Trivia / Avatar: The Way of Water

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• Acting for Two:
  • Sigourney Weaver plays both Doctor Grace Augustine and Kiri, the daughter of her avatar.
  • Stephen Lang plays Colonel Miles Quaritch and his half-Navi Avatar clone.
  • Matt Gerald plays Corporal Lyle Wainfleet and his half-Navi Avatar clone.
  • Kevin Dorman plays the Recombinant Mansk, the stand-in for Payakan, the aide to General Ardmore and many background characters.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Cliff Curtis, who plays the Metkayina chief Tonowari, is Maori, and worked with James Cameron to create a haka-inspired war dance for the Metkayina.
  • Kiri originally had a refined appearance, but Sigourney Weaver asked that she look more tousled to better reflect the awkwardness of adolescence.
• Billing Displacement: Giovanni Ribisi is billed in the main credits sequence, despite only briefly appearing in a video log.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: It became the sixth fastest film to gross $1 billion worldwide in less than two weeks and the fourth billion dollar film since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. It had a stellar 0% drop from weekend 2 to weekend 3. It grossed $2.3 billion worldwide, making it the third highest grossing film ever.^note Disney's decision to not release the film in Russia, due to the invasion of Ukraine, probably reduced its box office by at least $100 million, which is what the first film earned in the country. There's no wonder it's the one formerly Twentieth Century Fox property that Disney has pampered/advertised the best since the studio's acquisition.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • In the Japanese dub, Tuk is voiced by child actress Mei Kazuki, better known for playing Moka Suga in Weathering With You and Nodoka Tanikaze in Knights of Sidonia.
  • In the Mandarin dub, Ronal is voiced by none other than Zhang Ziyi.
• Dawson Casting:
  • An extreme example; Sigourney Weaver portrays Kiri, who is about 14 years old during the main events of the film, while when the film was released, Weaver was 73 and also portrays the character's biological mother. Because Kiri is depicted with motion capture and looks like a blue, teenaged Sigourney Weaver rather than a grown woman, her voice sounds much older and huskier, though not unreasonably mature.
  • While not as exaggerated like the original English version, Saori Hayami, Kiri's Japanese dub voice actress, is in her earlier 30s, compared with her own character. This is especially relevant in this case, as Hayami's voice, while being a quite versatile voice actress, is pretty notorious on using at times a quite deep voice, through she had even voiced even younger characters than Kiri, being the most notorious example Himawari Uzumaki, for one.
  • In an attempt to avert this trope, the second and third movies were shot back-to-back so that the child actors wouldn't sound much older in between movies, especially since The Way of Water is just the first half of a larger story.
• Deleted Scene: Several.
  • The Tulkun hunt was originally supposed to be longer, and would also reveal how the calf died - Scoresby shot it out of boredom.
  • Another scene would reveal that Garvin and Scoresby were fished out of the water by the RDA before their Sea Dragon was sunk.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Most of the cast trained extensively in free diving for this film. Kate Winslet did particularly well and set a filmmaking record by holding her breath for over seven minutes while shooting a take underwater.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: As he usually does with his biggest projects, James Cameron wanted to wait until special effects technologies were advanced enough to render oceans and underwater Motion Capture (which has never been attempted before^note Cameron infamously bashed Aquaman over its studio-made underwater effects not looking good enough) in them realistically. Developing that technology took no less than five years. It got to the point that, five years after the release of Avatar, the franchise was pretty low on the Popularity Polynomial and deemed "forgotten". The 13-year Sequel Gap was not helped by the COVID-19 Pandemic messing up theatrical release schedules in 2020-2021.
• Fake American: Kiwi actor Jemaine Clement plays an American marine biologist. This is made more noticeable by the fact that he shares most of his scenes with Brendan Cowell, who is allowed to keep his own Australian accent.
• In Memoriam: The film was dedicated to editor David Brenner, who died less than ten months before the film was released.
• Method Acting: In order to play a teenager more convincingly, Sigourney Weaver went to a high school and sat in classes so that she could get a sense of how teenagers talk and act.
• The Other Darrin: While the original English version brought back almost all the original cast, despite the decade-long wait, the same cannot be said in some foreign dubs:
  • In the Japanese dub, due to the death of Kazuko Yanaga, Grace Augustine is voiced by Gara Takashima in her place, while Kiri is voiced by Saori Hayami.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Miles Quaritch is voiced by José Luis Orozco due to the death of José Lavat in 2018. Norm Spellman also changed voice actors from Luis Daniel Ramírez to José Ángel Torres due to the former being banned from the dubbing studio, Taller Acústico, following several accusations of sexual harassment.
  • In the European French dub, Miles Quaritch is voiced by Xavier Fagnon, replacing Jean-Bernard Guillard who voiced him in the first Avatar.
• Posthumous Credit: James Horner, who created the score for the first Avatar film, died in 2015. However he's still credited in this film as the composer of the original themes, while Simon Franglen is credited as the main composer.
• Preview Piggybacking:
  • The first teaser for the film was screened in theaters worldwide before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, then it was uploaded on the Internet a few days later.
  • The teaser trailers for Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer were attached to the film itself.
• Release Date Change: In 2013, Cameron stated the film would release in December 2015, then it was delayed to 2016, then to 2017, then to December 17, 2021 (all of these because of its Extremely Lengthy Creation as usual with Cameron). That latter December 2021 date didn't stick due to the COVID-19 Pandemic causing big shifts in the overall theatrical release schedule, and it was pushed a year further.
• Real-Life Relative: In the Japanese dub, Maaya Uchida (Tsireya) and Yūma Uchida (Spider) are siblings in Real Life.
• Role Reprise: Returning from the first Avatar are Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri, Stephen Lang as Miles Quaritch (in a video intended for his clone, who's also played by him), Sigourney Weaver as Grace Augustine (in Eywa's spirit world), Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman, Dileep Rao as Max Patel, Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, C.C.H. Pounder as Mo'at and Matt Gerald as Lyle Wainfleet (well, his clone anyway).
• Sequel Gap: The film came out 13 years after the first Avatar, and is set about 14 years later, which is how old Kiri and Neteyam are.
• Throw It In!: Alicia Vela Bailey (Zdinarsik) chewed bubble gum on set, James Cameron loved it so much that he had her redo her scenes while blowing bubbles.
• Troubled Production: The COVID-19 pandemic caused production delays in 2020.
• What Could Have Been:
  • James Cameron apparently had a much longer story envisioned for an Avatar sequel, but decided to split the story in half, with The Way of Water being the first half and the planned third film being the second half. An early screenplay made for the sequel would later be adapted by Dark Horse Comics and released as Avatar: The High Ground, which serves as a prequel to The Way of Water.
  • James Horner, who scored several of Cameron's films as well as the first Avatar, was originally slated to compose the score for this film and its sequels, but he perished in a plane crash in 2015, leading Simon Franglen to take over Horner's intended scoring duties.
  • According to Marc Maron, he auditioned for a role but wasn't cast. He stated that he only tested at the urging of his agent and was glad he didn't get the role because he didn't want to spend an extended period of time away from his cats.
  • James Cameron offered Michelle Rodriguez the chance to reprise her role as Trudy, resurrected as an avatar. Rodriguez turned down the offer, having grown tired of playing resurrected characters in other franchises.
  • There were designs of a Pandoran otter-like creature made, but the animal was cut from the film. The art book implies the creature still exists in the world of the movie though.

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