James Cameron tried writing “Avatar” sequels without Spider — why 'it all fell apart'
- - James Cameron tried writing “Avatar” sequels without Spider — why 'it all fell apart'
Nick RomanoDecember 17, 2025 at 5:30 PM
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Jack Champion's Spider in 'Avatar: Fire and Ash'Key Points -
James Cameron explains why he tried writing the Avatar sequels without Jack Champion's Spider, the only live-action character.
The filmmaker says 'it all fell apart,' citing Spider as the glue between Jake (Sam Worthington) and Quaritch (Stephen Lang).
Cameron originally had other plans for Spider's transformation that would allow him to breathe the air of Pandora.
Can you imagine Avatar without Spider? Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) sure can, but it could've been a reality.
James Cameron, the Oscar-winning writer-director behind the blockbuster film franchise, recalls to Entertainment Weekly how he attempted to write the story of 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water, this month's Avatar: Fire and Ash, and the two future sequels without Jack Champion's character.
"We knew it was gonna be hard to shoot an actor in live action and surround that character with all these people that are twice his size [in performance-capture suits]," Cameron remembers. "I knew it was gonna be all kinds of scale stuff and it was gonna be horrific to do, which it was. I tried to write him out, and it didn't work. It all fell apart because now Jake and Quaritch are only just two guys trying to kill each other. It's too simple."
Sam Worthington's Jake Sully and Stephen Lang's General Quaritch have been archenemies since the first Avatar of 2009. Champion's Spider came along in the second film as the human child Quaritch conceived before his human body died and his previously digitized consciousness was uploaded into a new synthetic Na'vi form. Spider is also the unofficial fifth child of the Sully family, though Neytiri despises all Sky People, a.k.a. humans.
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Quaritch (Stephen Lang) in 'Avatar: Fire and Ash'
"If they are entangled through this kid that Jake has raised, as Quaritch tries to define his identity as this reincarnation of a former person whose memories he's imprinted with, part of his identity is as the father of this boy," Cameron explains. "So it becomes important to him in his own identity quest to try to be that father. Now, Spider doesn't want the enemy of the people that he loves to be his father. In movie 3, we see that dance, that father-son relationship continuing, but that puts Jake and Quaritch into an odd alliance."
Avatar: Fire and Ash, in theaters this Friday, picks up shortly after the events of Avatar: The Way of Water. The Sullys are still in the traditional Na'vi mourning period after the loss of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), their eldest son who died during the events of the last film. Though, neither Jake nor Neytiri are processing it well.
Quaritch and the RDA continue their onslaughts against the Na'vi people, but now a new threat is introduced: the Ash People, a volcanic Na'vi clan led by the relentless Varang (Oona Chaplin), who accepts the destructive power of fire as her new deity.
Spider's role becomes even more important. Certain events transpire that allow him to breathe the air of Pandora, which is typically toxic to humans, in addition to growing his own "queue" that allows him to connect with other creatures and the environment the way Na'vi do. This makes him exceptionally valuable to the RDA, which is trying to make the planet habitable for themselves.
When it comes to that story breakthrough, Cameron says, "It just seemed like you want to see hope for humans. They just can't all be tarred with a broad brush as being evil. It's a movie made by humans for a human audience, let's face it."
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Spider (Jack Champion) gains the ability to breathe Pandoran air in 'Avatar: Fire and Ash'
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Spider's evolution stems from how Avatar 2 and 3 were originally designed as one movie.
Cameron spent a year trying to crack the first act of the story, while two other scribes tackled acts 2 and 3. "Spider's transformation that takes place now in Fire and Ash was in the first act, and it never worked," he says, "because I was stuck in this paradigm that everything that happens in the forest has to play out in the forest. It only occurred to me later, 'Well, they can fly over a forest anytime they want to and wind up back in the forest.'"
The filmmaker sees it as "this crazy hat trick" of getting an audience to root against humankind by telling the story through Na'vi eyes. He now sees this development with Spider as "an invitation for us to reconnect with nature right here in our own world."
"It allows us, as a human audience, to step outside ourselves and look at us from that perspective of nature and what we are doing in the collective," he explains. "That's interesting, but we've gotta also embed hope and aspiration within that. Wouldn't we all love to be Spider and be able to connect with Pandora and be able to connect with those creatures?"
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
