Avatar: The Abridged Script
By Rod | Jan 14th, 2010 | 87 Comments | Movie:
Confused, Jake Sully aims for Tobias Fünke's head.FADE IN:
INT. SPACESHIP
SAM WORTHINGTON awakens from cryogenic sleep as the PILOT comes onto the radio.
PILOT
Alright everyone, we’re now arriving at Pandora.
SAM WORTHINGTON
Pandora? No wonder I keep hearing the same twenty songs over and over again.
SAM exits his tiny cryogenic tube and stretches his legs.
SAM WORTHINGTON (V.O.)
Air travel has been pretty restrictive since the Christmas underwear bomber. Anyway, it’s 2149 and I’m about to continue my dead brother’s work to help Giovanni Ribisi make enough money to buy some new vowels for his last name. Oh, and I’ll be occasionally dropping some voiceover exposition, because what would lazy storytelling be without voiceover?
INT. MILITARY BASE – PANDORA
SAM wheels his 145-YEAR-OLD WHEELCHAIR into a briefing room to hear a speech by STEPHEN LANG.
SAM WORTHINGTON
Holy shit, Duke Nukem Forever really does get released in the future!
STEPHEN LANG
No, I’m the film’s bullheaded tough guy. Welcome to Pandora. There’s not enough oxygen here to breathe, though it’s worth mentioning there is enough oxygen for totally awesome explosions.
SAM WORTHINGTON
Is the gravity at least the same?
STEPHEN LANG
Actually, we’ll be constantly mentioning the lower gravity here, but it will somehow have absolutely no effect on anyone.
SAM meets SIGOURNEY WEAVER and JOEL MOORE.
SIGOURNEY WEAVER
I hate you because you’re a marine, and marines are stupid. Though I will turn out to be wrong about you, I will be correct about all other members of the military. Fuck the troops.
JOEL MOORE
Let’s get you logged into your Avatar 3D IMAX Experience.
SAM WORTHINGTON
So what are these things? They look like fucking Night Elves. Is World of Warcraft still around in the future?
JOEL MOORE
Actually yes, but you get your epic mount at level 3 now. Anyway, these are avatars. They are grown by combining the DNA of the Pandora natives with human DNA, but somehow they come out genetically identical to the natives.
SAM mentally links to BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
I can feel my legs again! That makes it completely worth how utterly ridiculous I look!
BLUE JOEL MOORE
Be careful with it, Sam. James Cameron spent millions of dollars to develop the advanced facial capture technology it needs.
BLUE SIGOURNEY WEAVER
Cameron spent millions to develop advanced facial capture technology then strapped it to a guy whose face shows no expression?
BLUE JOEL MOORE
In spite of his role in fucking up the Terminator franchise, no less. Guy’s a saint.
EXT. JUNGLE – PANDORA
The BLUE CAT GROUP travels into the JUNGLE to HUG TREES AND SHIT.
BLUE SIGOURNEY WEAVER
Look Joel, this plant is exactly the same as it was yesterday! Research! Science! Breakthroughs!
BLUE JOEL MOORE
Alright Sam, just keep guard while we do some science. Keep your eyes open; this is a fantastical, far-away land, which means that the organisms are all not quite the same as organisms on earth.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
I have a not-quite-rhinocerous staring at me. And now a not-quite-panther is chasing me.
BLUE SIGOURNEY WEAVER
Run! Run like McG is chasing you with the script to Terminator 5!
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
(running)
Why the hell did they give me a gun if it can’t do anything?
SAM gets separated from JOEL and SIGOURNEY.
SIGOURNEY WEAVER
We’d better head back to base before it gets dark. There’s no way to locate Sam now.
BLUE JOEL MOORE
No way to locate him? We spent billions of dollars growing these things and didn’t bother giving them a GPS or something? I have a fucking GPS in my running shoes. How does the “jacking in” process work if we can’t locate the fucking things?
Meanwhile SAM wanders deeper into the jungle. As night falls, the plants start to emit a neon glow.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Oh fuck, I think I wandered into a Joel Schumacher movie. Someone, get me out of here!
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
(subtitled)
You should not be here. Jesus, am I subtitled with the Papyrus font? Fuck it, I’ll speak English.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Take me to your tribe leader. I need to become a member of your people.
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Absolutely not.
(pause)
Alright.
SAM and ZOE go to HOMETREE and meet ZOE’S FATHER, WES STUDI.
BLUE WES STUDI
Welcome to my village, Sam Worthington. I am Wes, a Cherokee actor. You’ve already met my Latina daughter Zoe, and this is my wife, CCH Pounder, a black actresses. Over here is Laz Alonso, who hates you.
BLUE LAZ ALONSO
I am also played by a black actor.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Wow, nice to know the casting session was just as awkwardly racist as the rest of the movie. Are we going to do the same shit as Pocahontas, The Last Samurai, Ferngully, and Dances with Wolves?
BLUE WES STUDI
Ooh, I was in that last one! Anyway, Zoe will train you to become one of us and eventually the best of us.
BLUE LAZ ALONSO
What?! I am blue with rage!
ZOE takes SAM through PANDORA.
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
We Na’vi are one with nature. We reject your culture’s love of technology and instead we appreciate the harmony and beauty of the world.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
I sure am glad computer technology has gotten sophisticated enough that James Cameron could make his $230 million 3D IMAX movie about rejecting technology! I think I understand: technology bad, nature good!
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Exactly! Not counting the technology that cryogenically froze you, transported you to this planet, sustains your oxygen supply, or allows you to wirelessly link into an avatar, of course.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Of course.
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Now, see the winged animals behind me?
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Yes. Do we appreciate the beauty and majesty of these grand creatures?
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Huh? No, we enslave them. Plug your ponytail into one to take control of it’s mind. Fuck you, blue pterodactyl!
SAM and ZOE fly around for a while so that the AUDIENCE MEMBERS WEARING UNCOMFORTABLE 3D GLASSES feel they got their money’s worth.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
What the fuck? Floating mountains? How did “floating mountains” make it all the way from script to storyboard to rendering without anyone asking how mountains can float while people just walk around?
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
The best part is that the floating mountains have waterfalls. Where is the water coming from?
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Holy shit, you’re right! I think I’m in love with you!
SAM and ZOE have sex.
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Oops, is it gay if the braids touch?
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
We’d better cut to something else before the audience members realize they are watching giant blue kitty cats fuck.
Meanwhile…
INT. MILITARY BASE
GIOVANNI RIBISI is talking to STEPHEN LANG.
GIOVANNI RIBISI
Hang on while I putt this ball into this mug for the 3D crowd. Alright now, I think it may be time to blow up Hometree.
STEPHEN LANG
I growl with approval.
SIGOURNEY WEAVER
You can’t! Don’t you understand how amazing these trees are? Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it!
JOEL MOORE
That’s almost ten-thousand connections!
GIOVANNI RIBISI
Listen, I don’t care about trees. I’m here to mine Unobtanium! Mwa ha ha!
SIGOURNEY WEAVER
“Unobtanium”? Really? May as well have just gone with “MacGuffinium”.
GIOVANNI orders HOMETREE destroyed but BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON tries to stop it.
STEPHEN LANG
Hey, zoom in on that blue guy. Enhance!
GIOVANNI RIBISI
Oh, did you just say “enhance” while looking at a paused video? I think I just got Movie Cliche Bingo!
STEPHEN storms into the AVATAR LINK ROOM to unplug SAM WORTHINGTON.
JOEL MOORE
No, don’t! Unplugging an avatar is extremely dangerous!
STEPHEN LANG
And yet we’re going to do it like ten times in the movie without consequence!
STEPHEN unplugs SAM then locks him, JOEL, and SIGOURNEY in a cell. MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ breaks them out.
MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ
Stephen just blew the fuck out of Hometree. I disobeyed a direct order and left, but I guess that’s alright in the future because I’m not locked in there with you. Let’s go fly the mobile avatar link station into the jungle somewhere.
SAM WORTHINGTON
But how will that work, without any connections to anything of any kind, including a power source?
MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ
ALL THINGS IN JAMES CAMERON’S DREAMS ARE POSSIBLE IN THE FUTURE!
SAM links back up with BLUE SAM and captures THE ONLY THING ON THE PLANET THAT ISN’T BLUE OR GREEN.
SAM WORTHINGTON (V.O.)
Somehow, I was the first guy to ever think of jumping onto the red flying pterodactyl from above. So that made me the king or something, and I went around gathering natives all around the planet to help defend against the next attack.
STEPHEN LANG
Giovanni, someone is gathering Na’vi together to defend the Tree of Souls. They’ve gone from ten to the second to over ten to the third Na’vi!
GIOVANNI RIBISI
Hmm. What would Paul Reiser from Aliens do? I guess, murder everyone.
STEPHEN assembles a team to bomb the TREE OF SOULS. BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON leads a counterattack. Even MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ helps!
MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ
You’re not the only one with a gun, bitch.
(dies)
Okay now you are, bitch.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON takes down the ship carrying the bomb, causing it to detonate a few yards from the original target and therefore doing NO DAMAGE. STEPHEN LANG enters a BATTLEMECH and jumps to the surface.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
A battlemech? Really?
STEPHEN LANG
James Cameron is convinced every movie would be better with battlemechs. To be fair, he’s probably right.
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Huh. Well, there’s only one thing in the world that could possibly make a battle between an 8-foot-tall smurf and a giant mech any more ridiculous.
STEPHEN LANG
A knife fight.
STEPHEN and SAM fight. Eventually, SAM wins! And some 3D ARROWS jump out at the AUDIENCE but in a totally immersive and not-at-all gimmicky way!
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Sam, we did it! Why aren’t you more excited?
BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Well, I’m confused. I can’t figure out why the internet is so in love with this movie. It’s just another three-hour James Cameron blockbuster that uses an absurdly cliche plot full of painfully corny dialogue to hold together what is merely a showcase for stunning special effects.
BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Simple. People on the internet can’t dress up as characters from Titanic. Half the internet is Furries, dude.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment