For more than a decade, the visual effects artists behind Avatar: Fire and Ash have been tasked with something astronomically difficult: making the impossible feel tactile. Not just bigger, not just louder — but more alive. With each return to Pandora, the bar isn’t simply raised; it’s rebuilt. Breaking new ground, not just at the box office, but within the craft of visual effects. Reshaping what audiences, industry folk, and fellow practitioners thought possible.
Director James Cameron has long positioned the Avatar films as technological accelerators for the industry, but innovation alone doesn’t earn Oscar nominations. What distinguishes the VFX team this season is not just scale, though the scale is staggering, but nuance. In Fire and Ash, the Sully family has been fractured by grief, and we return to a Pandora divided. The emotional stakes have never been higher, and the visual spectacle has never been more striking—new creatures, new landscapes, and new threats— all transport you to a visual world that has been lovingly crafted by hundreds of the best visual effects artisans in the game.
Eric Saindon (Wētā FX Senior VFX Supervisor) and Dan Barrett (Wētā FX Senior Animation Supervisor) are part of Avatar: Fire and Ash’s Oscar-nominated VFX team at the 2026 Oscars. In this conversation, the duo reflects on evolving Pandora’s cinematic language, pushing the limits of performance-driven digital characters, and navigating the peculiar pressure of competing against their own previous breakthroughs. We should mention that Saindon and Barrett previously won Academy Awards for their work on Avatar: The Way of Water, a night that proved far more memorable than one would imagine. Or hope for. Watch the Awards Buzz interview below to find out why.
