James Cameron and his Avatar team always pull out all the stops when it comes to creating Pandora and living on an alien planet – but this is something else.
As it turned out in the new Disney Additionally, in the documentary Fireboy and Watergirl: The Making of the Avatar Movies, the film crew and swimming experts helped create a new swimming style that better replicates the Na'vi's body proportions and unique flat-headed tail.
Given the need for Na'vi underwater diving to require a completely inhuman lack of movement, director James Cameron enlisted the help of world champion freediver and “stroke consultant” William Troubridge (supposedly the first of his kind in any film) to create something completely original on screen.
“We came up with a way of freediving called keyhole,” Cameron recalls.
Describing the movement, Troubridge added: “You use your arms and legs as oars and move them through the water in large movements.”
While the sweeping, fin-like movements are more or less what eventually made it into the final version, the new style of swimming had one major water hurdle: The actors couldn't gain the necessary speed to push off without moving their hips and legs in the usual way.
Any other director might have shrugged and dismissed the Na'vi's on-screen movements as a quirk of the game's capture. Not James Cameron. Instead, he decided to unleash his inner question through James Bond-style gadgets. MI5, eat your heart out.
“They won't go anywhere during the planning phase because they won't be able to generate enough thrust,” Cameron said. “So then we thought: propulsion system. We found these little jetpacks and gave [the actors] a small switch so they can make a move and then press that switch on the little jet engine. They were very, very good at it.”
Fireboy and Girlfriend: The Making of the Avatar Movies is now streaming on Disney Plus. The third Avatar movie called Fire and Ashhits theaters December 19th.
For more information, check out our guide to upcoming movies.
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