Warning: Spoilers ahead for Avatar: The Way of Water.
Though some have complained that Jack Champion’s portrayal of Spider in Avatar franchise character entirely. While there is a time and a place for subtle performances, blockbuster action movies can often benefit from acting that would typically be viewed as over-the-top, corny, or otherwise unsubtle. As a result, it is surprising to see reviewers single out the newcomer Jack Champion’s performance in Avatar: The Way of Water.
The son of Stephen Lang’s Avatar villain Quaritch, Champion’s Spider is a human who wishes to be Na’vi and fights alongside them. He is part of Jake Sully’s large family and pulls his weight in the early fight scenes, although his natural disadvantage means he is soon taken hostage by Quaritch’s Na’vi avatar. In the ensuring subplot, Champion does a lot of the blockbuster sequel’s dramatic heavy lifting as a conflicted hero who realizes that Quaritch is more than an uncomplicated, amoral monster. Spider’s reaction to this—and everything else—is not subtle, but that is an intentional, and wise, choice.
Why Avatar 2 Needed Spider’s Overacting
Champion is undeniably overacting as Spider, and his performance is corny at times. However, he is also playing the son of Stephen Lang’s Quaritch, the villain who gave Avatar its most memorably hammy monster. Lang is a star who has made an iconic career out of hammy, over-the-top performances, which makes Champion’s decision to match Lang’s bombastic approach a perfect fit. Spider’s journey wouldn’t work if his actor gave a muted, subtle performance, because his character arc takes place in the epic, overblown milieu of Avatar: The Way of Water, something Lang instinctively recognized in Avatar and Champion successfully caught onto in the sequel.
Spider Is Perfect As Quaritch’s Son
Spider’s frenzied anger, his inarticulate brooding, and his occasional outbursts of potentially ridiculous emoting all line up with Quaritch’s human and avatar depictions. While the characters are very different in of their respective moral comes, Spider and Quaritch are similar enough to seem like direct relatives, which is impressive considering one of them is a 9-foot-tall blue alien. Avatar: The Way of Water’s box-office success was a surprise to some critics, but these are likely to be the same reviewers who took issue with Champion’s wild-eyed, goofy portrayal of Spider. The blockbuster succeeded with audiences, not despite its silliness, but precisely because of how much Avatar: The Way of Water embraces its absurd elements
James Cameron’s Love Of Overacting
From Billy Zane’s villainous turn in Titanic to Bill Paxton’s infamous ad-lib in Aliens, to even Schwarzenegger as the Terminator (and of course, Lang as Quaritch), James Cameron has always encouraged some over-the-top performances to compete with the visual splendor of his movies. A toned-down approach to acting would jar horribly with the tone and style of the sequel, which is why Kate Winslet played her Avatar: The Way of Water role as dramatically as Champion’s Spider. This performance gained less critical backlash for two reasons, neither of which justify the complaints about Champion’s take on Spider.
For one thing, playing Na’vi character gives actors in motion-capture suits an excuse to overact, since they are playing of an imaginary alien species. However, this doesn’t hold up too much scrutiny since the entire message of Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water is that the Na’vi are thinking and feeling beings with complex emotional lives just like humans, rather than the overly emotional savages that the Marines view them as. There is also the excuse that Winslet is a much more established actor than Champion, which explains why she can take bigger creative risks and avoid criticism.
Zoe Saldana’s wild-eyed fury as Neytiri in the Avatar: The Way of Water ending proves that established, award-winning stars know that huge action extravaganzas call for huge, impactful acting that risk looking ridiculous. However, in an era when one performance can launch emerging stars like Joseph Quinn or Jenna Ortega into the A-list overnight, relative inexperience is no reason for Champion to play it safe in the role of Spider. The actor made a risky choice by matching Avatar star Stephen Lang beat-for-beat, and the decision should be commended as it gave Avatar: The Way of Water a stellar, fittingly overblown central turn.
