Yahoo Movies Michelle Rodriguez wouldn't let James Cameron bring her Avatar character back to life for The Way of Water
Michelle Rodriguez wasn't about to let her Avatar character die in vain.
In a Vanity Fair interview published Thursday, the actress revealed that she wouldn't allow director James Cameron to resurrect her character, Trudy Chacón, for his blockbuster sequel The Way of Water. Chacón, a former Marine pilot who becomes sympathetic to the Na'vi cause, dies in battle in the first film, sacrificing herself so the blue-skinned humanoids can repel the humans plundering the exomoon Pandora.
To bring the pilot back would have been "overkill," Rodriguez said. "Dude, when I saw Jim recently, he was like, 'I was thinking, What if Michelle came back? A lot of the other characters came back [in The Way of Water].' I was like, 'You can't do that — I died as a martyr.'"
Everett Collection Michelle Rodriguez in 'Avatar'
Rodriguez went on to cite several other instances of her characters being resurrected: "I came back in Resident Evil, I wasn't supposed to. I came back in Machete, I wasn't supposed to. I came back with Letty [in Fast & Furious], I wasn't supposed to. We can't do a fourth [movie resurrection], that would be overkill!"
As Rodriguez alluded to, The Way of Water already features the return of two other actors whose characters were killed off in the first film. Stephen Lang's Col. Quaritch is brought back as a Recombinant (a human-Na'vi hybrid), while Sigourney Weaver plays a Na'vi teenager via motion capture (after portraying a human scientist the first time around).
Rodriguez can next be seen as barbarian thief Holga Kilgore in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, in theaters March 31. The movie also stars Chris Pine, Hugh Grant, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Regé-Jean Page.
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