Sigourney Weaver, James Cameron float on in ‘Way of Water’

New York, Dec. 15: To Sigourney Weaver, her friendship with James Cameron didn’t really start on “Aliens,” the 1986 film Cameron directed her in. It started after.“He was quite serious most of the time. He had a lot riding on that. England was all about Ridley Scott (the original’s director) doing the next one,” Weaver recalls. 

“It wasn’t until we got to the Venice Film Festival where ‘Aliens’ was part of some program. We were having dinner afterward and I’m listening to Jim and I went, ‘Wait a minute. You’re funny? Where was this person all through those difficult months?’”

That their first movie — as fruitful as the final product was — wasn’t the smoothest experience may have been partly due to Cameron’s unconventional courtship of Weaver. When she wavered on returning as Ripley in the sequel, Cameron approached Arnold Schwarzenegger’s agent, who also represented Weaver, with the idea of Schwarzenegger taking over the film series. It was a way, once word filtered back to her, to coax Weaver into signing on. The gambit worked.

“The first few weeks on ‘Aliens’ was a bit rocky while we tested each other,” Cameron says. “After that, we’ve been fast friends forever.”That long-running friendship and collaboration reaches an unlikely pinnacle in “Avatar: The Way of the Water,” Cameron’s long-awaited oceanic opus. Though Weaver co-starred in Cameron’s original 2009 “Avatar,” her character, Dr. Grace Augustine was shot and killed by the end of the film. In 2010, while Cameron was sketching out what would eventually become plans for four more “Avatar” films, he met with Weaver to suggest a novel idea of how she might be reborn on Pandora.

Weaver would come back in an entirely new role: Kiri, the 14-year-old biological daughter of Grace’s avatar. In the film, which opens in theaters Thursday, Weaver plays the Na’vi character, adopted by Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). It’s not easy logic to parse out. What, exactly, are the reproductive capacities of avatars?

“I had to jump through a few fiery hoops to get her on this movie. Not that she was unwilling, but in terms of narrative logic,” says Cameron. “OK, she’s the daughter of the avatar of Grace Augustine, you know what I mean? So of course she looks like Grace. Makes sense, right? Oh, by the way, you’ve got to be 14 years old.” (AP)