I'd like to see it take the Avatar premise beyond just Pandora. I remember reading a novel by Stephen Baxter in the 90s which had microscopic beings created to live in the environment of a star. Would be cool to see something like that explored that would be completely foreign and different than any type of 'alien planet' that's been shown in movies over the years.
Assuming they continue where Avatar set precedent, then these will be movies in which 3-D actually does enhance it. On the other hand, the stories will suck ass.
I'm not sure why some people are acting like this is some out-of-the-blue hastily tacked on addition to a standalone film because of Hollywood's greedy demand for sequels. Cameron said he always intended for it to be a trilogy before the first film even debuted, and he's a very detail oriented filmmaker, so I'm sure he has a fairly extensive outline on where the sequels are going to go that he'll give to his new writing partners. The only thing really new about this announcement (other than giving the release timeline and announcing new collaborators and so forth) is the expansion to four films instead of a trilogy. I figure the sequels will go something like this: - Avatar 2 (Set ~6 years after the first film): Jake and Neytiri have united all the land-bound clans, because Jake knows that the humans will eventually return in force, and only through unity do they have strength. However, the powerful seagoing clans on the islands feel threatened by this unified tribe and begin raiding coastal villages using technology acquired from the former human colonists through trade and raids. Jake must fight them and eventually win them over to his side. Lots of oceangoing and underwater action. Jake and Neytiri have a child or children (as Neytiri was pregnant in CGI scenes that didn't make it in the final film). Human scientists, mercenaries, refugees, and adventurers from expeditions launched before the fall of the Hell's Gate Colony continue to arrive and are given a choice: stay and obey the Na'Vi's rules for peaceful coexistence and preserving the environment, or return home. Most leave, but some choose to stay and swell the Na'Vi's ranks of allies. - Avatar 3 (Set ~12 years after the first film): Jake and Neytiri's children are reaching the Na'Vi age of maturity, and their parents begin training them as warriors, leaders, etc. The military/industrialist human forces return with extensive vehicles, weapons, and personnel to retake the planet. The combined clans of Pandora and their human allies must use a mix of old and new technology to repel the invaders and preserve the planet's environment. The humans are eventually convinced to call a truce after a fierce battle when it's discovered that Earth once had its own global consciousness similar to Pandora's Eya, and that it can be revived and used to return the planet's ecosystem to a healthy status again. Neytiri was killed in the battle, and gives Jake this information after bonding with Eya. Jake is heartbroken, and decides to return to Earth with the humans and his children to awaken "Gaia." - Avatar 4 (Set ~18 years after the first film): Jake and his children arrive back at Earth to find it not only environmentally devastated, but torn apart by corporate and civil war. While most treat his mission to revive the Earth consciousness with ridicule and dismissiveness, some factions that wish to keep exploiting resources on Earth and Pandora seek to assassinate him and prevent his mission. They eventually succeed despite this, and Earth begins to cleanse itself of the toxins in its atmosphere. Earth and Pandora begin a new era of shared peaceful coexistence. Jake decides to transfer his consciousness into a human body again and remain on Earth, since Pandora would no longer be the same without Neytiri. His children return home and eventually become the new rulers of the unified clans and human colonists. I know that sounds like a lot of cheesy hippie Earth-mother stuff, but that's essentially what Cameron is doing anyway, so it wouldn't surprise me if things went that way.
Nah. Avatar 2: big evil mining company returns to pandora and bombs the shit out of the planet from orbit getting rid of the pesky natives. Wholesale mining of the planet begins Avatar 3: mining continues Avatar 4: mining continues until no more unobtainium left, move onto the next planet
Clearly I was under the mistaken impression that we were talking about what James Cameron would possibly do with the sequels, not what would happen if the situation were real and involved spaceships and modern armies vs. Indian Smurfs.
As impressive as the world look, I can't imagine much happening there that's really that's dramatically interesting. that is the real flaw here.
The Gaia and Eya stuff that Locutus speculated about sounds a bit like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I also expect that rescuing a dying Gaia will be JC's overall theme. I'm also wondering if it will turn out that life on Pandora and Earth was seeded from elsewhere -- the field line-like structures on Pandora struck me as possibly being being artificial in origin.
Congratulations; you earned that one. Some interesting ideas there, Locutus. I wonder if Jake's human body is being preserved in some kind of bio-stasis in case it's ever needed again...
When I was thinking of ideas for things they'll never do, I was gonna suggest that Cameron should go really meta and have the translucent bioluminescent aliens who manipulate their environment from The Abyss be the creators of both the world minds on Earth and Pandora and the crafters of some of the more extraordinary things on Pandora, like the magnetic fields which levitate mountains and so forth. They were originally checking up on Earth's progress in the late 1980s, but decided to leave us to our own devices after the reveal of their presence nearly caused a nuclear war. Unfortunately, this caused the destruction or hibernation of Gaia, which was already in a state of decline due to industrialization. In turn, it was this reveal which caused the humans to develop interstellar spacecraft in the first place, though it took more than a century to perfect. While it's just in the broadstrokes, there's some commonality between the Abyss aliens and some lifeforms on Pandora or the world itself. The translucence, the bioluminescence, the physics defying control of the environment, the lack of mouths indicating telepathy as a form of communication, etc. Pandora was just a more extreme case of environmental manipulation than Earth was. And since Cameron said the next film would likely explore the oceans of Pandora, I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to show them down there observing their other experimental planet. Of course, it'll never happen, but it's fun to think about. Yeah, it's all wrapped up in those glowing white cyberpunk roots of Grandmother Willow, so who knows whether that turns you into compost or if there's some huge body farm group mind that preserves you underneath the tree much like the Matrix towers? She was already pregnant in the unscreened epilogue for the first movie while Jake was still a Blue Meanie. It's unfinished and only done in rough CGI, so it's up to you in the audience if you want to count it or not. I figure that regardless, Jake and Neytiri having kids through their weird mindlink sex braids is probably going to happen in the next film anyway. As far as Jake getting his body back in my speculation, if he does, it wouldn't be until the last film anyway when he heads back to Earth, so there's plenty of time for hair sex in between.
Oops, I forgot about the atmosphere problem. Presumably Jake's human body will suffocate and die, no? I suppose that could be handwaved away somehow, but... I also don't really see Cameron doing a Gaia-related story. Without the whole bio-net shebang, invoking a planetary spirit would entirely depart from sci-fi into space fantasy. I know Jake says something to the effect of "we humans killed our world spirit", but I'm not sure that was meant to be taken literally.