James Cameron says it “makes no sense” Zoe Saldana’s Avatar work hasn’t received major awards love just because she’s playing a CG character

It’s hardly surprising, but James Cameron is a big fan of Zoe Saldaña’s performance in Avatar: The Way of Water. So much so, in fact, that it “makes no sense” to him that she wasn’t nominated for it at the 2023 Oscars.

“I’ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there’s nothing that Zoe’s doing that’s of a caliber less than that,” the filmmaker recently told Variety. “But because in my film she’s playing a ‘CG character,’ it kind of doesn’t count in some way, which makes no sense to me whatsoever.”

Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, The Way of Water reunites us with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Saldaña), and their kids, as they flee their home in search of a new safe haven on Pandora. But when an old enemy, resurfaces, the family are forced to go to war to protect one another and their people.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

“She can go from regal to, in two nanoseconds, utterly feral,” Cameron continued, confirming that the next installment will see Neytiri face up due to her overwhelming grief. “The woman is ferocious. She is a freaking lioness. Her emotional availability is like a fire hose. It just comes through so fast and so powerfully.”

At last year’s Academy Awards, Avatar: The War of the War was nominated for four accolades: Best Visual Effects, which it won, Best Sound, Best Production Design, and Best Picture. Making a whopping $2.3 billion at the worldwide box-office when it was released in December 2022, it became the third highest-grossing movie of all time, behind the original Avatar movie and Avengers: Endgame.

For more, check out our picks of the best sci-fi movies of all time.