That basic plot dates from 1993. I worked on it on and off over the next few years, when I actually was working for James Cameron at Digital Domain.
I felt there was no way the twist ending could be kept a secret. Also the battle with Earth was becoming more and more interesting, and it started taking over a longer part of the end of the script. It would be a War of the Worlds told from the alien's point of view! And they would be adorably cute and emphatic! It all seemed like a great idea and I really wanted to see it. The original environmentalist stuff was reduced but it was an excellent motivation plot point. I though it could be two movies, with the war of the worlds being the sequel, I thought this would work very well because you would be rooting for the aliens in the first one, and questioning your own judgement in the second. But I am not James Cameron and I doubt suggesting two movies would get me very far. I do wonder if that is what James Cameron is up to with the Avatar sequels, but I have not heard any such rumors.
I did want it to be somewhat hard science fiction (much more so than Avatar) and did spend some time developing the back story and technology:
- The reason the Fluffies are in such a advantageous position is that they had the only hyperdrive, which was an alien machine the earth people found abandoned in orbit around Saturn, and the Fluffies aquired during the battle. This plot point fixes a lot of problems and makes a Fluffy resistance and attack (which would take years to organize) possible. (It also means there cannot be human survivors of the attack back on earth, you can see I did not think of this when I wrote the treatment!)
- Both sides use very similar ships and technology, as they both steal from each other. This is how things really work. They look different, but it is just aesthetics, the Fluffies like curves and Earth likes angular shapes.
- The ships have impervious force fields, but those fields are opaque reflective bubbles, and the ship is blind and cannot fire it's engine or weapons when it is on. It seems Earth can make much bigger force fields, while the Fluffies have the ability to adjust them to a partial state (where they are just highly refractive).
- The ships fly vertically and artificial gravity is from spinning them or from thrust. And the main weapon is the engine, an engine capable of 1G thrust is vastly more powerful than any particle beam we can dream of today.
- There is no sound in space, and you cannot see weapon beams except when they hit things such as gas. Ships are thousands of miles apart when they fight. And space after a battle is filled with shrapnel flying at lethal speeds. (well, I can always dream that a movie will dare to do these things, I don't expect it however...)
Other than such technical details, I never really came up with a script. Later versions kept making the war bigger, until the original movie had all happened in flashback. I tried lots of variations involving a Fluffy who is caught by the humans and thus makes the first contact (all others are killed when their ships are shot down). I never really had anything that I thought was a story. Writing is a frustrating experience. Besides what is in the treatment, here are some plot ideas:
- Earth proves they are as nasty as the Fluffies, they have launched a planet-killer kinetic weapon, an interstellar ramjet which will be going at nearly the speed of light when it reaches the Fluffy planet and will smash it to asteroids, but this will happen 60 years from now and nobody can stop it unless they cooperate.
- The aliens who built the hyperdrive show up and are not nice. The humans and Fluffies are forced to work together, fortunately both are armed to the teeth.
- There is a coup on the Fluffy planet and the isolationists take over, the main character's father installed as the figurehead. But the main character is captured by the humans and it is a political mess to back out of the war...
- The Fluffies and Humans find common ground, and are last seen attacking another civilization who is destroying their environment even worse than either of them have been doing.
Also it was obvious that my career was going to be writing software, not producing movies. In addition the failure of 2D animation (the movies Treasure Planet and Titan A.E were similar sci-fi/animation mash-ups and they bombed!) made me think this was not going to work (I was convinced my idea required traditional 2D animation so the Anime/Disney styles would fight).
Attached is the most complete treatment, dating form 1999. In this version I added child Fluffies in an attempt to make this lighter. I am not sure if my idea worked.
Here you can see my work as a Production Designer. To seriously do this film you would need a lot of talented designers, and I thought it would be really cool to have conflicting designs for the Fluffies, Earth, and also the mysterious aliens who made the hyperdrive.