Predictions for James Cameron's Avatar Franchise

Written 54-F24 [2022-12-31], Edited 54-F27 [2023-01-03]

I recently saw Avatar: The Way of Water (not to be confused with Avatar the Last Airbender, Book 1: Water). After over a decade of waiting, there is finally a sequel to that extremely successful movie that everybody jokes about forgetting. There will be spoilers for The Way of Water in this article, so don’t scroll too fast. Also, if you are enthusiastic about James Cameron’s Avatar, then be warned that this will be a somewhat cynical article.

Predictions

Image credit: Walt Disney Company

The Way of Water is only the first sequel of many. There are plans for at least three more Avatar films. The Way of Water is not just a movie or even a sequel in the classic sense: it is the point where Avatar ends its life as a one-off curiosity and is reincarnated as a mega-franchise that can compete with the likes of Star Wars, Transformers and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In many areas of life, extrapolating on past trends is a fool’s errand. But Hollywood loves a good formula, and there are many similarities between the first two Avatar movies. The Way of Water is the model sequel to Avatar: it has most of the strengths and weaknesses of the original. Anyone who remembered Avatar and knew the sequel was titled The Way of Water would get exactly what they expected. Perhaps by contrasting the two films, we can predict where the world of Pandora will grow from here.

In short, my predictions are:

Every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will explore a new biome with new wildlife.
Every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will introduce a new Na’vi tribe with new steeds, a new style of gathering food, and a new tribal chief.
Every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will introduce a new precious resource, to be looted by humans using new machinery.
In the Avatar series finale, humans will attempt to deliberately destroy every biome of Pandora in order to terraform the planet.

To be clear, these are predictions. These are not an attempt to form the coolest or most original Avatar fanfiction. In fact, of all the predictions that could possibly be made about the Avatar franchise, these are probably the most boring and conservative.

Prediction 1: Biomes

Image credit: Walt Disney Company

In some science fiction and fantasy franchises such as Star Wars, the audience only gets to see a single biome and one or two species of wildlife on each planet. This is clearly not the case with Avatar. One of the main attractions of Avatar is the diversity of alien flora and fauna. Weird fantasy animals that would be background in other films are the focus of Avatar. For example, in The Way of Water, there was a lot of worldbuilding around the design and behaviour of the “tulkun” (space whales), to the point where the cetaceans might be more interesting than some of the paper-thin humanoid characters.

The first Avatar was rainforest-focused while the second was focused on islands, oceans and reefs. This is easily the most visible difference between the two films. Yet there are still many biomes that have appeared in Avatar spin-off media but only briefly in the films themselves. The Avatar wiki page for Pandora states that:

The Pandoran surface features jungles, mountains, volcanoes, plains (savanna), and oceans. A desert also exists in Anurai mythology.

There could easily be a full nature documentary about any of these regions - which is great news both for James Cameron and for anyone who likes his obsessive worldbuilding.

There is a flaw in this prediction: doesn’t James Cameron really like the ocean? Might he enjoy making another three films about the island Na’vi? Perhaps, but even the ocean has different biomes: there are differences between the tropical and the polar regions, not to mention differences between the upper layers of the ocean and the abyss.

In short: every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will explore a new biome with new wildlife.

Prediction 2: Tribes

Image credit: Walt Disney Company

In The Way of Water, the island Na’vi have a different culture and anatomy than the forest Na’vi. During the middle of the movie this causes all sorts of conflict between the Sully family and the island Na’vi they are seeking refuge with.

By moving the Sully family to the islands, The Way of Water repeats Jake Sully’s challenge of becoming Na’vi in the first film. In both films, Jake Sully is compared to a child who does not know how to live. Having repeated the plot point once, James Cameron might decide to keep doing it.

Assuming the first prediction is correct, this second prediction is also almost a given. In the Avatar films, the thematic difference between humans and Na’vi is that the Na’vi adapt to their environment, whereas the humans transform and even destroy their environment. In The Way of Water, even the human marines with Avatar bodies who openly aim to “think Na’vi” failed at their goal: they kept their marine uniforms and behaviours, and brought in steeds from the rainforest. The rainforest steeds are eventually defeated by the island steeds: showing the importance of learning the local culture.

The island Na’vi hunt and ride differently than forest Na’vi: that is a material necessity. The island Na'vi also have their own tribal chief separate from the forest Na’vi, which makes sense given the lack of inter-tribe infrastructure.

There are some aspects of the Na’vi that are controversial in a real-world context, such as the appropriation of Native American and other Indigenous cultures. It would be a pleasant surprise if James Cameron went in a more original direction for Na’vi clans in future instalments of Avatar. The key word of that previous sentence is “surprise”.

The anatomical differences between Na’vi tribes also seems a bit… much. Have these tribes been separated for thousands of years, to the point of almost being subspecies? Or is there some chemical trigger that causes Na’vi to grow thicker tails and webbed feet? And since so much of sci-fi and fantasy are metaphor, what is The Way of Water trying to say about real people? “Na’vi biodiversity” might be too controversial to appear in every film, and don’t really serve the thematic needs of the two current Avatar movies.

In short: every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will introduce a new Na’vi tribe with new steeds, a new style of gathering food, and a new tribal chief. The other differences between Na’vi tribes are less likely to reappear.

Prediction 3: Extraction

Image credit: Walt Disney Company

One of the neat bits of worldbuilding in the two Avatar films is that the humans are looking for a new resource each time. In the first movie, the humans mine for the precious metal “unobtainium”. In the second movie the humans hunt the tulkun for their brain fluid, “amrita”.

For plot purposes, this is a helpful bit of worldbuilding because it provides an excuse for humans to exploit different biomes of Pandora. If the humans of The Way of Water were extracting unobtanium as in the first movie, one might reasonably ask if mining the oceans would be as profitable as mining the forests. If there is no profit to be made from a biome, then there would be no incentive for humans to develop weapons and machinery for that biome. And if there is no new machinery for a biome, how will James Cameron bring in the dollars from robotics and aeronatics geeks?

Humans will probably be in conflict with Na’vi in every biome. Certainly the first couple of films have focused on the Na’vi opposing humans damaging the local environment. The word “local” is key - although Na’vi of multiple tribes teamed up in the first Avatar, inter-tribe unity seems much poorer in The Way of Water. By contrast, human efforts are united across all the biomes of Pandora and Earth: according to The Way of Water, tulkun hunting is funding the entire human colonization effort.

The one group of Na'vi intent on stopping the humans in every biome is the Sully family. Yes, Jake Sully learned that he could not protect his family by running away from danger. But what happens if a Na'vi tribe begs for the Sullys' help? Or if one of the Sully kids is finally successfully kidnapped and shipped to the other side of Pandora? Such plots could occur if humans are invading every individual biome.

In short: every upcoming Avatar movie, except for the series finale, will introduce a new precious resource, to be looted by humans using new machinery.

Prediction 4: Terraformation

Image credit: Walt Disney Company

It is canon that the humans of Avatar are trying to move a large chunk of their population to Pandora, creating a “new home for humanity”. The full implications of this exodus have not been explicitly spelled out yet, probably because the full implications would be grand enough to overshadow the actual plots of the first two movies. Problems this huge would only be suitable for the series finale.

Turning Pandora into a “new home for humanity” would require destroying the entire Pandoran ecosystem. Not only the rebellious Na'vi, but also every plant and animal. A few captive specimens might survive in climate-controlled buildings like zoos, farms, greenhouses and laboratories. But almost everyone and everything else would have to die.

Such massive death and destruction is necessary because of the atmosphere of Pandora. As explained in The Way of Water, humans can only survive seconds in Pandora’s atmosphere, but Na'vi can last a few minutes in Earth’s atmosphere. Within the context of The Way of Water, the former is implied by the humans constantly wearing masks and the latter is a useless bit of trivia. But how can Pandora be the “new home for humanity” if everyone has to wear masks all the time? If we have learned anything from the coronavirus epidemic, it’s that masks are really a nuisance. And on Pandora, if a mask is removed or otherwise malfunctions, the wearer dies extremely quickly.

In order to truly make Pandora into a human-friendly planet, the Pandoran atmosphere must be replaced with an Earth-like one. This will cause all freely-roaming Na'vi to suffocate to death, and most of the animal and plant life would soon follow. This is why the Na'vi being able to survive a little while in Earth atmosphere will eventually become an important plot point: Earth’s atmosphere is coming to Pandora. After multiple films of chasing one chemical resource or another, the humans will finally try to capture the entire world, in a disturbing analogue to both climate change and chemical warfare.

This terraformation would be a truly global theat to the Na'vi, unlike the plots of the first two Avatar films and unlike the structure implied by predictions one to three. Strictly speaking, there were multiple Na'vi tribes in the first film, but the final showdown will require much greater numbers to really escalate the drama. Every Na'vi tribe would have to put aside their differences to defeat their common enemy and save their homes. It would be a lot to ask, but if the Sullys spent the entire series getting familiar with different tribes, unity among tribes would be a fitting conclusion.

In short: in the Avatar series finale, humans will attempt to deliberately destroy every biome of Pandora in order to terraform the planet.

Conclusions

There is a single guiding principle behind all these specific predictions: Avatar will continue to be a mass-market blockbuster franchise with complex worldbuilding, environmentalist themes and simple plots. Since I believe the principle, I am confident in the previous four predictions but cannot imagine how the series will truly end. Is there a satisfying ending that can really meet those requirements? Will the ending be bungled so severely that audiences and critics won’t stand for it?

Ending the Avatar series with the extinction of all life on Pandora would be a daring move by James Cameron and his corporate overlords. But it would be too depressing for a major blockbuster, not to mention unsatisfying. Such a hopeless ending is suitable for Animorphs: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles only because it is a prequel to something more optimistic. What is the optimistic end to a story like Avatar?

There is an Avatar theme park ride at Disney World, which establishes the existence of a Pandora Conservation Initiative and peaceful human-Na'vi relations. But given the expansionist aims of humanity, how would that happen? Furthermore what would a realistic solution to human-caused climate change look like, in the context of Avatar? It’s not unimaginable, but a truly satisfying ending to the series would require a more original plot than the current Avatar movies have offered. Major changes do seem to be planned, given the interview with producer Jon Landau which revealed that the fifth Avatar film will partially take place on Earth. That said, a lot of plans have changed with this franchise already.

There is another possibility: maybe Avatar, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will never actually have a finale. From a pure worldbuilding standpoint, the Avatar franchise may have enough material for an endless supply of prequels, sequels and spin-offs. After all, the way of water has no beginning and no end.