Kate Winslet’s Avatar Sequel Character is Part of the ‘Sea People’

[Jachyra]

Her character name is Ronal. From JC:

“The one thing she did do is demand that she do all her own water work. I said, ‘All right, that’s fine, we’ll have to teach you how to free dive.’ The other actors are up to three- and four-minute breath holds. We’ve already been doing underwater capture. We did a scene last week with six teenagers, well, actually five teenagers and one 7-year-old underwater holding their breath for a couple minutes and acting, actually doing a dialogue scene under water because they speak kind of a sign language.”

Interestingly she asked to do all the underwater scenes herself with no doubles. One would think she'd be gun shy about filming underwater with JC at the helm after the reported stress/bad feelings the Titanic shoot brought her, but nope.

Here's the link

Cheers!

[Crickett]

So, does anyone else think the sea people are going to be a completely different species?

[Dr. Na'vi]

Originally Posted by Crickett

So, does anyone else think the sea people are going to be a completely different species?

Absolutely possible, to be honest I still can't imagine why/how part of the plot is going to happen underwater or how the Na'vi are going to stay there over a long period. New (sub)species would be interesting.

[Fandora]

Sounds like it to me. The Na’vi seem pretty attached to the land and the trees in a way that’s definitional to their species? And if the “Sea People” speak a sort of sign language, that also points away from Na’vi, I suppose. It makes sense that from the Na’vi perspective, members of different species are given these euphemisms (Sea People, Sky People, etc).

From a world-building perspective, you’ll eventually need other sentient, humanlike species beyond just the Na’vi to really expand and grow the universe.

[torukmakto4]

Doubt it. I can't prove that this is not speculation, but allegedly the clan you see gathered by the sea in Flight of Passage is Metkayina.

In contrast to some comments on reddit wanting moar skypeople, I am glad Ronal turned out to be Na'vi. Also, I must say, there are a surprising number of characters involved in general. This seems to me that the sequels are going the traditional Cameron direction of taking an unforeseen and often impossible to envision from outside quantum step up in scale over their originals. I'm hyped.

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

the Omaticayans are definitely land/forest-based, but the other clans are spread around Pandora, which has huge oceans. it makes sense some of the clans maybe be sea-based and have sea-faring culture, fishing, even living in or on the oceans. it would be awesome to see whales or other huge creatures of the deep, maybe the Na'vi have adapted to a water environment and can breathe underwater, something like that. i wonder if it possible to evolve gills, similar to the Mariner in Waterworld.

[Fandora]

Yeah, reading up on it more I guess it’s more-or-less confirmed that the Sea People are a different clan of Na’vi as opposed to a new species.