Predicting the Plot of Avatar 2 – Did I?

Posted On December 24, 2022

This is the sequel to [this post]. It should have happened earlier but…turns out I got covid. Like I found out THE day Avatar came out. So I was very salty about it. I saw it today, on the 24th, since now I feel good enough to be out of the house and not cough for 3 hours 12 minutes.

Walking out of the theater, I feel like I did a very good job guessing what would happen! But also I have not seen the post since I wrote it. I guess how I’ll do this is I’ll re-post the, uh, original post and then commentate on what things actually happened. With some trimming, so this post isn’t super long.

Spoilers for Avatar 2, of course.

Part 1 – The Na’vi Have Forgiven, but not Forgotten

The Way of Water takes place not in the jungles of the Omaticaya clan, but on the coast, with a different clan of na’vi. These ocean na’vi are greenish, have different markings, and have webbing for their more ocean-going lifestyle. Plus all the actors had to learn freediving. And they invented underwater mocap. This is an entirely different biome and way of life from before.

And why’s that? Probably because a lot of na’vi (especially Omaticaya) are not big fans of Jake. They wouldn’t need saving if he didn’t come along and ruin so much in the first place. Jake and his family move to another clan to get a new start, perhaps where people might not know who he is (and be unfamiliar with avatars in general). He was reborn in his avatar body at the end of the first film, and he wants to leave his old life behind. All it ever accomplished was pain, and it has no place on Pandora.

Of course, a 5 fingered eyebrow-having guy is going to stick out…

Jake and his family have to move in order to not put everyone else at risk of the RDA coming after them. They weren’t pressured by the others to go. But they did go so they can have a new start and not have the baddies know where they are.

Also I can’t figure out how to change the font to papyrus 🙁

Part 2 – The RDA (and their Stockholders) Haven’t Forgotten, Either

I don’t even want to know how much the RDA has invested in Pandora. Not only was all of Hell’s Gate built, and that looping cycle of interstellar vehicles to transport supplies/bring back refined unobtanium put together, and the avatar program developed (did you know each one costs $5 B?), Earth is reliant on unobtanium in a way that really isn’t discussed in the first film.

It’s kinda funny, they did not mention unobtanium at all. They gave a reason at the start of the film for the RDA coming back…and then another reason later.

… Also, the RDA goes out of its way to forbid study for synthesis of it on Earth, so the ONLY source is Pandora. But you can synthesize all the biological molecules you want!

…huh. So reason #1 the RDA came back is because “the Earth is dying” so I guess everyone is just gonna go live on Pandora? The planet where you can’t go outside at all? Reason #2 is space whale ambergris, which is a biological molecule. Which the RDA would have allowed people to synthesize. Is that not the case anymore? That seems a lot easier than space whale hunting.

I guess they’ve figured out how to synthesize unobtanium on Earth. Or don’t need it to do the math to make avatars or anything else.

So the RDA, of course, is coming back as the baddies! Countless people will die if they don’t! And their stockholders will get really mad, too! [This article] has some bits about what the RDA is up to. Specifically:

• There is a new “city” on the ocean, to get all those yummy ocean minerals
• There are now “recoms,” which are avatars with soldiers in ’em
• Quaritch is back, baby!

He’s one of two returning actors whose characters died in the first one. To be honest, I totally missed this article when this first came out, so when I was writing the outline to this after seeing the re-release, I put down “Quartich upload,” because I thought making him a clone would perhaps be too predictable. But I guess I’m 100% right on this one, because of language such as “his consciousness having been added to an avatar body.” And the recoms are “embedded with the memories of human soldiers.”

Yup, they sure did have an “upload” saved and stuck him into an avatar!

So Miles Quaritch, at some point, got his brain and or memories uploaded to a computer, which has now been put into an avatar. There’s lots of ways to get DNA, so they could have taken samples from his toothbrush or something to grow the avatar. I highly doubt that his natal body is alive, somehow, between the two arrows to the chest and being exposed to the Pandoran air for well over a minute. Because of the atmosphere composition, his brain would be too damaged to “fix” in any form (and I doubt Hell’s Gate had the facilities to do that)(or that the na’vi/their allies would have allowed that to happen).

He’s the antagonist, obviously! Or is he…?

The OG Quaritch still is turbo-dead. It would have been nice to see him have some sort of moment reflecting on his existence, but nah. They didn’t explain how tattoos on avatars work, though. And that’s gonna bug me for forever.

Part 3 – Maybe the Real Antagonists are the Friends we Made Along the Way

Jake fucked up big time with that stunt he pulled in the first movie. But also, he can never truly belong among the na’vi. He grew up in a world made of nonrenewable resources, with wheels, he’s a Marine! He even said that that never leaves you. So, to him, solving problems with aggression is something that’s deeply ingrained in him. The na’vi are much more pacifistic (Cameron has said as much), so these conflicting points of view are going to lead to rifts in raising those kids.

There’s going to be a secondary antagonist, a na’vi. This is either going to be someone who hasn’t forgiven Jake for the first movie, or one of his kids. Either way, they’re going to be told about the RDA, which will be framed as they’re the good guys, actually. All this mining is for helping kids just like them back on Earth! Just let us do a little bit of mining, okay?

This will mirror how Jake “betrayed” the Omaticaya in the first film, but this will be ironic-y-er and more hurtful.

So this kinda happens. One of the kids is captured by the RDA towards the start of the film and helps them out the whole time, as a translator and all that. Said kid is Spider, the human who really wishes he was a na’vi. I guess Quaritch knocked someone up on base? And the baby was born? And left there cause you can’t hypersleep a baby? I still do not really understand how he was born there BEFORE the end of Avatar 1, but whatever.

He hangs out with Jake’s kids from the start, “sort of like a stray cat,” Jake says, so they like him. Kiri, the Sigourney Weaver kid, is really upset he’s stuck with the RDA but everyone gets over it pretty quickly. He teaches the RDA avatars how to do avatar stuff, like get an ikran, and does some bonding with his sorta-real dad. I would probably have to watch it again to see how much of it is Spider willingly helping and how much is him being a hostage.

Regardless, it makes Spider getting adopted at the end kinda awkward. Once they find out all the things he did.

Part 4 – Oh Yeah, Let’s Talk About them Kids

There are 5! But only 3 are bio kids. And only 3 of the kids I know anything about at this point (and are also worth talking about). Plus 5 is a lot of characters, so they’re not all going to get equal screen time/importance.

Haha gee if that a’in’t true.

Of the three bio children, there’s the son that hangs out with the whale in the sneak peek. He knows how to undo the harpoon thingie that pierced its fin. He speaks both English and underwater sign. He seems to be in-between worlds, of earth and Pandora, the Omaticaya and the ocean clan.

The more important of the two brothers, since that whale was pretty important.

Spider is a “human orphan stranded on Pandora.” Which, interesting. Why would a child be shipped out to Pandora? Obviously, they weren’t, so he was born there. The only time that would have happened would be from the “good” humans that were allowed to stay on Pandora after the first film. But now he doesn’t have parents? Hrmmm.

Spider is a “human orphan stranded on Pandora.” Which, interesting. Why would a child be shipped out to Pandora? Obviously, they weren’t, so he was born there. The only time that would have happened would be from the “good” humans that were allowed to stay on Pandora after the first film. But now he doesn’t have parents? Hrmmm.

My prediction: the good humans were living in Hell’s Gate, because where else could they stay? But when the RDA inevitably return, they take it over, by force, hence the orphaning. But none of the na’vi want to raise a human kid, because of All Of That from the first film. Jake and Neytiri take him in. But he never feels like he fits in, due to his size, diet, and he has to always wear that air mask. He can’t do the same things as the other kids, and people treat him differently. Sounds like something an antagonist could take advantage of…

🤔 That sure does sound like exactly what happened.

Now, onto Kiri. Finding out about her made me lose it. See, Sigourney Weaver is old. And James Cameron made her learn how to free drive and hold her breath for minutes at a time to act underwater. That sure is a weird thing to do for a character that died! But the Empire article reveals that she’s actually playing a na’vi named Kiri, who is the adopted daughter of Jake and Neytiri.

Note her photo. She sure does have eyebrows! And five fingers! Na’vi are hairless (besides the scalp/tail tuft) and have 4 fingers per hand/foot. And bigger eyes, flatter noses, and sharper teeth. Kiri sue does have some avatar features! What could that possibly mean?

Clearly, she’s Dr. Grace Augustine’s kid. I am entirely unsure, though, of who the father is, or how Grace(‘s avatar) had this kid and hid it from everyone. Honestly, I feel this is a detail that was added in after the fact and wasn’t planned when the first film was made. Someone will probably throw in a line like “oh yeah she was off doing fieldwork for a year” to explain how this happened.

It’s also possible that Eywa re-birthed her into some random Omaticaya kid but…I don’t think that’s going to explain why she has avatar features. DNA doesn’t work that way.

Either way, this means Kiri has a unique connection to humans and the RDA, which is something that antagonist(s) are going to take advantage of. Maybe she’ll want to follow in her mother’s footsteps and further scientific advancement to help others out and increase understanding between the species, so she’ll help the RDA out.

It was mentioned in an article that came out after my post (but before the film released) that Grace’s avatar was pregnant when she died? So they stuck her back into one of the big fish tanks and kept her going until Kiri was born. Who her father is still isn’t revealed, and she’s clearly got…something going on. Material for the third film, clearly.

There were a lot of characters in this film, so we didn’t see her really get to interact with the humans of Hell’s Gate or RDA tech or anything. The “oh yeah if she Eywas again she might get another seizure and die” kinda got dropped, since she did the Eywa ex machina at the end. I wish we got to see more of her.

Part 5 – Global Warming is a Thing Now

A lot has changed since 2009. One of the things that is much, much more present is global warming, aka climate change. It’s a thing that we’ve known about in some capacity for a while, but the effects are unmistakable.

I presume global warming is why the Earth is dying…but they don’t say why exactly. The reason why the RDA is back isn’t all that relevant, I guess.

Cameron is an environmentalist, and he loves the ocean, there’s no way this isn’t going to make it into The Way of Water. Part of this movie is going to be “wake up, people!!! We gotta save our oceans!!!” and drive humans to go out and save the whales or whatever.

The “whales are alive and smart and we need to save them!!!!” seems to be the greater theme of the work. Very 1990s.

I might scream if I see a plastic straw being eaten by a sea turtle. Like there’s at least a 50% chance we’re going to see a plastic straw or water bottle or 6 pack of beer plastic rings thingie as ocean litter.

There was not a single sea turtle or piece of plastic pollution, sadly.

Part 6 – So Here’s a Synopsis…

Jake and Neytiri have settled down with one of the ocean clans. After the plot of the first film, he’s desperate to start a new life and forget the one he had back on earth. He’s still attached to the humans that have stayed on Pandora, though, who now live at Hell’s Gate. They’ve eeked out a way to live on this hostile planet while doing minimal damage to the land.

Nope, they move ’cause running away from your problems is cool.

The RDA, of course, isn’t going to give up that easily. They reappear and retake Hell’s Gate in a flurry of shock and awe. Many of the “good” humans are killed in the conflict (r.i.p. Norm), along with much of the mining/refinery equipment. One of the survivors is a human child, Spider. None of the na’vi want to adopt/raise him, so Jake and Neytiri take him in.

Everyone forgot about Hell’s Gate, even the film. But I guess none of the humans want Spider by the end of the film, so that part is true, at least!

The RDA builds a new city, this time, on the ocean (fewer trees to mow down, plus we can do oil platforms and such). They also discover that the local life forms, like the big whales, have unique compounds in them that have medical benefits for humans. Because of the unobtanium shortage on earth, the RDA has even more power than before, so they’ve forbidden the synthesizing of all Pandoran molecules, so now they’re hunting the whales along with mining. How evil!

Turns out space whale ambergris stops aging! Which is why they’re on Pandora now I guess!

But one of the local na’vi learns who Jake is. Perhaps they had a loved one who was killed in the battle in the first film, or they’re pissed on the Omaticaya’s behalf. They develop a relationship with one of Jake’s kids (probably one of the adopted ones, treating them like anyone else and not a weirdo) and convince them to speak to the RDA. The kid then learns that the RDA is good, actually! So they help them out, unintentionally setting up their family for great peril…

None of the na’vi rat out Jake 😔 Sad!

Quaritch, of course, is running around and causing problems, about 2-3 conflicts throughout the film. He’s the bigger, more obvious threat, which Jake is putting all of his energy towards stopping, but the true danger is even closer to home…

It’s kinda implied that Lo’ak befriending the friendless whale is super dangerous, but he’s the one who saves everyone. Still, it’s funny that everyone got over Spider getting taken so quickly.

Kiri finds out she’s Dr. Grace Augustine’s kid and confronts her parents about it. This causes a rift within the family (perhaps a “you’re not my real mom!” moment), and maybe this is when she goes full villain and leaves them for the RDA.

No 😔 She knows about Grace from the start. She doesn’t do much to move the needle either way until the climax when she does the Eywa thing.

For the climax of the film, we shall have to undergo a daring rescue, because one of the kids was kidnapped!

Man do those kids get kidnapped, so often.

But not actually, they willingly joined the RDA, as they want to stop Jake and Neytiri. I mean, look at all the cool things the RDA has. Like wheels! And iPads! And everything they’re doing is to help kids on earth, don’t you care about all those kids dying of future cancer? They want our cool na’vi medicine to help them!

The film has a fight, but it’s a firefight as much as it is an emotional one. The kid realizes that the RDA is actually evil and maybe they shouldn’t betray their parents. Quaritch escapes (or, if his avatar dies, we know that’s not the end of him, they got extras backed up) and the RDA is chased off…but they have other cities…other mines…and they’re already doing something Even Worse…but that is a problem for another film. We have our happily ever after (for now), so please see film 3 in 2024.

Quaritch sure does not die! I wonder if Spider is gonna tell anyone that.

[I don’t think one of the kids is going to get killed, people generally don’t like seeing children die in movies, especially on-screen, so I’m going to say there’s like a 10% chance a kid will die on screen].

It’s okay they traded the one son for another son. I’m sure people aren’t going to be mad about that when they find out.

So how did I do, actually?

I think I did pretty well? The “one of the kids ‘betrays’ the family and tells the RDA everything” does, indeed, happen. And I did predict it’d either be Spider or Kiri. I feel a little bad for not guessing that the whale was going to be more of a major character. I probably should have seen one of the kids dying, honestly.

Kinda wild though that “the whales have some super valuable compound in them for medical purposes so now they’re killing the whales” I saw coming a mile away.

Well! Time to wait 13 more years for Avatar 3!