TV Review: Explore the Mad Genius of James Cameron and His Collaborators in "Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films"

Today saw the release of the new two-part Disney+ documentary Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films, and below are my thoughts on this insightful look into the production of these 20th Century Studios movies.

I've known James Cameron to be an ambitious (to say the least) filmmaker for most of my life, and in recent years I've watched behind-the-scenes documentaries about what went into the making of his movies Aliens (from 1986) and The Abyss (1989). Those featurettes gave me a pretty good idea of what working with Cameron must be like, and that trend continued over into Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films. But the first thing I was to get across about this documentary is that the title is fairly misleading-- instead of a chronicling of the making of Avatar as a three-going-on-five-movie franchise, this is really the story of how Cameron and crew made Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), with a brief tease of this December's Avatar: Fire and Ash at the end. With that disclaimer out of the way, I will also say that Fire and Water is a fascinating look at modern-day moviemaking that continues to push the envelope when it comes to what is possible to accomplish on the big screen.

Going back to that behind-the-scenes look at The Abyss, and remembering footage I've seen from the making of Cameron's Titanic (1997), I have a general idea of how difficult it must be to work with (and in) water on a large-scale production like the Avatar sequels. So you can imagine the looks the director's crew must have given him when he handed over the script for The Way of Water and they got an idea of how much of the movie would be submerged. In Fire and Water we learn about how the production's first instincts were to attempt to fake underwater performance capture using wire-work on a soundstage, but Cameron was not satisfied with how that looked so a more authentic solution would have to be arrived at.

Through the two episodes of Fire and Water (I'm not sure I understand why it couldn't have just been a single 75-minute piece) we discover much more about the challenges facing the filmmakers and actors, and the preparation they went through in order to deliver their most naturalistic performances while swimming in a huge tank built in Manhattan Beach, California. There are also research trips to the Bahamas and Hawaii to give the crew the most Pandora-like experience possible and gather reference materials for what these kinds of environments would actually look and feel like, and Cameron admirably goes out of his way to emphasize that all emotions and movements on screen in the final product are provided by the actors, not computers. The most informative parts of the documentary, however, take place in that huge tank with the surface of the water covered with plastic balls to prevent reflection and the cast training to hold their collective breath for as long as possible while performing below the surface.

As someone who loves this kind of stuff-- and who hasn't consumed a lot of behind-the-scenes material from Avatar previously-- I got a real kick out of seeing Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Sam Worthington, and the rest of the cast acclimate themselves to the underwater environment. We know that James Cameron, of course, is already in his element with this sort of thing, so what's fascinating about watching him here is seeing the process of him and his talented collaborators come up with these ideas and execute them-- something that would not be even remotely possible without the passion (not to mention budget) to create something like Avatar. If you're anything like me and even remotely curious about how projects like this come together, I believe you'll enjoy Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films as well. And partway through its credits, it will leave you chomping at the bit to see Avatar: Fire and Ash when it hits theaters about a month and a half from now.

Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films is now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+. Avatar: Fire and Ash will be released into theaters on Friday, December 19th.