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Fire replaces water as the elemental character in James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” It’s even weaponized by Varang (Oona Chaplin), the ruthless leader of the volcano-dwelling Ash People, in their war against the rest of the Na’vi tribes.

“After figuring out water in all its complexity in [‘The Way of Water’], we focused on fire,” Cameron said about his VFX Oscar front-runner. “Fire is very much the same — you have to be very observant of [this] in the world. This is where having an understanding of physics — which I do — helps, and this is where a lot of real-world photography and reference comes in handy.”

Creating more realistic-looking fire in CG required Cameron to apply his understanding of fuel and how it burns, including flow rates, the interaction of temperature gradients, the speed of an object that’s burning and the formation of carbon and soot.

In essence, fire became the centerpiece of every scene — and a character with its own escalating drama. That’s where the VFX wizards of Wētā FX in New Zealand came in. They developed Kora, a high-fidelity tool set for physics-based chemical combustion simulations. Kora increased the scale of fire while providing more artist-friendly controls. The film contains more than 1,000 digital fire FX shots, ranging from flaming arrows and flamethrowers to massive explosions and fire tornadoes.

“Physical fire is really hard to control, so we had to come up with how to bend the physics towards the direction that Jim was giving it,” said Wētā senior VFX supervisor Joe Letteri. “Because he was very specific where he wanted the fire, what kind of speed, rate, size, how much or how little energy. He very carefully crafted every component, guiding your eye across it.”

“Fire serves two roles,” added Eric Saindon, a VFX supervisor at Wētā. “There’s always a little bit of low fire going on during quiet moments, but then you get fire that becomes much more destructive whenever there’s an attack sequence.”

In the film’s best scene, where archvillain Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and Varang meet for the first time in her tent, fire takes on a more subtle, mysterious quality. She gives Quaritch a trippy “truth drug” to ascertain his real agenda, seductively playing with fire with her fingers like a sorceress. The scene turns surreal with camera distortion and zoom shots to convey his hallucinatory point of view.

Then Quaritch surprises her with his superpower: the truth. He proposes a partnership to provide his military weaponry so she can spread her fire across the world and he can rule as her co-equal. “In a strange way, they become the power couple from hell,” Cameron said. “He wins her over by sharing his vision.”

Meanwhile, the subtle flicker of fire with cool blues around the edges of the flame is like a magic trick. “She knows it’s about theater, so she presumably has some kind of a gel or makeup that’s on the tips of her fingers so that they just don’t burn away in the first few seconds,” Cameron continued. “She’s able to dip her fingers in some kind of inflammable oil and light them and have them burn like candles. Of course, in his mind, it’s all enhanced much more due to the hallucinogen.”

Cameron praised both actors in the scene, but singled out Chaplin’s performance for the force she brings to Varang’s shamanistic authority. “She understood how the character would manifest her power psychologically and how there was a flip in the scene, where the flow of power runs the other direction at a certain point.”

The director also commended Wētā’s facial capture animation team for achieving a new level of photorealism, thanks in large measure to more realistic muscle and skin movement. “The way Oona’s performance comes through so resoundingly in the character is a tribute to a lot of R&D, a lot of development in the facial pipeline. But I think it really demonstrates how the idea of CG as a kind of digital makeup really does work. What I’m proud about in that scene is that it’s a culmination of an almost 20-year journey in terms of getting exact verisimilitude in the facial representation of the characters as an extension of the actors’ work.”

“It was really fun showing Varang to Jim because he knew what he had in the performance,” added Dan Barrett, a senior animation supervisor at Wētā. “And he included Oona’s idiosyncrasies in the final animation. He was very respectful of the performance.”

In fact, Cameron argues, Chaplin’s performance as Varang is Oscar-worthy. “It may be counterintuitive, but I would argue that it’s a more pure form of acting,” he suggested. “Now, you may say that it’s cheating in terms of the cinematography in the sense that the cards are stacked in our favor because that perfect performance will always be there and will be repeatable as I do my different camera coverage. But it’s not cheating in terms of the acting.”

Cameron has recently been more proactive in demonstrating how the performance-capture process works to academy and SAG-AFTRA acting members so they can better understand it. “It was just us, working on capturing a scene, and I even wrote new scenes so it wasn’t a made-up dog-and-pony show. And they were blown away,” he added.

Keiko Agena likes to create moments of coziness — not just on Sundays, but whenever she possibly can.

“Oh, there’s my rice cooker,” she says when she hears the sound in her Arts District home. “We’re making steel-cut oatmeal in the rice cooker, which by the way, is a game changer. I used to have to baby it and watch it, but now I can just put it in there and forget it.”

The 52-year-old actor, who played music-loving bestie Lane Kim in the beloved series “Gilmore Girls,” delights in specific comforts like a bowl of warm oats, talking about Enneagram numbers and watching cooking competitions with her husband, Shin Kawasaki.

“It sounds so simple, but I look forward so much to spending time on the couch,” Agena says with a laugh.

It is time that she’s intentional about protecting, especially amid her kaleidoscope of projects. Over the last couple of years, Agena starred in Lloyd Suh’s moving play “The Chinese Lady” in Atlanta, acted in Netflix’s “The Residence,” showcased her artwork in her first feature exhibit, “Hep Tones” (some of her ink and pencil drawings are still for sale), and performed regularly on that L.A. improv circuit. And her work endures with “Gilmore Girls,” which turns 25 this year. Agena narrated the audiobook for “Meet Me at Luke’s,” a guide that draws life lessons from the series, and is featured in the upcoming “Gilmore Girls” documentary “Drink Coffee, Talk Fast.”

She shares with us her perfect Sunday in L.A., which begins before sunrise.

5 a.m.: Morning solitude

I like to be up early-early, like 5 a.m. I like that feeling of everything being quiet. I’ll go into the other room and do Duolingo on my phone. I am a little addicted to social media, so the Duolingo is not just to learn Japanese, but also to keep me from scrolling. Like, if I’m going to do something on my phone, this is better for me. I think my streak is 146. Shin is Japanese, from Oyama. So I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese for a while. For him and his mom.

Then I’ll do [the writing practice] Morning Pages. I don’t know when I learned about Julia Cameron’s book [“The Artist’s Way”] — probably around 2000. I know a lot of people do it handwritten, but I’m a little paranoid about people, like, finding it after I die. So if I have it on my computer and it’s password protected, I can be really honest.

Then a lot of times, I’ll go back to bed. Shin, as a musician, works at night, and so he wakes up a lot later. So I’ll fall back asleep and wake up with him.

9 a.m.: Gimme that bread

I don’t do coffee anymore because it’s a little too tough for my system, but I’ll walk with Shin to Eightfold Coffee in the Arts District. It’s tiny but very chill. Then we’re going to Bliss Bakery inside the Little Tokyo Market Place. We get these tapioca bread balls. If you make any kind of sandwich that you would normally make, but use that bread instead, it ups the game. It’s life-changing. The Little Tokyo Market Place is not fancy or anything, but it has everything that you would want. There’s Korean food. They have a little sushi place in there. You can get premade Korean banchan and hot food in their hot food section. They also have a really good nuts section. It’s just one big table with all these nuts, just piles and piles.

10 a.m.: Nature without leaving the city

We’ll go to Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown. I like that place just because it’s very accessible. Like, they have accessible bathrooms and I’m always checking out whether a place has good bathrooms. We call it Flat Park because it’s a great walk. Like, you’re not really out in nature, but there’s a lot of greenery. You can take your shoes off and at least touch grass for a second.

11:30 a.m.: Lunch and TV cooking shows

One of my favorite salad-sandwich combos is at Cafe Dulce in Little Tokyo. A Korean cheesesteak and a kale salad. That’s always like a — bang, bang — good combo. So we might go there or Aloha Cafe, though it’s not fully open on Sundays. But I love it because I grew up in Hawaii. They have this great Chinese chicken salad and spam musubi and other Hawaiian food that is so good.

We’ll bring home food and watch something. Cooking competition shows are my cream of the crop. My favorite right now is “Tournament of Champions” because it’s blind tasting. To me, that’s the best way to do it. “The Great British Bake Off” is Shin’s favorite. He loves the nature and the accents as much as the actual cooking. He just loves the vibe, the slow pace of the whole thing.

I’m such a TV girl. I love spending time on the couch and eating a meal and watching something that’s appetizing with my favorite person in the world. I’m lucky because I get to do that a lot.

2 p.m.: Browse the aisles

I’ll go to this bookstore called Hennessey + Ingalls. I love art and architecture and design, but you can’t always buy these massive books. But you can go into this bookstore and look at them and it’s always chill.

If I have time, I’ll walk around art supply stores. Artist & Craftsman Supply is a good one. I’ll look at pens, pencils, stickers, tape, washi tape, different kinds of paper, charcoals. In my art, I try to find things that aren’t meant for that particular purpose, like little things in a hardware store that I’ll use it in a different way.

5 p.m.: Downtown L.A. in its glory

We really love to walk the Sixth Street Bridge. It’s architecturally beautiful and they’re building a huge park over there, so we’ll walk around and check it out, like, ‘Which trees are they planting? Can you see?’ We sort of dream about how it’s coming together. But the other beautiful thing about that walk is that if you go at sunset and you walk back toward downtown, it’s just gorgeous. Los Angeles doesn’t have the most majestic skyline, but it’s so picturesque in that moment.

6:30 p.m.: Cornbread and Enneagrams

I’ll head to the Park’s Finest in Echo Park. It’s Filipino barbecue. It’s just so savory and rich and a special hang. Their cornbread is really good. Oh, and the coconut beef, but I’m trying to eat less beef. They have a hot link medley. Oh my gosh, just looking at this menu right now, my mouth is watering. OK, I’ll stop.

One of my favorite things to do is ask friends about their Enneagram number. So the idea of sitting with friends over a good meal and asking them a bunch of personal questions about their childhood and what motivates them and what their parents were like and what their greatest fear is and then figure out what their Enneagram number is? That is top-tier activity for me.

9 p.m.: Rally for improv

Because I get up so early, if 9 o’clock, I’m ready to go to sleep. But I am obsessed with improv, so on my ideal day, there’d be a show to do. There’s this place called World’s Greatest Improv School in Los Feliz. It’s tiny and they just opened a few years ago, but the vibe there is spectacular.

Then there’s another place where my heart is so invested in now called Outside in Theatre in Highland Park. Tamlyn Tomita and Daniel Blinkoff created it together and not only is the space gorgeous — I mean, they built it from scratch — they have interesting programming there all the time. They’re so supportive of communities that are not seen in mainstream art spaces. It’s my favorite place. Sometimes I’ll find myself in their lobby till 12 o’clock at night. The kind of people I like to hang around are the people that hang out in that space.

11 p.m.: Turn on the ASMR and shut down

I am firmly an ASMR girl and I have been for years. I have to find something to watch that will slow my brain down. Then it’s pretty consistent. I don’t last very long once I turn something on. My eyelids get heavy and it chills me out.

Like many of you, I don’t need another good Italian cookbook. Yet I’ve found Amber Guinness’ “quanto basta” or “just enough” approach in her newest book “Winter in Tuscany: Cozy Recipes and the Quanto Basta Way “ (Thames & Hudson) immensely appealing — and useful when I’m looking for dinner ideas. A vegetarian take on the Tuscan beef stew peposo? She captures the original’s hearty flavors with chestnuts, mushrooms, red wine and lots of thyme. Despite her “House of Guinness” lineage, this Guinness, who grew up in Tuscany, has an easy, approachable style. Consider “emergency rosemary and garlic spaghetti,” a 10-minute preparation from Siena that is more in the vein of the un-recipe approach that her fellow Florence-based author Faith Willinger favors. Sometimes, in the “one’s own way is usually the best” philosophy she advocates, I’ll use Guinness’ recipes as good suggestions to tinker with — as I did the other night with her orecchiette with Brussels sprouts and pancetta. Other times, I’ll relax and just follow her conversational instructions for say, “Good Time” radicchio, Gorgonzola and walnut lasagne, which includes the line, “remove any sad outer leaves from the radicchio.”

Melissa Barrera is no stranger to a certain type of espionage. Dangerous missions. Sometimes starting in the dark of night. One particular covert operation she regularly took part in is one many daughters have had to take with their resolute mothers — Black Friday shopping.

She recalls crossing the border from her hometown in Monterrey, Nuevo León, in the wee hours of the morning to McAllen or Brownsville in Texas to score primo deals at the big-box stores.

“It felt like a treasure hunt for me,” she recalled. “In my mind, it was like a mission, getting the things that we had to get. I like challenges and being given instructions. That was very satisfying for my personality type.”

That experience prepared the Mexican actor for her role as a spy juggling secret identities in Peacock’s “The Copenhagen Test,” premiering Dec. 27. The espionage thriller stars Simu Liu as an intelligence analyst whose brain has been hacked, putting his thoughts and memories in the hands of unknown perpetrators. Barrera co-stars as Michelle, a spy tangled in the web of deceit.

“It was a challenge. I’d never done anything like this before, in the sense that you really don’t know who Michelle is,” said the actor, who chatted over Zoom from Barcelona where she’s filming another thriller, “Black Tides.”

“It was also confusing for me as an actor, because we didn’t have all the scripts at the beginning, so I had made up who I thought Michelle was — and then I would get more scripts and I was like, ‘Well, that goes out the window.’ It was a constant construction.”

Those Black Friday missions weren’t the only ways in which Barrera was innately prepared for the role. Growing up, she devoured the Jennifer Garner spy series “Alias.” She spent hours as a teen watching and rewatching episodes on DVD. It was Garner’s ass-kicking turn as Sydney Bristow, and her many stealthy alter egos, that planted a seed in Barrera.

“I was obsessed with that show,” she says. “As a young teenager, I was like, ‘I want to be a spy.’ I would research online: ‘How do you get recruited as a spy?’ That’s how obsessed I was.”

She longed for intrigue, for covert operations, for wigs. Not just the kind of spy business that equates to elbowing señoras at Best Buy for a deeply discounted TV. And then came “The Copenhagen Test.”

“I just thought that it was so fun, the role playing within the role playing that happens,” she said. “I read the scripts, and they were really good. And I got to be a spy. I was like, this is a no-brainer for me. I’ve been asking for this since I was 12, so it was a dream come true for young me.”

A spy series is just the latest in a long wishlist of roles for Barrera, who got to flex her dramatic side in “Vida,” her vocal and dance prowess in the musical “In the Heights,” and dive into scream queen territory in “Scream V” and “Scream VI.”

“I think it’s valuable for Latinos onscreen to bring in some of their background when it fits, and when it doesn’t, there’s no need to push it — I’m representing Latinos just by being there,” said Barrera, with a nod to ongoing discussions surrounding Latino inclusion in Hollywood. “[Yet] I’ve always wanted to explore all parts of myself. I’ve always wanted to try different things. I think it’s been happening, because I do believe that whatever you put out into the universe comes to you.”

It’s not just dream acting roles that Barrera puts out into the universe, hoping it produces something good. The 35-year-old is an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, wearing her beliefs quite literally on her chest — during our call she sports a hoodie with the phrase “words not actions” in the shape of a watermelon, a symbol of perseverance and resistance for Palestinian people. She’s never shied away from using her voice, in particular for this specific human rights issue, and it’s come with its consequences.

Two years ago, Barrera was fired from the forthcoming installment of the Scream franchise, “Scream VII,” as well as dropped from her agency for posts she shared and wrote on social media calling Israel’s attacks on Gaza acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

“Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” read one of her Instagram stories in following the events of Oct. 7. “Cornering everyone together, with no where to go, no electricity no water … People have learnt [sic] nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”

Her firing drew widespread attention and critical discussion over what was viewed by many as the latest form of Hollywood blacklisting. Last year, Barrera spoke to De Los about the backlash, saying, “It wasn’t easy to be labeled as something so horrible when I knew that wasn’t the case. But I was always at peace because I knew I had done nothing wrong. I was aligned with human rights organizations globally, and so many experts and scholars and historians and, most importantly, Indigenous peoples around the world.”

Over a year later, her stance hasn’t changed. In fact, that period changed everything for Barrera.

“I’ve always had that inner inquietude, that kind of yearning for equality and for justice and for eliminating any kind of prejudices and racism and colorism, which is very prevalent in Mexico,” she explained. “But I honestly think it was Palestine that did it for me, that crumbled everything for me. After that, it’s been a before and after in my way of thinking and my way of viewing the world; in my way of viewing the industry and the way that I want to move forward.”

As Barrera moves forward, using her platform to speak up for injustice is inextricable from her sense of self and her place in Hollywood. What she brings to the screen is her full self, regardless of the role; to play a spy, or a scream queen, or any other character takes knowing who you are and what you stand for. Now, more than ever, Barrera is firmly grounded and ready for action.