One of the most popular criticisms of James Cameron's Avatar is that its story was too
simplistic and that it borrowed heavily from other famous stories. It all came down to a war
between the Na'vi and the humans, and the chance that Avatar 2 would rehash this conflict has
become a target for critisism. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Avatar had the most
original, nor greatest story ever told, but I appreciated the way Cameron went out of his
way to capture it and for the most part, I was invested in the story onscreen. But while others
do allign with those previous critisims, the Avatar 2 teaser trailer, seems to indicate
that a rehash of the story won't be the case. So what exactly is the footage suggesting and what
kind of war may we be getting in the highly anticipated sequel. Well, in this video,
I'm going to be breaking down the potential war and storybeats from Avatar: The Way Of Water.
Before I get into it, if you want to keep up to date on any of my content surrounding the
Avatar sequels and other sci-fi series such as Denis Villeneuve's Dune, then don't forget to
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at cortex videos, which is all linked in the description below. But without further a do,
lets dive into my early thoughts on the plot of Avatar 2.
So after 13 years, the Avatar: The Way Of Water trailer debuted exclusively for CinemaCon
attendees, and now it has been released online for the world to see. That trailer has been
watched more than the modern Star Wars films and viewers have come out of it with primary
questions over the main story. Now while we can't put a full picture together of what this new
film will be fully about, what we can do is look at some of the elements displayed in the footage
and theorise over what the war could be centred on. The teaser trailer itself has
teased plenty of new underwater and shoreside locations, but it also suggests that rival
Na'vi tribes will go to war this time around, alongside the returning humans picking back up
their mining operations that once became desructive for Pandora. But amongst all of this
we have some interesting developments with Jake Sully and Neytiri's new family, as the fight to
keep their 4 children safe becomes a primary issue. Based on previous interviews with writers
and producers on the film, this includes their 3 sons with Neteyam, Lo'ak, and Spider,
alongside their daughter named Tuktirey. And because Jake Sully became one of the people
at the end of the first Avatar, his children are Na'vi too, displaying their iconic blue
skin, larger bodies, and being able to bond with the nature around them. However, a key
difference with one of their sons, paricularly Spider, is that he is actually a human.
After seeing the trailer, many of us have questions surrounding his character. Where
does he come from, and is this a concern for his parents now that the humans are back to cause
problems and fellow tribes are at war too? Well Spider is not their biological child
and his real name is aparently Miles Socorro, born in the colony that housed the humans in the
original film. Here there was of course all the scientists like Grace, the soldiers and RDA execs,
but during that time there also must have been children born and Spider is aparently
one that has been adopted by Jake and Neytiri. According to revealed details, Spider was too weak
to make the journey back to Earth after the original war, and Sully himself adopted
the child, gave him the nickname Spider, and raised him as one of the family. And this is
where problems and conflicts can arise in Avatar 2, whether it be from within the family itself,
or with how the other Na'vi tribes respond to this. Maybe when we come back to Pandora, we
realise that over the years the connection between the tribes has become fragile due to both
species becoming ever-more entangled, and therefore those who are only faithful to the Na'vi
have become all the more tense from it. After all, the Pandora natives have always been
quite anxious and distrusting of the humans who have continued to cause problems and rip
apart their natural land. And maybe, when they make a revisit, this completely seperates the
clans and makes them more against human settlers within. It was in the first film that Jake and
Grace had to earn their trust and betraytheir own kind to become apart of the people.
Jake also had to abandon his old body and become a Na'vi for the rest of time, via the tree of
Eywa. And maybe now the humans have a greater incentive to come back and fight, because
on top of needing the planet's valuable resources, they also probabaly don't like the fact that
the Na'vi are joining with humans that have grown up and couldn't make the trip back to
Earth originally. They may feel like their own people have been taken captive by the Navi's,
similar to how Miles Quaritch misread their actions before and didn't listen to Jake or
Grace in multiple situations. And I'd also put my money on Jake himself still being looked down
upon from other Na'vi because of his human origins and eventual transition. So it's
characters like Jake and his son Spider that are obvious targets in this current landscape,
and they are potential incentives for this new war, building in a growing hatred from the
Na'vi towards humans and from the humans themselves who hope to fight back much harder.
It's Spider's presence in this new film that suggests the blurring of the lines between both
species, continuing on from Jake's physical transformation into a Na'vi
in the previous storyline. Now coming back to how the humans
will aim to fight back harder in Avatar 2, we get a great sense of this through the re-apparance of
a character we once thought had died. Colonel Miles Quaritch had a quite brutal death in the
first movie, taking multiple massive arrows from Neytiri. But after director James Cameron
confirmed that he would be returning for all the planned films, and as the central villain,
it made us wonder how he will be back to potential force forward this new war. The exact reasons
have been kept under wraps, but now in the Avatar 2 trailer, we see that a Na'vi
has the same haircut and tattoo that Quaritch had in the first movie. So how did he return?
Well, maybe the RDA had enough time to plug his mind into a Na'vi body even though his human body
is no more. We did see Jake using the tree of Eywa to put his mind into a Na'vi body at the
end of the first film, so what's not to say that a decade later, the humans have advanced
and found a way to make this happen in an alternative way. For all we know, the RDA might
also now be able to create copies of important people in their ranks, and this would lead to a
more complicated war for Jake and his family. They'd have to do more then just survive and
fight back this time, because they'd have to actually prevent this kind of tech from being used
and upgraded even further. And with this version of Quaritch, being the same one or a clone,
realising that he has to become one of them to take them down, it makes for a much
more threatening opposition. We'll have to see, but all the smaller details like the return of
Quaritch and the human child of Jake and Neytiri, make the landscape of a new war
all the more interesting, yet all the more scary for Jake's family too.
But like I was saying before, I think what really grabs my attention about the potential
conflicts of Avatar 2, is the more internal ones within the Na'vi tribes. This provides for a
more interesting story long term and you can really introduce us to new clans that hold
differing positions. Cameron is a filmmaker that reflects our world in his stories, and doing
something like this, could reflect the divergence of cultures and countries on Earth.
By showing those internal conflicts on Pandora, Avatar: The Way Of Water could give us a much
deeper look into that world's culture and avoid repeating the same plot. That movie
did also tease that there was a lot of this world still left to discover, especially when we see
Jake asking the help of other clans on the planet. So now in the sequels if we see a greater
on-screen relationship between them through a conflict, it would make the stakes all the
more necessary. Avatar 2 really has the world and factions to create a storyline that is much more
personal when it comes to the family bonds they've teased, yet more universal too in
the way tribes get along with each other. And over time we could see a story where all these
different tribes eventually have to come together. It can be a film that introduces more of
the culture, more of the characters involved and a more detailed war in the process.
One that's not just Humans vs the Na'vi, but this time with one that has blurred
the lines between the two.
But that was my video discussing my initial thoughts on the potential war and plot of Avatar:
The Way Of Water. Again, there is of course the skepticism surrounding how viewers will
react to Avatar 2 after so many years, and the way that James Cameron and his team can prove
people wrong, is for one, by not repeating the simplistic war that the first film centred
on, and two, build on a story that is fresh for this world and one that emotionally captures the
characters involved. The new trailer showed us that this may in fact be the case and
that's a postive sign considering that Cameron has 4 films lined up with the Avatar franchise.
We all know that the technology is going to be groundbreaking and the teaser alone sold
me on that, but it's in the story that Cameron can really prove the doubters wrong this time
around. I have faith that he can pull this off, having done so many times in the past, and
it will be really intriguing to see what the extent of the Na'vi civil wars will be and the
current dispute between them and the humans in Avatar 2. Only time will tell, and I'm sure
the second trailer will focus more on the story elements that people are hungry to know about.
But what do you think the war will be about in Avatar 2 and what other details from the
trailer did you pick out that suggest where this story is going. Let me know
down below in the comments section. For much more videos and news on James
Cameron's Avatar films, then subscribe to the channel and turn on your notifications. Also
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