If there’s something we can all agree on after the past two years on Earth, it’s that it’d be pretty nice to head back to the glowing vistas of Pandora soon. The world that James Cameron cooked up in Avatar should offer some serious cinematic escapism when the sequel finally arrives in 2022 – and plenty has changed in the 13 year gap between movies. For one, Jake and Neytiri have their own family now, including Na’vi kids Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuktirey (Trinity Bliss). But they also have a human child among their clan: Miles Socorro, aka Spider, played by Jack Champion. Born at the military base on Pandora but too small to return to Earth, he’s been raised in the bioluminescent jungle by Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).
“Jake took him in but Neytiri always saw him as one of the people who destroyed her home and killed her father,” producer Jon Landau tells Empire of Spider, in The Batmanissue. “So you have all these dynamics playing out.”
Because while the new adventure promises plenty of deep-dives into Pandora’s oceans and all the epic combat you expect from a James Cameron movie, there’ll be some real family drama in there as well – something recognisably human among all the fantastical worlds. “If you look at what Jim does in his movies, he writes in universal themes that are bigger than the genre of any one movie,” Landau explains. “This time around, we’re taking Jake and Neytiri and building the most universal theme of all around them. Which is family. Jake comes from the human world, Neytiri from the Na’vi world. So, they’re like a modern mixed-race couple, raising kids who perhaps feel they don’t belong to one world or another.”
Read Empire’s full Avatar 2 story in The Batman issue – on sale Thursday 23 December, and available to pre-order online here. Avatar 2 is set to be released in cinemas on 22 December, 2022.