Spider Is Secretly Key To Avatar: The Way Of Water’s Success

Avatar: The Way of Water is James Cameron’s latest feat of cinema magic, but it’s the human character, Spider, who could be the key to the film’s success. In the follow-up to his 2009 epic, Avatar, Cameron expands on the beautiful world of Pandora, introducing audiences to new landscapes and new characters as Jake Sully and his family flee from their home in the forest to protect those closest to them. While Avatar acted as an impressive showcase of visual effects and CGI technology, Avatar: The Way of Water ups the ante by bringing a fresh perspective to the world of Pandora’s indigenous Na’vi.

After successfully defeating the forces of the RDA and permanently moving his consciousness into his Avatar body at the end of Avatar, Jake Sully fully integrates himself into life with the Omatikaya people. Picking up over a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water debuts Jake and Neytiri’s children: Neteyam, Lo’ak, Tuktirey “Tuk”, Grace Augustine’s biological daughter Kiri, and the human Miles “Spider” Socorro, Colonel Quaritch’s son who became an honorary member of the Sully family. The Sully children provided some of the best moments in The Way of Water, but Spider’s inclusion proved that Cameron is on the road to success once again.

Spider Makes Avatar: The Way Of Water’s World Feel Real

With the development of the Avatar film series, James Cameron always ran the risk of his vibrant new world feeling too strange for audiences to become fully invested, but this was solved with the inclusion of Spider as an honorary member of the Sully family in The Way of Water. Living among the Na’vi characters on Pandora, the human teenager Spider brings a brilliant sense of scale to The Way of Water, not only making the looming physiques of the Na’vi more evident, but also showing the physical differences in the Na’vi, as well as making the CGI of the entire world feel much more real.

Avatar: The Way of Water brought a much more visually realistic impression of life on Pandora than the original film did, even taking into account how ahead of its time Avatar was to begin with. Showing the human Spider interact so seamlessly with the Avatar and Na’vi characters, who were far larger than him, marks a fantastic technical achievement for James Cameron and the Avatar crew. Spider brought a human perspective to Pandora, allowing audiences to imagine themselves running through the dense forests and battling alongside these remarkable alien beings.

Spider Will Remain Key To Pandora As The Avatar Story Continues

It was revealed during Avatar: The Way of Water that Spider is in fact the biological son of Colonel Quaritch, Avatar’s primary villain who is reborn in a “recombinant” Avatar body at the beginning of The Way of Water. This will be a hugely important thread to follow in further planned sequels, as it has already been seen that Quaritch expresses an emotional connection to the son of his original human self. Spider’s existence could lead to a change of heart for Quaritch, adding further gravitas to the story, and extra conflict for Jake Sully when the sequels to Avatar: The Way of Water release.