Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers forAvatar: The Way of Water.While Hollywood is praisingJames Cameronfor his many cinematic achievements, with good reason, we dare say, some more cautious members of the audience wonder how the filmmaker will put children in danger again. Yes, this is a sad trend in James Cameron’s cinematography. The few child actors the filmmaker allows on the set seem destined to suffer for Cameron’s amusement as he builds his legacy over a pile of kids' corpses. And while we all hoped Cameron had softened his heart regarding the younger members of our society,Avatar: The Way of Wateris here to prove Cameron doesn’t give a crap about kids.
James Cameron’s History of Hating Kids Explained
While Cameron is remembered for birthingThe Terminatorfranchise in 1984, his feature directorial debut actually happened in 1982 withPiranha II: The Spawning. This strange horror movie is about people who must survive the attack of a vicious school of genetically modified piranha fish with wings that can actually fly. As a young filmmaker, Cameron still didn’t have much money to spend torturing infant characters. Still, he managed to slip a kid in the horror movie, an unnamed boy that the piranha killed to motivateAncil Gloudon’s character, Gabby. One could argue that Cameron didn’t have much choice in the matter since the production ofPiranha IIwas so chaotic that the filmmaker rarely counts the feature as his actual directorial debut. Still, across the year, he would continually use children as targets in all his movies.
In 1984’sThe Terminator, Cameron knew he had to redeem himself for the failure of Piranha II. So, he decided not to put child characters in danger. However, since a movie can only be fun when kids suffer, Cameron removes children from the film. However, afterThe Terminator’s success, Cameron had all the money he needed to make kids suffer. That’s whyTerminator 2: Judgment Dayrevolves around a killer robot from the future hunting down the young John Connor (Edward Furlong). And just to make his point clear as day, the opening scene ofTerminator 2shows the destruction of a playground, with toy horses catching fire in front of our eyes.
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BeforeTerminator 2, Cameron would test the idea of having a single kid suffering for an entire movie withAliens, in which he puts the young Newt (Carrie Henn) alone on a planet ravaged by xenomorphs. And that would not be the last time a monster would snatch a young girl sinceTitanicshows the evil Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane) kidnapping a child to win a place in a lifeboat. Yes, Cameron’s movies are beautiful to look at. But that coat of paint distracts us from the fact that every time Cameron puts a child in one of his movies, he makes sure they’ll suffer. That’s no different inAvatar: The Way of Water.
Children Are Destined to Suffer in ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’
InAvatar: The Way of Water, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) formed a supposedly happy family with five children. They had two sons, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and a daughter, Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li). They also adopted Kiri (Sigourney Weaver),a girl born from the womb of Dr. Grace’s (Weaver) deactivated avatar body. Finally, Jake and Neytiri help raise Spider (Jake Champion), a human kid born in Pandora before humans were kicked off the planet and got stuck on the alien moon since babies cannot be put in cryogenic sleep.
At first glance, we could thinkAvatar: The Way of Wateris all about family love. Nevertheless, it doesn’t take long for Cameron to shatter our hopes and, once again, make sure all the children suffer. First of all, these children have Jake as a father, a man who is incapable of forgetting his military training and who commands his family as an army, demanding blind obedience and being incapable of demonstrating love. Then we find out Spider is the biological son of Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who’s even a bigger asshole than Jake.
As if their biological bonds were not punishment enough for crimes they never committed, the kids inAvatar: The Way of Waterare thrown into the middle of a bloody war. There’s death at every corner, with Na’vi on one side and humans on the other. Jake and Neytiri’s children must deal with the horrors of being shot at, beaten, kidnapped, and held at knifepoint over and over again for almost three hours straight. And when the Na’vi children are not being used as a trade coin for warmongering villains, they are being chased by Pandora’s wildlife, trying not to drown, and having all sorts of accidents. Not a single child is left unwarmed inAvatar: The Way of Water, and some don’t even survive.
As if physical pain was not enough, Cameron wants to scar theAvatar: The Way of Waterchildren’s spirits. That’s why Spider is forced to help Quaritch, even though he has to witness the damage the humans do in Pandora. And if that wasn’t enough pain for the poor fifteen-year-old Spider, he is also cut down by Neytiri, who takes the boy as a hostage to force Quaritch to stand down. That’s right, even though Spider has dedicated his life to learning the Na’vi way and consciously turns his back on humanity, he’s almost murdered in cold blood by one of the few parental figures he’s ever known. Why expose Spider to this torment if not for the pleasure of watching children agonizing?
Cameron might think we don’t see his true purpose, but we are watching closely. He’s incapable of featuring children in his movie without making them suffer, andAvatar: The Way of Wateris just the last of his movies to show how he doesn’t give a shit about kids.
