![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/559751fb4b8d08c4698bdfbf481af39bda-spiderscreenshot.rhorizontal.w700.png\")
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\n Photo: 20th Century Studios\n <\/p>\n
Avatar: Fire and Ash, like the two previous Avatar movies, teems with colorful, inventive visions of space life. Above the floating mountains and bioluminescent forests are nomadic wind traders who travel on sky ships pulled by billowing creatures. The seas are home to massive space whales adorned with big piercings<\/a> and holding whale trials and calf communions. Death-cult warriors ride dragons while shooting flamethrowers. Edie Falco pilots a mecha. But the most divisive and jarring and least plausible creature of all is simply a white boy with dreads. Spider, played by Jack Champion, was first introduced in 2022\u2019s Avatar: The Way of Water alongside a host of other new characters, namely Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri\u2019s (Zoe Salda\u00f1a) ragtag brood and coastal Metkayina friends. Spider is a human boy who lives among the Na\u2019vi; he was born, and orphaned, on the human-colonizer home base in Pandora. Spider\u2019s arc is just as mythical and dramatically compelling as any of the other main characters\u2019: In The Way of Water, he learns his father is Colonel Miles Quaritch, the villainous, Na\u2019vi-hating human Marine commander who was killed by Neytiri in the first film and then reincarnated with his memories uploaded into an Avatar body to complete his mission of tracking down species traitor Sully. Spider also struggles with being the ultimate other growing up among his adopted family \u2014 smaller, weaker, unable to breathe without an oxygen mask, wholly maladapted to his environment. This difference is his dramatic fuel as a character, but it can be alienating to audiences. Spider sticks out like a sore-thumb middle finger amid the nine-foot-tall blue CGI cat people because he\u2019s just a human actor and because James Cameron writes him as a John Connor\u2013style li\u2019l stinker. By acting the most like an obnoxious kid from a California suburb, i.e. the most recognizable to our daily lives, Spider threatens to jar us out of the world of Avatar altogether. It\u2019s almost too easy to give in to impulses like annoyance and \u201ctaste\u201d and to dislike him. \u2019Tis a nobler and more enlightened choice to embrace him. Which is why it\u2019s fabulous for Certified Spider Enjoyers that Fire and Ash is Spider\u2019s movie.<\/p>\n Spider, played by Jack Champion, was first introduced in 2022\u2019s Avatar: The Way of Water, alongside a host of other new characters, namely Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri\u2019s (Zoe Salda\u00f1a) ragtag brood and coastal Metkayina friends. Spider is a human boy who lives among the Na\u2019vi; he was born, and orphaned, on the human-colonizer home base in Pandora. Spider\u2019s arc is just as mythical and compelling as any of the other main characters\u2019: In The Way of Water, he learns his father was Colonel Miles Quaritch, the villainous, Na\u2019vi-hating human Marine commander who was killed by Neytiri in the first film and then reincarnated with his memories uploaded into an Avatar body to complete his mission of tracking down species traitor Sully. He also struggles with being the ultimate other growing up among his adopted family \u2014 smaller, weaker, unable to breathe without an oxygen mask, wholly maladapted to his environment. This difference is his dramatic fuel as a character, but it can be alienating to audiences. Spider sticks out like a sore-thumb middle finger amid the nine-foot-tall blue CGI cat people because he\u2019s just a human child actor, and because James Cameron writes him as a John Connor\u2013style li\u2019l stinker. By acting the most like an obnoxious kid from a California suburb, i.e. the most recognizable to our daily lives, Spider\u2019s presence threatens to jar us out of the world of Avatar altogether. It\u2019s almost too easy to give in to impulses like annoyance and \u201ctaste\u201d and to dislike Spider. \u2019Tis a nobler and more enlightened choice to embrace him. Which is why it\u2019s fabulous for Certified Spider Enjoyers that Fire and Ash is Spider\u2019s movie.<\/p>\n For a kid born in the year 2154, Spider is a throwback. He looks, talks, and acts like a \u201990s kid and functions like the over-the-top neighbor character in a \u201990s sitcom. This is immensely strange and funny in Fire and Ash because this little weirdo drives the whole plot. He\u2019s in the center of the action and makes corny little quips throughout. When Spider\u2019s oxygen mask dies, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) uses her nascent space-Jesus powers to channel Eywa to thread her mycelium network through his body, biohacking him into a hybrid human who can breathe the atmosphere and interface with the nature of Pandora. What does he say after this miracle turns him into a new species never before seen in the known universe? \u201cOh yeah, I\u2019m good on the whole air thing.\u201d As Jake, who raised Spider, has his intergalactic Binding of Isaac moment and makes the agonizing decision to kill him in order to save Pandora, the boy just tools around in the background, clueless, saying stuff like \u201cI gotta take a leak.\u201d During the most climactic battle of the entire film, Spider is off to the side, narrating: \u201cSick! The Tulkun are fighting back!\u201d Every single time this boy opens his mouth, he undercuts the drama building around him. Yet I think this is actually crucial to locking in the tone of the Avatar films, which balance one type of earnestness (Secrets of NIMH, harmony with nature, New Age spirituality) with another (old-school good guys vs. big baddies blockbuster, wide-eyed delight at things blowing up). Spider is the glue.<\/p>\n Spider\u2019s also a gloriously guileless \u201990s kid in the sense that he literally looks like a cartoon come to life from either Nickelodeon\u2019s Rocket Power or Disney\u2019s Tarzan. He scampers around and hangs ten and vine surfs and dances like nobody\u2019s watching and thumbs his nose at grown-ups and calls them pendejos and gets called \u201cmonkey boy\u201d by his crush. His full name \u2014\u00a0Miles \u201cSpider\u201d Socorro \u2014\u00a0even makes him sound like a Junior X Games prospect. Also, his chunky locs end up serving a narrative purpose in this film, as he evolves to grow a queue like those the Na\u2019vi use to commune with Eywa.<\/p>\n The numerous times they\u2019re talking about what they\u2019re gonna do with Spider in Fire and Ash when he\u2019s in the background of the shot doing some shit like this pic.twitter.com\/NgDTR08QsQ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 paul (@paulswhtn) December 19, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n After Spider gets captured and put in a laboratory for study, Quaritch attempts a peace offering so he can use and manipulate his son. \u201cGot you a burger,\u201d he says, pulling a tiny, completely incongruous burger out of his giant Avatar pocket with his giant Avatar hand, and Spider, defiant, slaps the burger off the table. It is one of many moments when characters essentially treat Spider like the family dog. See also: Jake and Neytiri trying to rehome him and their kids all getting upset in the process, or Jake and Neytiri literally attempting to put him down while he cluelessly sniffs around looking for a tree to pee on.<\/p>\n Spider is great cuz he\u2019s like if Jar Jar was human and everyone else was aliens<\/p>\n \u2014 McRib (@McR1B69) December 20, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n And to those who simply think the issue is that Champion isn\u2019t a particularly good actor: Have you considered he is the only main character (besides celebrated and seasoned performers like Falco and Giovanni Ribisi) who doesn\u2019t have the benefit of a CGI Na\u2019vi overlay to obscure his face and hide just how awkward the Avatar filming process is? Have you seen the conditions under which this kid has to emote?<\/p>\n i feel like critics would be a lot less inclined to hate on jack champion\u2019s acting when this is literally what he was working with half of the time pic.twitter.com\/TteRngdnsT<\/a><\/p>\n