James Cameron, clever guy that he is, found a way to bring back a lot of his favorite actors from Avatar in the sequel, even though in many cases, their characters died in the first movie. Stephen Lang’s Miles Quaritch was killed in the first Avatar’s big finale, but he’s back in Avatar: The Way of Water in a new Na’vi body; ditto for Sigourney Weaver. Although her Dr. Grace Augustine died in Avatar, Weaver is able to play her own daughter in The Way of Water through motion capture technology.
It would seem like there’s no limit to who could return in the upcoming Avatar sequels. But one person you most definitely will not see is Michelle Rodriguez, who appeared in Avatar as Trudy, the brave pilot who, in the movie’s climax, helps the Na’vi in their battle against Quaritch and the rest of the human colonizers on Pandora. Trudy died a hero’s death in that movie — but, again, that’s no reason she couldn’t return in a similar fashion to Quaritch in the upcoming third Avatar movie.
In fact, Rodriguez says James Cameron was even considering that idea, until she shot it down. She told Vanity Fair…
Dude, when I saw Jim [Cameron] recently, he was like, ‘I was thinking, What if Michelle came back? A lot of the other characters came back [in The Way of Water].’ I was like, ‘You can’t do that—I died as a martyr. Jim, I came back in Resident Evil, I wasn’t supposed to. I came back in Machete, I wasn’t supposed to. I came back with Letty, I wasn’t supposed to. We can’t do a fourth, that would be overkill!’
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Rodriguez has a point; she does have a weird way of seemingly dying and then coming back to life in these movies. On the other hand, it would make a lot more sense in a movie like Avatar — where the technology for these sorts of resurrections has already been established — than it did in Fast & Furious, where they were really stretching plausibility with that one. Oh well.
Avatar 3 is currently scheduled to open in theaters on December 20, 2024. Rodriguez can currently be seen in the very entertaining Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which is now playing in theaters.
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