Avatar: The Way of Water Almost Included a Giant Space Battle

It has been nearly a month since Avatar: The Way of Water arrived in theaters, taking the saga of James Cameron’s billion-dollar film franchise to new heights. As a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, reveals, that ethos was almost taken pretty literally, with plans to originally include a major space battle. According to co-writer Rick Jaffa, one of the original plans for The Way of Water was for the Na’vi people to fight their foes in space, but it ultimately was scrapped entirely.

“There was one idea of a space battle with Na’vi,” Jaffa explained. “That idea got a lot of traction, and we talked a lot about it. We were struggling, though. How would that work with the story that we’re telling? Jim said, ‘Well, give me a few weeks.’ He went off and he wrote an entire script. And, by the way, a brilliant script. … At the end of the day, the whole script got thrown out because it just didn’t really work with the story we were telling.”

What is Avatar 2 about?

Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family, the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure. The film will see the return of Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Giovanni Ribisi, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, CCH Pounder, and Matt Gerald. New cast members include Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Michelle Yeoh, Jemaine Clement, Oona Chaplin, David Thewlis, and CJ Jones.

“The goal is to tell an extremely compelling story on an emotional basis,” Cameron previously shared with Total Film about The Way of Water. “I would say the emphasis in the new film is more on character, more on story, more on relationships, more on emotion. We didn’t spend as much time on relationship and emotion in the first film as we do in the second film, and it’s a longer film, because there’s more characters to service. There’s more story to service.”

What did you think of Avatar: The Way of Water? Would you have wanted to see this space battle? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!