The upcoming movie Avatar: The Way of Water has a runtime of three hours and ten minutes and director James Cameron is explaining why it’s such a long film.
The first movie was very long with a runtime of two hours and 41 minutes and the sequel is nearly 30 minutes longer!
James Cameron explained the long runtime in an interview with Total Film magazine.
“The goal is to tell an extremely compelling story on an emotional basis,” James said. “I would say the emphasis in the new film is more on character, more on story, more on relationships, more on emotion. We didn’t spend as much time on relationship and emotion in the first film as we do in the second film, and it’s a longer film, because there’s more characters to service. There’s more story to service.”
Not only do protagonists Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) return in the sequel, but the two characters now have children (one of whom is played by Sigourney Weaver) who are main characters.
“People are like, ‘Oh my god, a Disney family story? Exactly what we want…’ It’s not that kind of family history,” Cameron added. “This is a family story like The Sopranos is a family story.”
The highly anticipated movie will be released in theaters on December 16.
