Movies

'Avatar' Sequels Add Michelle Yeoh To The Sprawling Cast

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By Ben Pearson/

Michelle Yeoh is heading to Pandora.

The legendary actress, who recently earned critical acclaim for her roles in Star Trek: Discovery and last year's Crazy Rich Asians, is the latest person to join the sprawling cast of James Cameron's mega-budget science fiction sequels to the highest-grossing movie in the world. Find out who she'll play below.

There you have it: Yeoh will play Dr. Karina Mogue, a (presumably human) scientist. I wonder if she was a former colleague of Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine? Plot specifics for the sequels are hard to come by, at least for tertiary characters like these. But we know the broad strokes: the Avatar sequels will be a generational story akin to The Godfather, focusing on the Na'vi family of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and the formerly-human Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and their children. It takes place at least partially under the seas of Pandora, using underwater performance capture technology. Cameron has previously teased that Avatar 2 goes to some "dark places," calling it an "emotional rollercoaster."

Yeoh is a phenomenal addition to an already-great cast. She's an actress who can do it all: craft moving emotional moments, deliver technical exposition in a zippy way to keep things moving, shoot withering stares at her co-stars, and of course, kick some ass if needed. She may be known now for movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Memoirs of a Geisha, but she got her start with much more physical roles in the realm of action cinema, holding her own with Jackie Chan in Police Story 3: Super Cop, Pierce Brosnan in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, and eventually becoming one of the biggest draws in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and its sequel. I can't wait to see her work with Cameron (a director who's created his fair share of awesome action-heavy roles for female leads) for the first time. Hopefully her character ends up with more to do than just frantically type into a computer. How cool would it be to see Michelle Yeoh take flight on the back of a banshee?

Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, CCH Pounder, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, Giovanni Ribisi, Matt Gerald, David Thewlis, and Oona Chaplin star. Avatar 2 arrives on December 18, 2020, followed by Avatar 3 on December 17, 2021, Avatar 4 on December 20, 2024; and Avatar 5 on December 19, 2025.

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