James Cameron made a minor change in Avatar: Fire and Ash to reference.a key scene from the original film. Toruk, the big bird that Jake rides in Avatar, wasn’t initially added to Avatar: Fire and Ash. However, after thinking long and hard about it, he decided to reshoot some scenes to include him.
“I went, ‘Oh, he’s got to go get the bird.’ Come on! I was saving it for a later film. I was like, “F*** that! He should get the bird. Get the Toruk.” There’s something in Jake’s destiny that requires it, right?” Cameron said. “So I just rewrote it, and we went back, and we shot two or three scenes around that concept, and I threw some stuff out and stuck that in … it works beautifully, and the actors were super excited about that idea. It’s like, Oh, okay, that feels right, you know?”
Including Toruk felt right. Without him, the storytelling felt “a little off.”
“Our Toruk is back [in Fire and Ash], right? You know, the big bird that Jake rides [in Avatar],” Cameron told Variety while previewing the upcoming flick. “I’ve always been waiting for the question, ‘Why doesn’t he just go get the big red bird and kill everybody like he used to do?’ Because that doesn’t exist in The Way of Water at all.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash comes three years after the release of Avatar: The Way of the Water. The first two films are the first and third highest-grossing movies of all time.
