The way the Reddit subreddit for Avatar posts not only about Spider but the movie in general reminds me why I haven't been a part of a fandom since the shitshow that was the MCU before, during and after Endgame.
And it's my own fault. I was not big into Avatar until WOTW and fell in love with the movies after it but I kind of enjoyed it in my own way. I wasn't on reddit, didn't see anything on TT, followed the actors and James Cameron but didn't really interact, didn't read comments, didn't follow fan accounts. But then this year, in my excitement for FAA, I started visiting the subreddit and for the most part it was harmless. It was still quiet with fanart, theories about the movie, calm and quiet.
And then the movie hit, and holy mother of Earth, what an absolute shitshow. Same questions being asked over and over, disparaging remarks against characters and actors, love for actual villains as if they are the heroes of the movie, opinions being stated as fact. There's one poster that I swear every time he comments has to state how much he hates Spider and how shitty Jack's acting is (which it's not). He even stated he was "tired of talking about the character" and makes snide remarks about getting downvoted every time he posts like he's trying to get the whole group on his side. and not realizing that maybe it's because people don't agree with him. I swear, the character lives rent free in this person's head. I mean, I've literally seen people that defend Spider be called a cult.
And the hatred for Spider. It's absolutely disgusting the comments I've seen. Now before people freak out, I very obviously don't expect everyone to love him or the actor but if you look, you can trace the sheeplike assertion that Jack is a bad actor to a redditor who saw the movie during the press preview and stating, without naming him, that one actor was simply awful. Everyone just assumed it was Jack. I actually had no idea people hated the character that much but it seemed like everyone just decided it was him and when the movie came out, piled on. The amount of people that said he took them out of "the immersion of the movie" is bordering on ridiculous. Earlier today, I actually saw someone comment that "Jack seems nice, but he should hang it up", never mind that it was his first role, and his latest movies show marked improvement. Someone posted a thread about him and it had over 300 replies just ripping the character and the actor apart. It was sickening. Criticism is fine but the echo chamber of hate is nauseating (it's all the same complaints too). And every few days there is a new thread ripping the character apart.
Now for Jack, I've seen a lot of people saying his acting is wooden and I think that particular criticism is subjective and mere opinions. Opinions on acting and the character are not fact, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. It doesn't make them in a cult or anything. It just makes them see things differently. He's fine to me and I've seen worse, but where it crosses a line is people actually questioning James Cameron about his casting. It is quite obvious that Cameron adores Jack and thinks the world of him. But personal affections aside, there is a reason he was chosen. A reason we may not be aware of or know and it's frankly none of our business. Cameron wanted him in the role and he worked closely with Jack for years. The constant questioning of why he was chosen and the comments about there had to be better kid actors is frankly quite annoying and disregarding the fact that while yes there might be better kid actors, Jack had something that Cameron wanted for the character.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are legitimate criticisms for the movie, some of the lines are clunky and simple changing some phrasing would smooth it out and the constant 'bro' and 'cuz' does annoy me even though I get why it's there (you got a problem with it, don't let me catch you saying 'bestie' or 'mate'). Jack literally has an interview where he talks about the 'bro' thing (link).
But my god, if I see one more person talk about how he wasn't crying during that scene, I swear I'm going to spend hours screenshotting each and every frame where there are tears! Someone even posted that they wanted him to have a full on breakdown, snot running down his face and everything. Here's the thing, and I've said it before, not everyone reacts that way. We've become so used to finally seeing men show those types of emotions in things like Supernatural, etc that we've actually gone the other end of the spectrum and have forgotten that not everyone reacts that way. Jack himself has admitted that he's not a big crier and when he does it's more a lump in his throat than anything. It didn't fit the character for him to be ugly crying, the way Lo'ak's reaction against Jake was more in character.
I've also seen people say the character is useless when Cameron himself has said that he tried to cut the character and couldn't because he plays an important part of the story, especially the fight between Jake and Quaritch. It adds the personal stakes of two fathers fighting over a son and a layer to Spider of being conflicted. While his writing is not perfect, I trust that Cameron knows where he wants to go with the story and the significance of certain characters, especially characters that play a role in the story. Spider is not a Macgruffin, he's a main character with ties to several others that add layers to their actions and motivations.I have so many other points that I could point out about the character that I feel like people miss but this rant is getting too long.
I think the moral of the story is I've been in enough fandoms to know that most of the time, I should just enjoy the thing my own way, write my fanfiction, make my gifs, etc and rarely really get involved in the fandom/read comments but I wanted to enjoy the release with other fans and get some news/photos/etc. and I made the mistake of thinking that reddit and tik tok would have similar fans. You would think I knew better by now. So I'm just going to go back to my little corner and enjoy what I love about the movies. I would love to connect to other similar thinking fans. Remind me please that those idiots on reddit are a minority. I do have some observations about some things I'm going to post that I would love to discuss as well.
