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Unfortunate Landings: Please, Avatar, Never Visit Earth! | Movies

December 9, 2022

James Cameron et al seem to have turned critical opinion on Avatar: The Way of Water upside down with incredible speed, now that a few people have actually seen the film. A few months ago the sequel was pilloried, now some people seem to think it will be the best thing since the invention of mechanical armor. But wait until they pull off their next cosmic trick. Yes, according to producer Jon Landau, the Na’vi are coming to Earth!

“In movie five, there’s a section of the story where we go to Earth,” Landau told io9. “And we go there to open people’s eyes, to open Neytiri’s eyes, to what exists on Earth.

“The Earth is not only represented by the [evil, Pandora-scrubbing human corporation] GDR,” he added. “Just as you are defined by the choices you make in life, not all humans are bad. Not all Na’vi are good. And that is the case here on Earth. And we want to expose Neytiri to that.

We can only assume this means Neytiri and company will be traveling across the cosmos to humanity’s home planet, which might make for the weirdest fish-out-of-water fantasy movie since. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s execrable first film in Hollywood in 1970, Hercules in New York. Will the 10-foot-tall blue space elves be paraded before mankind like the horrid “human zoos” of the 19th and 20th centuries? Or will they arrive on Earth as free allies, with the horrors of the GDR presumably banished from recent history? What could have happened to Pandora in the three intervening films to lead us to such a bizarre eventuality?

To be honest, none of that matters. Because there’s an unwritten rule that sci-fi franchises originating on Earth should never, ever return to the home planet, because the results are usually atrocious. Remember the totally misleading trailer for David Fincher’s Alien 3 that suggested a visit to this end of the solar system was on the cards? In the end, the final movie closest to Earth featured a load of English character actors with proudly regional accents, and it was still rubbish. By the time the saga finally basks in the warmth of our own true sun in the divine Alien vs. Predator, any long-time franchise fan would probably have preferred the prospect of being impregnated by a Chestburster than sitting still. for over five minutes of Paul WS Anderson’s Awfully Bad Entrance.

Other examples of returning to Earth being a really bad idea include the entirety of 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the truly tedious about blimmin whales that spends most of its time with the crew of the Enterprise that deals around contemporary San. Francisco looking for water parks. Then there’s the end of the 2004 remake of Battlestar Galactica, a finale so pointless and disheartening that we all wanted to be back in a Viper gunning down Cylons with Starbuck and Apollo in the first season. They really should have learned from the original show’s eventual discovery of Earth in the short-lived and utterly gruesome 1980 Galactica, a 10-episode series that proved the crew of the legendary space cruiser really were better off miserable in space.

Our advice to the Na’vi would be not to travel to Earth anytime soon, especially since we know from the first Avatar movie that it likely turned in the 22nd century into a devastated and lawless hellscape. Surely Cameron’s reason for inventing Pandora is that its lush, verdant, psychedelic forests are perfect for generating stunning, jaw-dropping 3D dreamscapes in ways we can only assume a trip to New Malden in the 22nd century would not.

So please, Neytiri, stay where the xenon-tinged air is sweet and the six-legged beasts are always welcoming, at least when they’re not trying to eat you. Facing the prospect of meeting the locals on a hurricane-ravaged winter night in Chicago’s dystopian future or relaxing in the beautiful, warm and luxurious oceans of Pandora while messing around with other incredibly beautiful, we know where we prefer to be.