Time jumps can be one of the coolest and most effective narrative tools for worldbuilding. Anime and manga do this all the time, where stories following young teenagers feature a big time jump, after which the protagonist is older, more trained, and much more powerful — as are the threats. One of the best and most surprising of these is “Gurren Lagann,” which uses a time jump to hugely change the tone of the story, and increase its scope from a small-scale story of rebellion to an intergalactic fight where galaxies are thrown around like baseballs. It’s weird. It’s awesome.
That James Cameron will introduce a six-year time jump in “Avatar 4” after already doing a 16-year time jump in “The Way of Water” is one of the best things he could do. It shows that the world of “Avatar” truly is bigger than just Jake Sully, that it is a family saga and a generational battle for the fate of Pandora. Given that the Disney theme park is technically canon, and also set a century after the end of the conflict shown in the films, it’s likely this story will play out over many, many years.
Say what you will about the simplistic story of the first film, but if they keep doing time jumps, then by the time “Avatar 5” is released (22 years after the original), we’ll have witnessed a sci-fi epic unlike any other in blockbuster cinema.