In the 2009 film Avatar, the main story is set in 2154. The date places the events more than a century after the film’s release and frames Pandora as part of a technologically advanced but environmentally strained future.
The plot follows former Marine Jake Sully, who travels to Pandora to participate in the Avatar Program. Human operators control genetically engineered Na’vi-human bodies so they can move through Pandora’s environment and communicate with the Na’vi. The conflict concerns human mining interests and the Omaticaya clan’s home.
The film’s future technology includes interstellar travel, suspended animation, advanced spacecraft, biotechnology, and remote neural links. Despite that futuristic setting, its central conflict is recognizable: industrial expansion confronts an indigenous culture and a living ecosystem.
The year 2154 belongs to the film’s fictional chronology. It should not be confused with the year Avatar premiered, 2009, or with the year the story’s protagonist first enters the Avatar Program.