Pandora beckons once more, guys. Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa are back on the show today, spilling secrets from their screenplay for the recent third film in the Avatar franchise, Fire & Ash. The husband-wife duo came on the show around the release of Avatar: The Way of Water a couple of years back, and it’s always a good time chatting with them – I love the unapologetic earnestness of their storytelling and the habit they have of taking huge, billion dollar IP and using them as vehicles for stories about the wonder of nature and what we risk by not showing our environment the appropriate care.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. Jurassic World. These are huge-scale blockbuster spectacles that, in an era of franchise films drenched in irony and a certain cynicism, make these very sincere pleas to appreciate animals. To revere and protect nature. Because to lose it or underestimate it leads to chaos and collapse. Fire & Ash is another film to bear that signature of theirs – and it’s an epic of mythic proportions. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, we break down the intricacies of this latest collaboration with director James Cameron.

They tell me about the moment in which a character very viscerally contemplates suicide, in a scene I was really surprised to see in a Disney tentpole movie. They tell me about the conversations that led to the heartbreaking moment in which Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully agonises over whether to do the unthinkable to save his Na’vi tribe. And we also get into the ending of the movie and what exactly is happening as series antagonist Colonel Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, throws himself to his apparent demise.

Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.

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