Avatar Theory: James Cameron's Sequels May Be Spoiled By ... Chinese Philosophy?

Ever since James Cameron released his record-breaking fantasy adventure film "Avatar" in 2009, viewers have clamored for a sequel. In 2022, Cameron released "Avatar: The Way of Water," the second film in what is expected to be a franchise of five. With "Avatar 3," scheduled for 2025, "Avatar 4" for 2029, and "Avatar 5" slated to be released in 2031, fans have a lot of time on their hands to speculate about what Cameron has planned for the Na'vi community and the planet of Pandora.

One popular "Avatar" theory gaining traction online comes from Reddit user u/Impacatus — and it involves a Chinese philosophical concept that has been around since the Han dynasty. According to the user's theory, Cameron is basing each of the "Avatar" films on one of the five phases that make up the Wuxing system. But to fully understand this theory — and what Cameron might be cooking up for the franchise — you need to understand the Wuxing system and how Chinese philosophers and academics apply it to different fields of study.

In the Wuxing system, there are five agents or phases whose interactions with each other are used to explain everything from politics and medicine to music and martial arts. The five phases that make up the Wuxing system are fire, water, wood, metal, and earth, and scholars use the way these phases create or destroy each other to account for different phenomena within their respective fields.

Fans have previously hypothesized that James Cameron could be centering each of the "Avatar" films around the four classical elements, a Greek philosophy that was proposed by Empedocles who was born around 490 BC. The four classical elements consist of fire, earth, air, and water, and fans have pointed out that while the second "Avatar" film was clearly focused on water, the first might have been thematically linked to earth or air. It's a solid argument, but thanks to a new point made in u/Impacatus' Reddit theory, more of Cameron's narrative arc might be falling into place.

The argument u/Impacatus makes on Reddit is that if the "Avatar" universe is following the Wuxing system rather than that of the classical elements, the first movie was thematically framed around the concept of wood and the second around water. Going forward, they suggest that the third movie might be based around fire, the fourth around earth, and the fifth around metal. And there are certainly some good arguments to back up this assertion.

For starters, there are five phases in Wuxing and five films in the franchise, which makes the former system a better match than the four classical elements. Additionally, James Cameron told the French outlet 20 Minutes that he plans to use fire in the third movie, which will be represented by a group of Na'vi called the "Ash People." A great deal of the first film takes place in a forest on Pandora, which backs up the idea that the first film might be thematically linked to the concept of wood.

u/Impacatus also suggested that the fourth film might take place on or be centered around Earth (both the planet and the phase), and could potentially chronicle the difficulties humans are experiencing as a result of their ecocide and the planet's rapidly depleting natural resources. For the fifth film, the Redditor predicted that Cameron will delve into the concept of metal, as told through humans' reliance on technology, and will detail how this could help or hurt the Na'vi community.

With the way the franchise's release schedule is staggered, it might take another eight years or so for viewers to receive any definitive answers. So at least for the time being, we'll have to make do with compelling fan theories like this one.