the characters into, I don’t want to say darker, but I would say more emotionally challenging places as a family and the bet is that you progressively care about these people more and more as you go on their journey so it hits you harder and harder as the films go on.

Is ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Ready for Its Release Date?

“All the main creative decisions have been made.”

I have to ask you, how far are you along? Are you pretty much close to the finish line with Fire and Ash, then?

CAMERON: Yeah, we’ve got a few more weeks of mixing. We’re ahead of schedule on the mix, we’re right on track on the VFX. There’s still a lot of work to do, but it’s mostly in the fine details. Creatively, I think from my perspective as the director, the film’s pretty much done, we’ve got a great temp mix, we’re just getting it into Atmos and we’re finding it detailing, it’s spatial sound on the things that people expect us to do, which is a kind of excellence in the image and excellence in the sound, that’s where we’re focused right now.

But all the main creative decisions have been made, we know the film’s playing, we know that it ends kind of resoundingly, and that people are responding emotionally in the right places. I almost feel like this film is emotionally, like Titanic is emotional, it’s not a love story per se, but it definitely is quite heart-wrenching in places, and Titanic played out against this kind of pageantry, and we have that quality as well. It’s a hard film to describe. The only thing I can say about Fire and Ash is that, similarly to The Way of Water, it just doesn’t look like anything else that’s out there; it’s got its own kind of unique signature as a cinematic experience, and that’s what we strive for.

The Way of Water felt like a really great coming-of-age film and how the backdrop of water … connects people and allowing them to grow in different ways and challenging them. Especially in the first movie, which comes from these themes of nature and living in the forest, and the second movie deals with water and, obviously, fire is present in both movies as a destructive element, and now you’re bringing that into the forefront.

CAMERON: I think it completes a kind of an elemental triad. In The Way of Water is life and beauty, fire is chaotic, violent, symbolic of hatred in a way at least in the films and destruction as you say and then ash is the emotional consequence of hatred, right, which creates loss, so people are dealing with loss, they’re dealing with trauma, how it informs them and in our world today, I think it’s quite relevant and people have told me as they watch the films, “Wow, how do you make these films that seem so relevant at the moment?”

I think it’s not that I’m doing anything, I think it’s that people make the connections they make when they see a film, the film has got a war shot for their reaction, but they’re relating to it as something that’s hopeful, something that’s unafraid to deal with and look in the eye, these kind of ideas of our human nature and how we tend to exist in these cycles of hatred and violence, everybody feels wronged and that gives them permission to do wrong things, but how do you break that cycle? And I’m not talking about the bad guys, I’m talking about the characters who follow, so I think nature is such a beloved character, Jake is such a beloved character, it allows me to challenge the audience a little bit, but we still love them, they’re doing something we may not agree with and I think that it’s getting the audience into that headspace that really engages people.