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A new villain aligns with a familiar one in “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third installment in James Cameron’s franchise about the blue inhabitants of the distant earthlike moon Pandora. Arriving on the scene this time is Varang (Oona Chaplin), a passionate figure whose desire to rule is as strong as her desire to ruin.
In this scene, she has cornered Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the villain from the first film, and given him a psychedelic truth serum. It leads to a potential partnership that could fulfill many of Varang’s power-hungry needs. Narrating the scene, Cameron discusses some of the ideas behind it, how he worked with the actors through performance capture, and what techniques he employed to give the sequence a jittery spark.
Read the “Avatar: Fire and Ash” review.
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Mekado Murphy writes about the world of movies and produces the Anatomy of a Scene video series.
The post How a Deadly Bond Develops in ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ appeared first on New York Times.



