Do not take a pee break during Avatar: Fire and Ash's pee-break joke

James Cameron is just trolling you about pee-break discourse

When’s the best time to pee during an Avatar movie? The question has been asked by movie-goers since the dawn of time — and dinosaurs didn’t even have traditional bladders, so that’s saying something.

With the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash, James Cameron’s third trip to the Alpha Centaurian moon of Pandora, the problem of how a mere mortal is supposed to drink a 44-ounce Diet Coke over the course of a three-hour and 17-minute movie without missing a key beat is once again rearing its head — and even Cameron seems aware of the issue. If you find yourself crossing your legs and clenching your pelvis muscles at the two-hour mark, there is a terrible (but hilarious) moment for you in Fire and Ash.

But first: an answer to the eternal question. Or a few answers: If you want to know when to duck out of Fire and Ash for a tinkle without missing anything, you have to look inward and define “anything” for yourself. Fire and Ash, like its predecessors, is a whole lotta movie. You might be there on day one for the action. Or maybe you just want to see what wacky stuff Cameron has cooked up for his CG characters this go-round. Perhaps you have spent the last three years mourning the loss of Neteyam after the events of Avatar: The Way of Water, and need to see how Neytiri suffers through the loss. Whatever the case, there are various lanes in which to operate when it comes to pee-break stratagem. Here’s my expert opinion:

Now for James Cameron’s most sinister joke

Cameron has said that, after hearing reactions to The Way of Water, he returned not just to his completed footage and in-progress edit of Fire and Ash, but even the script itself, adding a few key scenes after the fact. It’s unclear which scenes those are, but I am praying that the scene where Spider, the dreadlocked surrogate member of the Sully family played by Jack Champion, declares he has to “take a leak” twice in the span of a minute was added after the fact as a joke on pee-break discourse. Otherwise, it’s just really weird!

After a major action set piece — no spoilers! — Jake, Neytiri, and Spider convene in a pocket of the Pandoran jungle to take a much-deserved breather. As mentioned, Spider spots a babbling brook and is immediately overcome with the burning need to take a whiz, which he tells Jake and Neytiri, who definitely wanted to know that. What’s funny is that Spider does not get a chance to urinate into the crystal-clear stream because he’s pulled away by Jake, who wants to have an urgent talk.

Is this strange dialogue scene Cameron’s way of ribbing us all for devoting too much time to bathroom discourse around The Way of Water? Is he aware that at the two-hour mark, a good percentage of his audience desperately needs to go number one, and he’s poking fun (and our kidneys)? Or is he actually doing his viewers a favor by subliminally suggesting Now’s the time, folks! instead of programming in an actual intermission?

I have heard the speculation on the third point, but I vehemently disagree: You can’t go to the bathroom when Spider starts shouting about how he needs to take a leak.

In the wake of Neteyam’s death, Neytiri is fairly distraught. Her oldest son is dead, and a human boy, Spider, the spawn of her archenemy, is not only alive, but taking shelter under her wing. Doesn’t seem fair — so she’s ready to return him to the RDA. Or maybe kill him.

Cameron tugs at a pretty bleak heartstring in Fire and Ash, which I found to be the most emotionally moving of the three Avatar installments. Spider, in his DNA, is the enemy. In this film, when Eywa grants him the ability to breathe Pandora's air without a filter mask, he becomes key to the human invasion. If the RDA can replicate his magical-fungi surfer bod, they could call the planet-sized moon a true home, moving fungused-up humans in by the millions. Even Jake fears that outcome, and decides he needs to kill Spider to save the lives of millions of Na’vi.

Hardcore! Cameron also stages this pivotal will he/won’t he scene immediately after Spider whines about needing to piss. This is why Cameron is a storytelling master: The swing from levity to the most intense dramatic sequence in the entire trilogy caught me completely off guard.

So the answer to the big question really is: there are tons of fine moments to go to the bathroom during Avatar: Fire and Ash. But there's one time not to go — the time when a main character is squeezing your insides by talking about going to the bathroom. Cruel, and incredible.