Project 880: The Avatar that almost was

[TheManWithNoName]

A very, very cool article discussing Project 880, a scriptment written by Cameron after Titanic.

For those who don't want to read this all, some bullet points. Read the entire piece for in-depth description and analysis, but these bullet points are the main, stark differences between Project 880 and Avatar:

- Earth and its environmental problems are explored
- We see Josh Sully's Avatar being born
- It's revealed the Avatar program exists to train Na'vi to be an indigenous workforce for the Corporation, since it's so expensive to send human workers
- There are more humans, including a bioethics officer on the take, a video journalist, a head of the Avatar program and a second military dickwad
- There is an Avatar controller who is burnt out because his Avatar died with him in it. He committed Avatar suicide because he had fallen in love with a Na'vi girl who had been killed by the military
- The Avatars have a Na'vi guide named N'Deh, who is sleeping with Grace
- Grace survives the soul transfer
- Josh Sully gains the Na'vi trust by being a member of the community. He also excels in a major hunt
- Josh Sully shows his leadership not by taming a dragon but by leading a raid on Hell's Gate to rescue prisoners
- Josh Sully isn't the only Na'vi to ride a big dragon
- Pandora is a living entity and it sees the humans as a virus; it has been mobilizing the plants and animals to attack all along because it wanted to force the humans out
- There is no unobtainium beneath Hometree. The military just wants to wipe out the local Na'vi to send a message to all the tribes that they must be obeyed.
- Some of the humans and the Avatar controllers rise up in the final big battle
- Josh Sully tells the Earth that Pandora will give any humans that return a disease that will wipe out humanity

The differences between the scriptment (which I'll call Project 880 from here on in) and the finished film are immediate from the first page. In Avatar Cameron feels like he is rushing to get to the Na'vi, and we begin the movie off Earth. Project 880 spends time establishing Earth and the life of wheel-chair riding ex-Marine Josh Sully (there are a number of character name changes between 880 and Avatar); the opening page of 880 presents a very Blade Runner dystopia - rainy and gray and filthy and high tech. The people are miserable and stink because of water shortages. The entire surface of the Earth is essentially industrialized, and there are even cities spread out across the Moon. There are no longer national parks, and Yosemite is pointed out as a posh condo community. Josh lives in a megalopolis that takes up the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States, and his cramped, prison-like apartment is located where North Carolina is today.

This is the Earth of 100 years from now, and Project 880 takes its time setting this world up. Earth isn't just polluted (with filth as well as waste from nuclear terrorism) and ugly, it's literally doomed; extinctions have destroyed the planet's biodiversity and its entire ecosystem has collapsed. Humans scrape by because they can turn sea algea into food, and most waterfront property has been turned into manufacturing for the protein farms. This is an Earth where the people aren't just urban, they've completely and utterly lost touch with anything green. Keep this in mind, because this is one of the guiding elements of what makes Josh fall in love with Pandora.

http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969 ... Page1.html

Some of the changes made are very interesting. What do you think about it? Do you think it would've made a better movie than Avatar?

[Gramzamber]

- Pandora is a living entity and it sees the humans as a virus; it has been mobilizing the plants and animals to attack all along because it wanted to force the humans out

...

- Josh Sully tells the Earth that Pandora will give any humans that return a disease that will wipe out humanity

Pandora wants the humans out, then has Josh tell Earth the one thing that would make the humans stay.
Wait, what? Good thing it's just a draft, he probably realised the silliness of this.

[Tritio]

A really interesting article indeed. It gives more background information on where the film is coming from. I especially liked some parts of the Project 880 script, about Josh's different reaction compared to Jake when using his avatar for the first time (instead of running around like a kid, he cries. How touching is that?) and when he goes into the jungle for the first time (instead of wandering off on his own, he is afraid of the jungle, having never seen one before). Very very interesting. I wonder whether the sequel will touch some points of the Project 880 script, like showing the condition of Earth.

[Ziggy Stardust]

A really interesting article indeed. It gives more background information on where the film is coming from. I especially liked some parts of the Project 880 script, about Josh's different reaction compared to Jake when using his avatar for the first time (instead of running around like a kid, he cries. How touching is that?) and when he goes into the jungle for the first time (instead of wandering off on his own, he is afraid of the jungle, having never seen one before). Very very interesting. I wonder whether the sequel will touch some points of the Project 880 script, like showing the condition of Earth.

I agree; these elements should not have been dropped. Also, I like the inclusion of the "burn out" Avatar controller: not only does it show there is some consequence to the death of the Avatar body, but it shows that a controller falling in love with a Na'vi isn't unique to Sully. I also like the elimination of the idiotic big dragon thing, and that more humans join the final battle than the main characters. I kind of wish the idea of Pandora as a living entity had been eliminated entirely (I like the idea of it being a planet-wide symbiotic relationship, but I don't like the idea of it having a unique consciousness that guides the animals/plants in a "RAR NATURE FIGHTS BACK" scenario like the movie sort of half-assed).

[Zac Naloen]

- Pandora is a living entity and it sees the humans as a virus; it has been mobilizing the plants and animals to attack all along because it wanted to force the humans out

...

- Josh Sully tells the Earth that Pandora will give any humans that return a disease that will wipe out humanity

Pandora wants the humans out, then has Josh tell Earth the one thing that would make the humans stay.
Wait, what? Good thing it's just a draft, he probably realised the silliness of this.

The humans on Pandora have already been dealt with, that's the prevent more from coming back.

[GuppyShark]

Potential biological contamination would not be a problem if the planet was sterilised. In fact, a threat like that could encourage the hawks, not deter them.

Before people warm up the flamers, I'm not suggesting this is what *I* would do, just pointing out that threats can have unintended consequences.

[Sarevok]

The movie has been far better than this. It has a few good ideas but can be summed up as being too long to film and too dumb and full of Hollywood cliches. Avatar was a surprisingly smart and intelligent movie about a vast subject matter.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm glad you liked it, evilcats even though before seeing the movie you were totally for throwing space rocks at the blue cats.

Yeah, I'd agree. The simplicity in Cameron's Avatar was a good thing. He trimmed out the excess fat, showed us what we needed to see, and didn't meander or indulge too much by wasting time on Earth viruses or depictions of wastelands or superfluous journoes or precedents of Avatar guys going native and falling in love with the Na'vi (cause if that happened before, then Jake'd probably get his ass kicked by someone when they notice him acting similarly).

I also don't think the movie would've benefited from Sigourney Ripley fucking a blue cat alien.

Simplicity's beauty. It's a mark of good film making. Contrived crap is crap, and a sign of juvenile film making.

[Themightytom]

It sounds like 880 was too big a story to launch given teh amount of effort put into special effects. Cameron was wise to focus on introducing the verse in style, because he can return later to flesh it out and reintroduce his ideas.

They can still show gritty Earth
They can actually resurrect Gracie with a bit of a stretch.
They can have a disillusioned Avatar driver who's Avatar died on them, it could be Gracie FTW...
They can still threaten Earth with a disease because Earth will probably come back.
They can still Have Earth dick around with the locals as a workforce, they can have all the senseless violence they want.

880 doesn't seem like just a bin full of what could have been but isn't, it can probably still become a bin of future ideas.

[Shroom Man 777]

They can still show gritty Earth

Yeah, they can.

They can actually resurrect Gracie with a bit of a stretch.
They can have a disillusioned Avatar driver who's Avatar died on them, it could be Gracie FTW...

What's the point of resurrecting Ripley? This isn't Aliens: Resurrection. And anyway, that's cheap!

They can still threaten Earth with a disease because Earth will probably come back.

And they can also not do this. Serves no purpose.

They can still Have Earth dick around with the locals as a workforce, they can have all the senseless violence they want.

And have Jake and co. spring them!

880 doesn't seem like just a bin full of what could have been but isn't, it can probably still become a bin of future ideas.

Some of those ideas are good, some of them aren't. There's a reason why a lot of that stuff didn't make it to the movie.

[Gramzamber]

- Pandora is a living entity and it sees the humans as a virus; it has been mobilizing the plants and animals to attack all along because it wanted to force the humans out

...

- Josh Sully tells the Earth that Pandora will give any humans that return a disease that will wipe out humanity

Pandora wants the humans out, then has Josh tell Earth the one thing that would make the humans stay.
Wait, what? Good thing it's just a draft, he probably realised the silliness of this.

The humans on Pandora have already been dealt with, that's the prevent more from coming back.

No it just means they'd come back in full hazmat suits and be less likely to return to Earth just in case.
And as others said threats like that against a spacefaring people is like hanging up a sign saying "please glass the planet".
All in all I'm glad this was dropped.

[GrayAnderson]

Afternoon and Merry (belated) Christmas. Been a couple of days since I've been on. Some thoughts on the 880 stuff:
-I'm not sure whether 880, as written and with some limited revisions, would've been better. It would've been different, though. Parts would've stretched believability and the visuals might've been a bit overwhelming or overdone, but I don't think 880 would've been bad. Commercial viability would likely have been made a bit dodgier, though, and some of the stuff (extra fights, etc.) would probably need to get dropped.
-A lot of the stuff, particularly the background, seems to have been cut for time and pace more than anything. This isn't the first time Cameron has had to hack and slash at a script to jam it into a reasonable time: I was really into the Titanic (the ship) when I was ten, so I dug a leaked script out on the internet on a random search on the ship. I swear they had to cut thirty minutes from the final draft...and even then Cameron still had one of the few three hour plus blockbusters this side of who-knows-when. Given that Avatar was already costing hundreds of millions of dollars, seeing studio execs willing to gamble on a three-and-a-half hour film seems a bit of a stretch. 160 minutes is already on the long side, after all, and I can not see 880 being less than three hours and change long.
-Also, a lot of what I've contended is implied in Avatar in the review thread is spelled out in 880. Possibly the biggest problem with Avatar was "artifacts" of 880 (the "shock and awe" line, the "dying world" line, etc.). Some of these are explainable as figurative language (the "dying world" stuff in particular), but a lot of what was in the 880 script also made it into the external "fluff" for Avatar (the chartering/regulation of RDA, the strongly implied state of the Earth, etc.). The artifacts were the only parts of the film that I've heard really bad feedback on (a friend complained that the "shock and awe" line was a bit too blatant of a shout-out to Iraq, but in the 880 script it doesn't seem too out of context). In 880, Cameron spells out a lot of what he hinted at in Avatar.

I'd love to see the actual 880 script and hold it up next to the Avatar one just out of curiosity. With that said, the 880 script was clearly not quite ready for prime time. Some of the stuff would've been good (Jake's reaction to his Avatar body), some not so much (some of the virus stuff).

[Sarevok]

I think not showing Earth as a shithole was a brilliant decision. The only person really bitter about Earth is a wheel chair bound loner who was not helped by those he lost his legs fighting for. He has reasons to feel betrayed and seeing the whole world as a depressive dump compared to the vibrant world of Pandora where he is living a dream come true. Jake's point of view was biased. We only think Earth was a shitty place because Jakes life really sucked when he lived there. To show Earth as this hellhole would be out of place in a semi realistic scifi film depicting what should be a near post scarcity society. You can't judge an entire planet anymore by Jake's beliefs than a blanket statement on New York by a homeless person.

[Coyote]

I think not showing Earth as a shithole was a brilliant decision. The only person really bitter about Earth is a wheel chair bound loner who was not helped by those he lost his legs fighting for. He has reasons to feel betrayed and seeing the whole world as a depressive dump compared to the vibrant world of Pandora where he is living a dream come true. Jake's point of view was biased. We only think Earth was a shitty place because Jakes life really sucked when he lived there....

Partially true, but at the same time this is an Earth that allows corporations to amass a private army, and bully a bunch of less-advanced people because they can. The RDA company obviously feels like they can get away with wiping out the Omatikaya so long as they go through a period of acting like they tried to play nice for awhile at first. The mindset of RDA and their private army says a lot about the way things are probably being run back on Earth. It's Conquistadore Spain writ large.

[GrayAnderson]

I think not showing Earth as a shithole was a brilliant decision. The only person really bitter about Earth is a wheel chair bound loner who was not helped by those he lost his legs fighting for. He has reasons to feel betrayed and seeing the whole world as a depressive dump compared to the vibrant world of Pandora where he is living a dream come true. Jake's point of view was biased. We only think Earth was a shitty place because Jakes life really sucked when he lived there. To show Earth as this hellhole would be out of place in a semi realistic scifi film depicting what should be a near post scarcity society. You can't judge an entire planet anymore by Jake's beliefs than a blanket statement on New York by a homeless person.

I would agree with you on ignoring his statements if we had sources to contradict him in any way. We don't, and if anything the fluff (not to mention the cut material) implies that he's not that far off the mark, which means that while we're dealing with a source that may be biased as hell, it's about all we've got and there's nothing out there to contradict it.

Also, permit me to say that claims that in 150 years we "should" be living in a post-scarcity society strike me as questionable...particularly given how many projections of what 2000 was supposed to look like proved to be more than slightly idealistic. I don't see Blade Runner or The Matrix in our future, but I also don't see Star Trek, either.

Partially true, but at the same time this is an Earth that allows corporations to amass a private army, and bully a bunch of less-advanced people because they can. The RDA company obviously feels like they can get away with wiping out the Omatikaya so long as they go through a period of acting like they tried to play nice for awhile at first. The mindset of RDA and their private army says a lot about the way things are probably being run back on Earth. It's Conquistadore Spain writ large.

Well, it can also speak to desperation, too, which is what 880 at least seems to imply about things. There's precedent for corporations having private armies (the RL East India Company comes to mind...actually, most of the early shipping companies had at least small navies because of piracy issues). If the government on Earth doesn't want to fork over the cost of running police and defense operations out in space (which won't be cheap for them to do), then the best option left to them is to let the company deal with it and keep them on a leash as best they can...which they seem to do in both scripts.

That said, I think the Colonial Spain comparison probably isn't too far off insofar as I would not be surprised if we may have a bad case of "obedzago pero no cumplo" going on in both scripts (though this seems more clear in 880).

[Sarevok]

Also, permit me to say that claims that in 150 years we "should" be living in a post-scarcity society strike me as questionable...particularly given how many projections of what 2000 was supposed to look like proved to be more than slightly idealistic. I don't see Blade Runner or The Matrix in our future, but I also don't see Star Trek, either.

Just think about how much energy and resources it takes to make a spacecraft traveling at 70 percent of lightspeed. Then think about conjuring up an army with automated manufacturing capability on a planet lightyears away. Think about a reusable spaceshuttle that can also hover, carry huge payloads and is sturdy like a tank. People with that level of technology are not going to be in danger of dying as the environment on their home planet fails. They could be living in enclosed cities with life support and individual members could have sad lives. But it's not going to be a shithole of any kind. Infact it could be better than any first world country today.

Or maybe not since as Coyote mentions their society has serious moral failings and movie suggests serious economic downturns. But regardless of how bad their economy and politics failed Avatar Earth would be better than most countries today to live in given their tech level. People in the middle of the Great Depression and rise of fascist thugs in politics were still better overall than people 1000 years ago.

[Gramzamber]

Partially true, but at the same time this is an Earth that allows corporations to amass a private army, and bully a bunch of less-advanced people because they can. The RDA company obviously feels like they can get away with wiping out the Omatikaya so long as they go through a period of acting like they tried to play nice for awhile at first. The mindset of RDA and their private army says a lot about the way things are probably being run back on Earth. It's Conquistadore Spain writ large.

I don't know, I'd say there's a lot you can get away with if you're in another star system that's a 10 year round trip away.
It doesn't necesarilly mean that RDA could pull that kind of shit on Earth.

[GrayAnderson]

Also, permit me to say that claims that in 150 years we "should" be living in a post-scarcity society strike me as questionable...particularly given how many projections of what 2000 was supposed to look like proved to be more than slightly idealistic. I don't see Blade Runner or The Matrix in our future, but I also don't see Star Trek, either.

Just think about how much energy and resources it takes to make a spacecraft traveling at 70 percent of lightspeed. Then think about conjuring up an army with automated manufacturing capability on a planet lightyears away. Think about a reusable spaceshuttle that can also hover, carry huge payloads and is sturdy like a tank. People with that level of technology are not going to be in danger of dying as the environment on their home planet fails. They could be living in enclosed cities with life support and individual members could have sad lives. But it's not going to be a shithole of any kind. Infact it could be better than any first world country today.

Or maybe not since as Coyote mentions their society has serious moral failings and movie suggests serious economic downturns. But regardless of how bad their economy and politics failed Avatar Earth would be better than most countries today to live in given their tech level. People in the middle of the Great Depression and rise of fascist thugs in politics were still better overall than people 1000 years ago.

1) Advances in one area of technology do not imply advances in other areas. There's very little, if any, suggestion that (to offer an example) nanotechnology is working, at least on a replicator-level scale like we see in Star Trek and whatnot.
2) Also, certain areas of quality of life may be improved while others languish. It's quite possible that you can have all of the algae-produced food substitute that you wish and watch all of the television you want to but can't order a decent steak for a respectable price anywhere.

A "near post scarcity society" is substantially different from just a jump in overall living standards. Also, even if you have infinite energy at your disposal that does not mean you can make anything. Energy is only one input into most products, and if the other inputs are missing then I can't make those products. I can't turn a near-infinite amount of electricity into an automobile without the components, or at least the raw materials and the knowledge of how to convert those materials into the necessary components.

I don't know, I'd say there's a lot you can get away with if you're in another star system that's a 10 year round trip away.
It doesn't necesarilly mean that RDA could pull that kind of shit on Earth.

Actually, assuming that most communications are a bit clunky and delayed (at the very least they have to sit in the queue for the FTL comms for a bit...not to mention difficulties enforcing rules across the distance), the Colonial Spain comparison holds up. A lot of the viceroys also got away with stuff they couldn't have pulled in Spain proper.

If RDA has complete control over the comms, then the miracle might well be that we're not looking at a replay of the Congo Free State in either script, as such a situation could easily develop.

[Gramzamber]

Anyway I'd think that in the case of a shithole, dying earth with no ecosystem you'd think the true conflict wouldn't be about resource mining but colonisation.
Humans setting up cities on Pandora seeking a new earth-like world, maybe even trying to supplant the ecosystem with selective terraforming to make the atmosphere breathable.. and fucking over the natives big time that way. Hey, desperation is ugly.

[Samuel]

Anyway I'd think that in the case of a shithole, dying earth with no ecosystem you'd think the true conflict wouldn't be about resource mining but colonisation.
Humans setting up cities on Pandora seeking a new earth-like world, maybe even trying to supplant the ecosystem with selective terraforming to make the atmosphere breathable.. and fucking over the natives big time that way. Hey, desperation is ugly.

The problem with that is they can only ship a few hundred people a year. Move people are probably born everyday. It would be more efficient to just try space habitats. That and if the problem is ecological collapse, taking over Pandora and destroying the ecosystem would be counterproductive.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Also, permit me to say that claims that in 150 years we "should" be living in a post-scarcity society strike me as questionable...particularly given how many projections of what 2000 was supposed to look like proved to be more than slightly idealistic. I don't see Blade Runner or The Matrix in our future, but I also don't see Star Trek, either.

Just think about how much energy and resources it takes to make a spacecraft traveling at 70 percent of lightspeed. Then think about conjuring up an army with automated manufacturing capability on a planet lightyears away. Think about a reusable spaceshuttle that can also hover, carry huge payloads and is sturdy like a tank. People with that level of technology are not going to be in danger of dying as the environment on their home planet fails. They could be living in enclosed cities with life support and individual members could have sad lives. But it's not going to be a shithole of any kind. Infact it could be better than any first world country today.

Or maybe not since as Coyote mentions their society has serious moral failings and movie suggests serious economic downturns. But regardless of how bad their economy and politics failed Avatar Earth would be better than most countries today to live in given their tech level. People in the middle of the Great Depression and rise of fascist thugs in politics were still better overall than people 1000 years ago.

All of those things require resources and industrial centers to produce. The planet will probably have reached its carrying capacity by then causing biosphere collapse. A post scarcity society you describe would be completely converted to agriculture and industry, and the natural processes which maintain agriculture would be dead necessitating the definition of high input agriculture, which will kill off ocean life. The emissions of CO2 and other pollutants would turn the earths climate into a chaotic hot box.

And if you think the economic fruits of all that destruction will be equally distributed you have something else coming.

[Covenant]

880 had some interesting elements, like the idea of an independently living Avatar, which might have made for some interesting development if it had gone more that way, but I think the way it turned out was for the best. I'm still not a fan of the movie, but tacking on more plot wouldn't change my perspective. The movie that 880 became is the story that Cameron wanted to tell, and slightly trimmed down. Not everyone will like everything, and there's no way to market the movie to everyone and keep the story the same, so they were right to aim the movie like a torpedo rather than like buckshot.

The only things that 880 really changed in a huge way was the way that Earth was presented, and keeping Earth out of the frame didn't confuse the message at all. It's not like he had written a script in which the Na'vi weren't humanoid, or something that would have actually changed the trajectory of the plot. Avatar was a cleaner product.

[aieeegrunt]

Threatening Earth with some killer virus is especially stupid and it's a good thing it was cut. Nobody is going to tolerate the existence of a rival with whom they've already exchanged hostilities to exist that has the potential capability to genocide your whole species. I'd expect as many of the biggest impactors they could accelerate to fractional C speeds to be heading towards Pandora as soon as possible, it would be exaclty what I would recommend myself.

[Sky Captain]

The fact that humans have mastered interstellar flight means they have access to the material and energy resources of the whole solar system. Their rapid prototyping technology is only few steps away from true replicators. In order to produce antimatter fuel for starships and to power the boost lasers they must have space based solar power installations capable of supplying all the possible future Earth energy needs many times over. Their biotechnology capability (growing avatar body) shows they could easily recreate the species that have gone extinct (they should have their DNA anyway) and given time even rebuild the whole ecosystems.

Cheap nonpolluting energy means they could grow most of the food in vertical farms or even algae bioreactors (given demonstrated biotech capabilities genetically engineered algae that produces food with all necessary nutrients should be within reach). If anything there should be much more land given to wilderness than today because farming can be done far more compact. It`s said most humans live in mega cities and total population IIRC is ~20 billion. If avarage population density is like in today's modern cities all 20 billion could take up relatively small part of total Earth land area leaving a lot more to nature than possible today. Avatarverse humans really are society that are about to enter the post scarcity era.

Unless there is some Evil government artificially creating resource and energy scarcity and ruining ecosystems on Earth on purpose or incompetence of epic proportions there should`t be any large scale poverty, resource and energy shortages.