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Soon to be seen decades younger and with blue skin: Sigourney Weaver
Photo: Theo Wargo/WireImage
It has long been known that Sigourney Weaver would return for the second part of the science fiction epic »Avatar«.
Her cast was still mysterious – her character Dr.
Grace Augustine had not survived the first adventure.
In an interview, the 72-year-old revealed who she will play in "Avatar: The Way of Water": a teenager.
However, not a human one.
Her character is called Kiri and is a Na'vi, one of the extraterrestrial creatures that director James Cameron introduced in the first part of his »Avatar« series.
Kiri is the adopted daughter of Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), the main characters of »Avatar«.
Cameron, who directed Aliens with Sigourney Weaver 36 years ago, told Empire magazine: "It's obviously a big challenge for an actress.
Sigourney worked with a group of teenage girls to channel their youthful energy.” Afterward, Cameron says, Weaver looked much younger and shone from her.
Weaver himself said, "I think we all remember how we felt when we were young.
When I was eleven, I was almost 1.80 meters tall.
I gave Kiri a lot of this uncertainty.« The role is about finding yourself.
Modern motion capture technology allows Weaver to appear on screen as Na'ri while looking many decades younger.
For the process, markers are attached to an actor's body and face, cameras film the performance, and this is transferred to a computer and finally to a digital figure.
The technology has existed for around twenty years.
It was first prominently used in the 2006 comic book adaptation »X-Men: The Last Stand«.
At the time, fans and critics alike poked fun at the unnaturally smooth and artificial-looking faces of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's computer versions.
Technology has made great advances in recent years.
However, it is far from perfect, as the very different current films and series show.
The Netflix series »Stranger Things«, for example, is currently making convincing use of the fact that teenager Eleven can be seen as a little girl in some scenes.
The creators used a younger actress and visual effects.
The Netflix film The Adam Project cast actress Catherine Keener as 28 in addition to her current age (63).
However, her avatar was created entirely on the computer, with the irritating effect that her face looks like it was painted with an airbrush gun - in other words, involuntarily scary and only remotely human.
Even today, masks and wigs are often the better solution, as recently seen in »Black Widow«.
There, Rachel Weisz convincingly covers up an age difference of 20 years – without the intervention of computer technology.
Sigourney Weaver's rejuvenation process in »Avatar – The Way of Water« is of course more extreme.
But also the process of alienation, because she will be seen as an extraterrestrial with blue skin.
So there is no direct comparison between the real Weaver and her avatar.
However, one challenge remains: she has to make her body movements look like those of a teenager.
This was a problem for Robert de Niro, who appears in The Irishman as a young-faced man whose movements seem like those of a man in his 70s.
From December 14, viewers can judge whether Sigourney Weaver is better at the transformation.
Then »Avatar – Way of Water« will be shown in German cinemas.
