Avatar: The Way of Water’s James Cameron blasted the heroes of the MCU, but his characters — particularly the villains — can’t match his rhetoric.
During the rollout of Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron had pointed words for his perceived rivals in the various Marvel and DC film endeavors. In an interview with The New York Times, he said, “When I look at these big, spectacular films — I’m looking at you, Marvel and DC — it doesn’t matter how old the characters are, they all act like they’re in college. They have relationships, but they really don’t.” It generated the intended controversy and helped get people talking about the film before its release. Judging by the initial box office, the gambit certainly didn’t hurt.
The proof is in the pudding, however, and with Avatar 2 now in theaters, it’s clear that Cameron doesn’t have nearly the grasp of human relationships that his competition does. Nowhere is this more clear than in the movie’s antagonists: one-note villains of the exact kind that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has risen above from the beginning. Comparing his villains with the latter’s is an exercise in proving how far off-base he is.
Avatar 2’s Villains Are Shockingly Thin
Problems with Avatar 2‘s antagonists start early and never let up. The human invaders return to Pandora with colonization and genocide on their minds. Earth is dying, and Pandora is the designated replacement. Edie Falco’s icy general makes it clear that the planet’s indigenous inhabitants will receive no mercy. The military forces at her disposal fulfill their duties with gusto, led by Stephen Lang’s merciless Colonel Quaritch: reborn in an Avatar body thanks to a little super-science back on Earth.
They’re barely disguised metaphors for the real greed and cruelty destroying the environment in no less brutal terms. But once that basic lesson sinks in, Avatar 2 has nothing further to say. The villains mainly exist primarily to extort feelings of rage from the audience. Their actions are uniformly cruel and hateful, designed to induce pain and suffering in the name of their goals. Quaritch’s primary mission is to take revenge on Jake Sully, which becomes an excuse to threaten or murder anyone who might provide information. The film contains copious stretches where he and his team threaten hostages, burn down villages, and employ a crew of whalers who chortle at their wanton butchery.
Children, in particular, serve as favored targets. One early scene shows the humans interrogating Sully’s adopted human son Spider in a high-tech torture device. Quaritch seems to delight in taking children hostage and instigates Avatar 2‘s climactic battle by cuffing Sully’s kids to the rail of a ship and pointing guns at their heads. He repeats the feat later when he and Sully face each other by holding a knife to his daughter Kiri’s throat. None of it provides any insight into the characters, nor does it further the film’s environmentalist message. It exists solely for the sake of delayed gratification: giving the antagonists’ violent comeuppance in the finale a ham-handed boost. There are Death Wish sequels with more emotional nuance.
Marvel Gives Its Villains Humanity and Depth
Contrast that with the MCU, particularly its antagonists. Their motives are invariably complex and often rooted in understandable causes. They wrestle with themselves as much as their foes, and even the worst of them possess reasons for doing what they do besides avarice and cruelty. The most prominent example is probably Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. He’s as ruthless in his own way as Quaritch — he certainly has no problems with genocide — and yet his anger is couched in understandable terms that even Shuri sympathizes with. Similar examples abound, from Baron Zemo to the Djinn from Ms. Marvel. Even the notion of children — which Cameron wields like a riding crop against the MCU — is a big step up, as figures like Wanda Maximoff and Gorr the God Butcher grapple with their grief as parents in far more engaging ways than the simplistic shrieks and bloodletting that Avatar 2 indulges in.
Ironically, Quaritch’s few moments of humanity come in his scenes with Spider, the son he never knew raised on the planet he’s actively trying to destroy. It’s also among the least convincing relationships in the film, especially considering Spider’s status as a leveraged hostage against his own adopted family. The toxicity of it is clearly lost on Cameron, as is an honest assessment of the rivals he’s all too eager to condemn.
Avatar: The Way of Water is currently playing in theaters.
