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With the first Avatar, Cameron has left himself plenty of latitude for where he can take us on the second Pandoran adventure. Money won't be an object and neither will be running time so all that's really undetermined is what James Cameron wants to do in movie #2. While I'm certain that Mr. Cameron doesn't have any problem coming up with his own ideas for Avatar 2, these seven ideas I had for what we might see in the sequel are merely meant for the rest of us to speculate and wonder about. (That said, if you see something in here that you like, give me a phone call and I'll work something out with you Jim. It's all about making the best milkshake, right?)

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  1.  The RDA never left.

What, do you really think that Selfridge, his RDA cronies and the mercs would up and leave Pandora? I can't see Selfridge's bosses being cool with him shipping back to Earth. Assuming that there's no faster-than-light communication technology it's up to the RDA and military types now in orbit around Pandora to figure out what their next move is. With no access to important things planetside like a breathable atmosphere, gravity and their Avatar bodies, the RDA and their muscle may decide that it's better to try and mine the rest of the moons of Polyphemus to see if there's any Unobtanium in Pandora's neighbors. And there might be -- it's just that it won't be as easy to get as the stuff on Pandora.

That may set the stage for the RDA in space to try and launch a new offensive against the Na'vi but this time from orbit. They may think that they're 100% safe in space since the Na'vi don't seem to have any biological spacesuits growing on their trees. In fact, the new RDA base might be on another moon of Polyphemus -- how's Jake gonna fly over there on his red Toruk and spank pinkskin ass?

  2. The RDA are still on Pandora.

Remember those scenes of Jake making alliances with the other Na'vi tribes? Suppose this was one of Cameron's seeds that he planted, the idea that there are other Na'vi tribes out there and that not all of the tribles get along with each other. Suppose that there's a Na'vi tribe on the other side of Pandora. Maybe they aren't as well-off as the Na'vi in the Omaticaya tribe. Maybe the other tribe is experiencing hardship through drought or pestilance. Maybe the RDA have done something to the local wildlife or crops that makes it look like the Na'vi's mother goddess, Eywa, has forsaken them. This other Na'vi tribe might be willing to welcome the RDA with open arms if the humans are offering the basics that they need to survive. Who cares if the humans want rocks in exchange for drinking water or food?

That sets the stage for Jake's Na'vi tribe to do battle with the human-backed Na'vi tribe. If the humans learned one lesson from their battle in Avatar it's that you can't fight the Na'vi unless you're on equal footing. By making friends with a different Na'vi tribe, Cameron's sequel story could draw more historical reference from the Indian tribes that sided with the European settlers, forsaking their culture and values for the white man's law and civilization. And if this new Na'vi tribe has different animals living on its side of the planet, Jake's people may not be ready to fight them in a head-to-head battle.

  3.  Grace is in the Pandoran neural network.

Before the final battle in Avatar begins, Jake tries to talk to the Pandoran Tree of Souls, hoping that Grace's consciousness now resides somewhere in there. What if it does? How will a human consciousness affect the Pandoran circle of life? Could Jake find a way to somehow communicate directly with Grace if she's alive in there? Can she be downloaded to a newly grown Avatar body? And could the Pandoran spirit of their world, Eywa, somehow be copied and returned to Earth to regrow our own planet's biomass, Gaia?

  4.  Medusa in the sky.

One of the animals from the Avatar scriptment that wasn't used in the movie was the Medusa. These immense, jellyfish-like creatures float in the skies of Pandora, their mile-long tentacles sweeping across the ground to try and pick up any animals or plant life they can catch, then lift it up to their feeding mouth. We might not have seen any Medusa in the first Avatar movie but something tells me this idea won't be left out of the sequel. In fact, this sounds like a great animal for which the human allied Na'vi tribe from idea #2 could use against Jake's tribe.

  5.  Reinforcements arrive.

Whether it's waiting ten years for heavy military reinforcements to arrive in the Pandoran system or if they're already en route and get there sooner, Cameron could go the easier route and give us round two of another human-Na'vi battle. This time there could be better and bigger weapons of destruction used by the humans to try and secure a new groundhold on Pandora. This could bring Jake to go around his world and see if he can assemble a global army of Na'vi to come and kick humans off the planet for a second time. While it seems the least original of the possible sequel ideas for Avatar 2, it does offer us a better chance of seeing a follow-up arrive sooner than later. Cameron said that one of the reasons for 20th Century Fox to make an Avatar 2 is because all of the models already have been coded and rendered. Sure, we would want to see new weapons, vehicles and Pandoran creatures in that second battle but it won't be as hard to make those as it was to make all of the environment and lifeforms for the first movie.

  6.  Exploring under Pandora

Another of the hints that Cameron has dropped is that we might get to see what it's like under the surface of Pandora. Knowing Cameron's fondness for exploring the oceans on his home planet, why wouldn't he want to show us what lurks under the waves of Pandora's oceans? We know that the moon has got them since they were visible from orbit when Jake's spaceship arrived in orbit. What kind of bioluminescent aquatic Pandoran animals could there be in the seas, and how would they be interconnected with each other? Are there Na'vi tribes that live close to the water and that ride the water equivalent of Banshees?

  7. The other moons of Pandora.

Cameron may choose to show us more of Pandora in Avatar 2 but he's already hinted that he's got an idea to show us what some of the other real estate around the gas giant of Polyphemus looks like up close. If Cameron has already started thinking about showing us what it looks like on the other moons of Pandora, that natually begs the question of how does the story move from Pandora to one of its sister moons? What would happen that would require Jake or his Na'vi friends to have to visit another Polyphemian moon?

Here's a possibility: the other moons in the Polyphemus system also have their own version of the neural network bio-mind of Pandora. Maybe, and I realize that this idea may be going out a lot further on a branch than my other ideas, maybe there's a macro version of the Pandoran link that stretches across all of the moons of Polyphemus. Maybe if something happens on one moon it can have an effect on another moon. If that were the case, could the RDA stripmining a sister moon of Pandora have an impact on the other biolinked worlds? If that were the case then suddenly Jake and Ney'tiri have a very good reason to find a way to leave their world and pay a visit to the new RDA headquarters.

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Those are just seven ideas to get you started thinking about where the story will Avatar 2 will go. At some point in the months ahead James Cameron will have to go on the record and say what's on his mind for the sequel and whether he will be back to write the screenplay and direct it. With Avatar, Cameron has finally been able to meet the inspirational level behind the original Star Wars movie, the film that got him motivated to set out on his filmmaker's path. And like Star Wars, the universe of Avatar won't be restricted to a single movie. Whatever happens next to Jake Sully on his new homeworld, the people on our world are waiting to find out.