The first official synopsis for Avatar: The Way of Water teases the trouble ahead for the Sully family when the long-awaited franchise returns.
During Disney's presentation at CinemaCon 2022, the company shared the first updates on Avatar 2, including its new title. It was also revealed that the first Avatar 2 trailer is attached to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So while fans will have to wait another week to get their first look at Pandora's underwater world, the synopsis teases what audiences can expect when the Na'vi return to the big screen.
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
To mirror the gap between the first film and its follow-up, the events of Avatar 2 will find Jake, Neytiri, and their kids navigating life over a decade later. While it's possible the intervening years were filled with peace on Pandora, that will change given all the talk of "trouble," "battles," and "tragedies" in the synopsis.
For Zoe Saldana, who plays Neytiri in the film, it was an emotional experience. "It's powerful, it's compelling. I can get choked up just talking about it, because I was able to see just 20 minutes of the second installment, right before the year ended, last year, and I was speechless," the actor said of the sequel. "I was moved to tears."
"[Director James Cameron] was finally able to crack that challenge," Saldana said of returning to the world of Avatar and expanding beyond it. "You know, that whole thing that you can't imitate water virtually through performance capture. That was just a challenge that he had taken upon himself and it took him years... and he did it. He did it."
Much of the reason the sequels to the first film have been delayed is Cameron's insistence on setting much of the upcoming Avatar story underwater. The film will explore an offshoot of the Na'vi people who live beneath the waves, and it required considerable technological advances to pull off such a vision. Hopefully, it will be worth the wait for fans of the franchise.
Avatar: The Way of Water arrives in theaters Dec. 16.
Source: Disney, via Twitter