Interview: Sigourney Weaver talks about "Avatar"

[Michael]

The South African Times Live site talks with Sigourney Weaver about "Avatar". Here is an excerpt from the article.

Much of the interest in Avatar centres on the technological breakthroughs Cameron has achieved. But Weaver insists: "It's an old-fashioned story, almost like one by H Rider Haggard. Jim says it's the movie he wanted to see when he was 14. Only now has technology advanced sufficiently for him to have written and directed it."

It relates the adventures of a disabled US marine named Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) who is chosen to travel to an alien planet called Pandora, where he is telepathically transformed into his "avatar" - a slender, athletic creature, almost 3m tall, blue-skinned, with a long tail and, unlike Jake, functioning legs.

Having laid waste to earth with its military might, humankind is colonising Pandora, and starting to pollute the alien planet too. The human avatars resemble the Na'vi, Pandora's indigenous people whom humans are trying to infiltrate. But Jake falls in love with a Na'vi princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and gradually becomes opposed to his fellow colonists.

Cameron has been working on Avatar for a decade, and everything in the film bears his signature. Collaborating with linguistic experts, he invented an entire language for the Na'vi. He created the look of Pandora, its flora and fauna. Most remarkably, he created a revolutionary 3-D camera that curved in a semi-circle in front of his face, and which he held himself while directing.

"What's so amazing about Jim is that he doesn't write this pompous sci-fi crap," Weaver says flatly. "He grounds his characters. You care about them. It's all about people. The moment you first see Jake, this young man in a wheelchair, unable to walk, it breaks your heart. You're in his pocket."

Read the full article here.