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Spoiler Alert: This piece contains major spoilers for Avatar: The Way of WaterJames Cameron‘s Avatar: The Way of Water is a cinematic feat to behold, and I’ll stand by that statement until the day that I die. After years of the first Avatar being the butt of jokes and the constant complaint that nobody but Cameron wants five Avatar movies, we finally have The Way of Water, and it’s magnificent. Alongside other 2022 blockbusters like The Batman and Top Gun: Maverick, it’s proof that the auteur blockbuster is still alive, and can still thrive in a landscape ever-dominated by franchise films that all feel the same.
Both the general audience and most critics seem to be in love with The Way of Water, but there has been a recurring complaint that I’ve seen not just in other reviews, but also from my friends, family, and even some of my co-workers here at Collider, shocking I know. That complaint is centered around one character in particular, Spider, played by Jack Champion.
Who Is Spider?
Spider is the son of Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who has spent his entire life on Pandora since as a baby, he was unable to fit in any cyro-chambers. He now spends his teen years rocking dreadlocks, wearing only a loincloth and oxygen mask, and painting blue stripes all over his body. He prefers spending his time with the Sully family rather than actual humans, the great Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) describes him as akin to a “stray cat.” So yes, to answer your question, he’s Space Tarzan.
Why Does Spider Have Haters?
Some of the complaints made surrounding Spider have been that he doesn’t really do anything for the overall story in The Way of Water. The hinted romance between him and Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) is admittedly weird, especially considering the age gap between Weaver and Champion, but besides that, the argument that he has no ties to the film’s story is, at least in my eyes, preposterous.
One of the reasons why I believe The Way of Water is far superior to the first film is that the emotional swings have a stronger impact. Quaritch in particular, whose presence in the sequel initially had fans scratching their heads, has gone from a two-dimensional generic military villain in the first film, to a character who has a lot more depth, and the reason for that is Spider.
Spider Makes Quaritch Much More Interesting
Quaritch is still depicted as a man (or should I now say Avatar) with nothing but hate and rage underneath his newly blue skin. That being said, his relationship with Spider creates a few cracks in his lack of humanity. During the scene when General Ardmore (Edie Falco) is interrogating Spider with some sort of torture device, Quaritch steps in offering a more personal approach to extract information from Spider. Despite Quaritch continuing to claim that Spider means “nothing to him,” the way he treats his son compared to everyone else says quite a bit. Especially in the film’s third-act face-off between him and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), as soon as the latter nearly strikes the teen, Quaritch panics. Even in the two characters’ final scene together, you can sense that the sinister Colonel is hurt by his son’s rejection.
Spider Brings the Theme of Family Home
That’s just one piece of the larger argument in my ode to The Way of Water‘s “Monkey Boy.” Family is clearly a major theme in both Avatar movies, the entire reason why Jake was sent to Pandora in the first movie was that he was taking over from his recently deceased brother. Jake had always been the meathead, his brother had the brains. Spider has some striking similarities to Jake in the first film. The first film was about Jake falling in love not just with Neytiri, but also being in his Na’vi body. Spider clearly has a desire to become a Na’vi, and there’s always a chance that his soul could be transferred in a future sequel, especially with his connection to Kiri. We see Jake hugging Spider alongside Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) as the family mourns the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), yes in a lot of cases, we hug a lot of people when we’re in mourning, you can argue that all you want, but this scene really hammers home Cameron’s message on just how broad a family can be.
Spider Is the Audience and (Maybe) James Cameron
Well, yeah. Spider is cool. Yes, you can call him a rip-off of Tarzan, much like you called the first film a rip-off of Ferngully and Dances With Wolves, and similar to how people will inevitably call The Way of Water a rip-off of Free Willy. The Avatar films are all about their jaw-dropping spectacle, the story, at least for some moviegoers comes second. I know I’m not alone in watching the Avatar films wanting to be one of the Na’vi. Yes, they face a lot of dangerous situations, but to once again quote the mighty Jake Sully, you can adapt. Hell, there are fans out there who even find the Na’vi “hot.”
Spider is a character that serves as a character that we as an audience, or at least us Avatar die-hards, can relate to. He’s more in love with the jungles of Pandora than the so-called boring science labs that are full of a bunch of nerds, just like we’re more in love with the Na’vi than we are with the human characters. Real-life stories of feral children are often tragic, fiction has always made it into something to envy with characters like Peter Pan and Tarzan, living a life that is free of the burdens we normal humans have to face.
Maybe Spider is just James Cameron’s way of putting himself into the world of Avatar. He’s a filmmaker who has given us some all-time great blockbusters like Terminator 2 and Titanic, yet he’s now spent a large portion of his career dedicated to building the world of Avatar. Cameron has been on record saying that this world has been inside his head for decades, who can fault him for wanting to live in it, and putting himself in it, through the use of Spider.
I think I’ve made myself very clear on why Spider works. Not only does he build upon the film’s emotional core, but he’s a character that clearly was written out of nothing but love from James Cameron. Who are we to hate that?
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