"Boy, did I draw an unlucky opponent for the first round of this arm-wrestling tournament."

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

The Abridged Script

FADE IN:

EXT. PANDORA

PRETEND BLUE ALIEN SAM WORTHINGTON relaxes peacefully in the ALL-CGI UTOPIAN JUNGLE PLANET, PANDORA.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Hey folks, sorry for the delay, but we’re back! And BOY am I lucky that after blanding my way straight into the memory hole of pop culture more than a decade ago, now I have this contractual excuse to be the top-billed star of what could turn out to be four two-billion dollar global megahits in a row. I don’t even care that they won't let me use my real face.

He frolics with his REAL BLUE ALIEN WIFE ZOE SALDANA and their CHILDREN.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Now I’m sure you’re all aching to hear what old Jake Sully’s been up to - that’s JAKE SULLY, J-A-K-E S-U-L-L-Y, please try and remember it this time. Me and Zoe have settled down and had three beautiful cross-species abominations named Jamie, Britain, and Irrelevant to the Plot.

BLUE ZOE SALDANA

Don’t forget our two adoptive kids! We also look after Jack Champion, who was the only human baby left on Pandora when the colonists fled, and whose parentage reveal is gonna be a masterclass in hacky screenwriting.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Right, plus after we failed to upload a dying Sigourney Weaver to her avatar, we kept that mindless husk for some reason and it turned out to be pregnant! Nobody knows who the father is, and by the end of the movie that will still be the case. I think Cameron’s trying to keep his options open.

BLUE SIGOURNEY WEAVER

Either that or he just wanted any contrived excuse to get me back in the movie! Yes, he’s using the husky seventy-three-year-old pipes of Sigourney Weaver to voice a spritely teenager. It works about as well as you’d expect.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

So yeah, that’s how picture-perfect our little life has been, ever since the humans abandoned this planet and its massively valuable resources forever and ever, never to darken our doorstep with their superior numbers and insurmountable technological advantage again!

Suddenly HUNDREDS OF HUMAN SPACECRAFT enter the atmosphere.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Okay yeah, that was always going to happen I guess.

The HUMAN-NA'VI WAR just sort of PICKS UP WHERE IT LEFT OFF, rendering the victory of the last movie kind of POINTLESS.

INT. HUMAN SPACECRAFT

One year later, BLUE STEPHEN LANG is woken up, surrounded by the BLUE REPLICAS of all the DEAD BAD GUYS from the first movie. He is treated to a video of STEPHEN LANG.

STEPHEN LANG

Morning, me! I’m here to explain to you that you’re an avatar created to take over my mission if I die, and you've been implanted with all my memories. Including, presumably, memories of this plan, so I don’t know why you need me to explain any of this.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Ah, so I’m not actually myself, but instead an artificial construct, and the person who I remember being died years ago. Guess I’ll go ahead and have no existential angst about that whatsoever.

He and his men go and meet GENERAL EDIE FALCO, who’s virtually the only thing in this movie stopping it from being a STRAIGHT-UP CARTOON.

EDIE FALCO

Men, as you know, our mission on Pandora is to pave the way for human habitation since we fucked up our own planet.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Wait, since when? I thought we were only here for the valuable unobtainium?

EDIE FALCO

“Unobtainium”? What a stupid word, I’m sure you just made that up. Nope, we’re stealing the whole planet for ourselves, so we need you guys to eliminate the Na’vi leader Sam Worthington and-

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Hold up, if we’re gonna live here we’ll be presumably terraforming it so humans can breathe the atmosphere, thus killing all native species, right? So why bother with this war at all when we could just drone-strike the whole jungle to ashes?

EDIE FALCO

This is an Avatar movie numbnuts, our military never uses its technological advantage properly. Now hop to it!

EXT. JUNGLE

STEPHEN and his TEAM head into the JUNGLE to hunt down SAM and ZOE. They then stumble into JAMIE, BRITAIN, JACK, and IRRELEVANT TO THE PLOT!

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Oh hey, the very first Na’vi we run into happen to be the children of the guy we’re hunting, that’s awfully convenient. Let’s use them as bait!

Just as planned, SAM and ZOE come looking, and the BLUE MAN GROUP attacks them!

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Bwa ha ha, these larger, stronger bodies that can actually breathe Pandora’s atmosphere are way better for fighting with on this planet than our old human ones!

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

I can imagine. So much so that, if they were willing to give you guys your own billion-dollar flesh puppets anyway, you have to wonder why they didn’t send you out in them in the first place. Hell, you wouldn’t even have to have died.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

...Well let’s pretend that’s not true why don’t we.

SAM and ZOE manage to get away with all the kids but JACK, who is CAPTURED.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Damnit, we’re gonna have to go into hiding now. Let’s-

BLUE ZOE SALDANA

Woah, hold it. Are we just going to leave Jack in enemy custody then? Aren’t you worried that the evil soldiers will torture him for information?

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

I should be and they will, but that child I’ve been helping to raise since infancy can officially go fuck himself. As I was saying, our family needs to leave. The army is targeting us so our presence is a threat to the rest of the Na’vi.

BLUE ZOE SALDANA

...What? But they’re targeting us because they want to get rid of the Na’vi leader so they can more easily rout the Na’vi. If you leave, they’ll just rout the Na’vi and win. Won’t they?

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

(shrugs)

Who knows? Cameron wants to skip right to the ocean stuff, so we’re just going to quickly name some random extra the new tribal leader and then fuck off and forget this tribe ever existed. BYE, SUCKERS!

The family LEAVES.

EXT. BEACH

SAM and ZOE and THE REST arrive at A WHOLE OTHER TRIBE of DIFFERENT NA’VI, and these ones live by the OCEAN and are a SLIGHTLY GREENER SHADE OF BLUE. Like an AQUAMARINE, if that’s not too on the nose. They meet with tribal leaders AQUAMARINE KATE WINSLET and AQUAMARINE CLIFF CURTIS.

AQUAMARINE CLIFF CURTIS

(looking at pointy ears and tail)

It seems that my tendency to get cast as a new race in every movie has reached its logical extreme.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Howdy folks! You know those unstoppably powerful sky pirates who want to destroy the planet? The ones with the machine guns and mech suits? Well a bunch of them are relentlessly hunting us down and will annihilate anything that stands between them and us. Sooo, can we crash with you guys?

AQUAMARINE KATE WINSLET

Why us? We’re basically aquatic, we do everything underwater. Is there not a single other land-based Na’vi tribe anywhere on the planet you could join?

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

God, I don’t even know, the worldbuilding is super shallow. C’mon, we can learn your watery ways.

AQUAMARINE KATE WINSLET

But we’ve actually evolved for this habitat, like our bodies are literally adapted for underwater swimming. You can’t just learn to hold your breath for fifteen minutes at a time.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

You clearly don’t know just how far this franchise is riding the white savior trope. Not only will we learn how to swim just as well as an actual aquatic species, we’ll do it in what appears to be a few weeks.

BLUE SIGOURNEY WEAVER

(hypnotizing fish)

Even faster for me! I’m doing some kind of Mystical Chosen One narrative, I can do all the water stuff on the first try PLUS I’ve got Snow White powers!

(jellyfish alights on finger)

BLUE ZOE SALDANA

Okay... is that ever explained, or does it go anywhere?

BLUE SIGOURNEY WEAVER

Meh, we’ve got three other movies coming, I’m sure we’ll figure out something to do with that eventually.

(hugged by manta ray)

The FAMILY start training in the METHODS OF MOISTNESS, and there ensues an extended period of the movie where it turns into a NEW AGE ALBUM COVER. SWIMMING. SAND. FISH. WAVES. BLUE SKIES. FLOOOAAATING.

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

Ooooohhhh, preeetty. You know what, I kinda get it now. For a little while I’m able to shut off my higher brain functions and be hypnotized by history’s most expensive screensaver.

BLUE JAMIE FLATTERS

Yeah, I think this might be the first movie to ever cross the billion-dollar mark purely on vibes alone.

(spaces out for an hour)

INT. BAD GUY BASE

Meanwhile, JACK is being put through ALL THE TORTURE.

EDIE FALCO

Tell us where Sam and Zoe are!

JACK CHAMPION

I’ll never tell you! Because I’m TOUGH, and I’m LOYAL, and also it should be kinda obvious that I don’t have the first clue where they would have went, I mean did you really think they left me a forwarding address or something.

STEPHEN comes in and calls a halt to the TORTURE.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Don't forget kid, we promised the audience that ultra-hacky parentage reveal. So as you know, I’m your dad. Which means I was in a relationship at some point of my gung-ho genocidal deployment on this planet, if you can even picture that.

JACK CHAMPION

Yeah, what’s the story there? Did she abandon me to return to Earth? Or did she die, possibly at the hands of the Na’vi, which would actually explain quite a bit about your characterization?

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Those are all very valid questions, but exploring character stuff isn’t what we’re here for. Now I want you to come to see me as a father, so come on, accompany me and my men as we hunt down your surrogate family, commit rampant war crimes, and generally act like exactly the kind of vicious dicks you’ve been warned we were.

EXT. BEACH

SIGOURNEY is being picked on by some AQUAMARINE BULLIES.

AQUAMARINE BULLY

Hey you blue four-fingered freak, we don’t like you, nyah! Good to see that even this idealized hippy-dippy naturetopia planet has some good old-fashioned racism.

BRITAIN flips out and starts beating on them until SAM arrives and scolds everybody into playing nice. Later, the BULLIES come and talk to BRITAIN in private.

AQUAMARINE BULLY

Aw, we’re sorry. After showing how much we hate your kind and then getting punched in the face by you, we now want you to come miles away to an isolated location with us, without telling anybody, for, uh... friend reasons.

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

Woo, can’t see how this could go wrong!

They take BRITAIN out to a particular part of the OCEAN, then ABANDON HIM to be eaten by a MONSTER SHARK.

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

Oh wonderful. This would be bad enough without the knowledge that those bullies are never going to face any repercussions for TRYING TO MURDER ME.

The SHARK THING is about to SWALLOW HIM when suddenly a WHALE THING attacks the SHARK THING!

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

Gosh, thanks Mr. Whale Thing!

WHALE THING

Don’t mention it - wait, you and I are talking to each other? That’s a thing?

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

Yeah, you make whale noises and subtitles come up, suggesting that I can understand you. When the fuck did I learn whale language? Who knows!

WHALE THING

Oh well whatever, let’s start a Boy and His Whale plotline that feels like it should have been a whole other movie!

BRITAIN starts taking any excuse to go off and hang with his WHALE PAL. They SWIM and FROLIC. A whole bunch more BEAUTIFUL ELECTRONICS SHOWROOM FOOTAGE ensues. But SAM disapproves!

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Damnit Britain, I’m sick of your renegade bullshit! Why can’t you be a blandly flawless exemplar of parental respect and obedience like your brother? Why he's the GOOD son, the one that REALLY makes us proud!

BLUE JAMIE FLATTERS

(sighs deeply)

There’s no way I’m making it out of this thing alive, is there.

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

For crying out loud Dad, I disobey you and put myself in harm’s way, you scold me. I disobey you and put myself in harm’s way again, you scold me AGAIN. I disobey you and put myself in harm’s way several more times, you scold me several more times! WHAT THE HELL DOES IT TAKE TO EARN YOUR APPROVAL?! BAH!!

(storms off)

EXT. AQUAMARINE VILLAGE

Soon after, STEPHEN’S SQUAD arrives at WATERWORLD.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Good thing that we detected that distress signal that Sam sent to his scientist buddies after Sigourney touched these folks’ underwater Soul Tree and had some kind of vision seizure! Which is another plot element that we’ll be catching back up to probably around 2026 or so. Now we know Sam and Zoe’s approximate location!

JACK CHAMPION

So now I guess you’ll be scoping the place out, doing some surveillance and recon to get some sign of where they’re holing up?

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Pfft, what kind of cartoon bad guys would we be if we did that?

(storms village, burns everything down)

BLARGH! TELL ME WHERE SAM AND ZOE ARE OR I’LL MURDER YOU ALL!!

JACK CHAMPION

Oh no you fucking don’t! If you start killing these people, Dad, I’ll DISLIKE YOU!

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

(looks around at flaming wreckage and terrified villagers)

Surely that ship has already sailed.

JACK CHAMPION

Yeah, but I’ll dislike you MORE! I’ll dislike you SO MUCH, Dad!

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Dangit! All right men, let’s regroup and figure something else out.

JACK CHAMPION

Oh wow, that actually worked. Maybe I should also ask him to not murder my adoptive family? Nah, I’m sure that’ll all be fine.

INT. WHALER BOAT

STEPHEN and the OTHERS are aboard a BOAT with EVIL WHALER BRENDAN COWELL.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

New plan! Since the folks on this planet are such tree-hugging animal-loving hippies, if we start murdering the whales out their way they’ll come to stop us, including Sam and Zoe! I’m sure they haven’t just pulled up sticks and relocated their family like the last time we came after them, that’d make too much sense.

BRENDAN COWELL

Fortunately, in me you already happen to have an experience human whaler on this planet, conveniently enough. We kill these things for their brain oil, which is a fantastically valuable resource that we intend to wreck the ecosystem to seize. Basically it’s Unobtainium 2.0.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

So after doing Save the Rainforests in the first movie, now we’ve moved on to Save the Whales. I wonder what classic 1990s environmental catchphrase Cameron will riff on next time?

They kill a WHALE THING, which just so happens to have been KATE’S BEST FRIEND.

AQUAMARINE KATE WINSLET

This is all your fault, Sam and Zoe! The assholes who are hunting you, which you completely warned us about from the beginning, have wrought havoc upon us, as we well knew was the risk when we declared that you could come live here! ALL YOUR FAAAAUUUULT!!

AQUAMARINE CLIFF CURTIS

We need to warn the other whales to go into hiding, like the all-loving saints that we are! Oh but the whale thing that befriended Britain is being ostracized for having a dead family, so nobody warn that fucker, he can go hang.

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

Shit! I better go warn my whale friend myself. Surely there’s nothing wrong with disobeying Dad and putting myself in harm’s way, I’m sure he would have said something at some point.

He goes to find the WHALE THING, accompanied by JAMIE and SIGOURNEY and IRRELEVANT TO THE PLOT.

EXT. OCEAN

The KIDS find the WHALE THING, only to discover that STEPHEN has already CAUGHT IT. They are captured by STEPHEN!

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Oh hey, the very first Na’vi we run into happen to be the children of the guy we’re hunting, that’s awfully convenient. Let’s use them as bait!

(pause)

Dang. And I thought this was contrived the first time we did it.

They round up the KIDS on the WHALING SHIP, and soon SAM and ZOE and KATE and CLIFF and ALL THE VILLAGERS show up to FIGHT THEM!

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

Heh heh, it worked. We non-aquatic guys got our boat surrounded by the entire water civilization for this climactic fight and FUCK did we make the exact same mistake as the good guys from Black Panther 2?

JACK CHAMPION

Not the exact same mistake! You guys also have no powered armor and have on board me, who is on the Na’vi’s side and extremely likely to sabotage you, so arguably what you’ve done is even dumber!

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

On the other hand, unlike the guys from not-Atlanta we don’t have any whale friends who could back us up OH WAIT WE TOTALLY DO. Fuck, why didn’t we bring those guys? That would have made things a lot easier.

(shrugs)

Oh well, let’s attack anyway! It’s time to commence Avatar: THE BAY OF SLAUGHTER!!

The GOOD GUYS and BAD GUYS FIGHT! Thanks to their SUPERIOR NUMBERS and HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE and the fact that there’s a WHALE THING RIGHT THERE WHO’S ON THEIR SIDE, the Na’vi are JUST BARELY able to keep the upper hand, and they free BRITAIN, but JAMIE gets mortally wounded! The family retreats with him as he SPUTTERS HIS LAST.

BLUE JAMIE FLATTERS

Cough, blergh, figures. Cameron couldn’t have given me one character flaw, could he. I would’ve taken anything, correcting people’s grammar a lot, chewing with my mouth open, whatever. But no, he just had to make me Too Pure for This Sinful Pandora. Asshole.

(dies)

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Grrr, THAT’S IT!! Stephen killed my son, and he’s still holding Sigourney captive, so we-

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

And Irrelevant to the Plot.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Sure, her too, so we need to end this! I know the climactic battle has already gone on for ages, but we’re gonna go back and make it go on for another twenty minutes or so, because this movie has absolutely no fucking restraint at all! Come on, everybody, ATTACK!!

AQUAMARINE KATE WINSLET

Actually we’re gonna sit this one out.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

What? Why?

AQUAMARINE KATE WINSLET

I dunno, this seems like kind of a personal fight. And YES they burned down our village and murdered my whale friend and whatnot so you’d think it’d be personal for us as well, but the audience doesn’t really care about us so it doesn’t count.

SAM, ZOE, and BRITAIN go back to the SHIP to keep fighting STEPHEN’S GUYS. The fighting continues in various permutations for a WHILE. Eventually STEPHEN has SIGOURNEY at gunpoint, but then ZOE gets JACK at knifepoint!

BLUE ZOE SALDANA

Release her or I kill your son!

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

You’re warning me that if I don’t spare this adoptive child that you helped raise, you’ll kill that other adoptive child that you helped raise?

BLUE ZOE SALDANA

Well Jack was more of a community project and I kind of don’t like him. Although you have no way of knowing any of that, so uh, just kind of trust that I’m not bluffing I guess?

STEPHEN releases SIGOURNEY and the FIGHT resumes! The ship’s HULL gets breached and the ship starts slowly SINKING with all the main CHARACTERS running around inside it trying not to DROWN!

DIRECTOR JAMES CAMERON

Ha ha haaa, and they said I’d never be able to make a Titanic 2! Well I SHOWED THEM ALL!!!

BLUE BRITAIN DALTON

Don’t worry Dad, I can help you out by showing you the special breathing technique the aquamarine guys showed us! Which you’d think you would already know since you did the same Discipline of Dampness training as me. I guess you skipped that class.

They all manage to swim to safety, but STEPHEN drowns. But then JACK rescues him and makes him NOT DROWN.

BLUE STEPHEN LANG

So, after all the murder and torture and destruction you’ve seen me do, all it takes is for me to show that I’d rather not let you get stabbed than murder your adoptive sister, and you suddenly like me?

JACK CHAMPION

Don’t read too much into it. Mostly we just need to keep you around so Sam can have another fight to the death against you next time. And the time after that. And the time after that. Wow, this is gonna get old.

He rejoins SAM and ZOE and the OTHERS.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Phew, it was a tough fight, but we did it. We’re safe again.

BLUE ZOE SALDANA

What the hell are you talking about? Stephen probably told Edie and the others exactly where we are. I doubt they’re gonna stop chasing us because we killed a bunch of their billion-dollar 3D-printed soldiers.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON

Crap, you’re right. I guess Cameron will probably ditch this water tribe for yet another new biome next time. Maybe that one could be some kind of fire kingdom-

NICKELODEON

DON’T FUCKING PUSH IT, SAM.

END.

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