James Cameron

So the goal is, all right, these people look different.

They're physiologically different.

They live in a different place.

But doesn't that give us permission to step outside ourselves with our petty little differences between race and culture and religion and politics and all that stuff, step well outside ourselves and see kind of universals of human behavior and the things we care about, whether that's a sense of

duty and love that a parent has for their child.

And that's why these films travel, I think, and why they resonate in China and India and Europe and Africa, wherever they go, because I'm trying to deal with universal stuff.

But I'm not trying to make stuff up, right?

So with the sequels, Way of Water and Fire and Ash, and beyond that, if we get to make some more, I don't know if we will or not,

We have to make some money.

I mean, it's a business also.

But if we do get to make some more, the stories are about a family.

And so I couldn't, not only couldn't, but probably wouldn't have even tried to write them.

If I hadn't been in a large family and gone through all that teen angst and that issue, the father issues and not being seen and all those things.

And then having been a father of teens, we've got, Susie and I have five kids.

And so, I mean, artists are just working out their stuff, you know, their lived experience and project.

But taking that to another world and putting it in another context means,

allows everybody to share in it and or recognize themselves in it, either in an aspirational way like, wow, I wish I was part of a family like that.

My family, not so great.

Or maybe I don't have a lot of siblings.

Or maybe I wonder what that would be like.