Editor’s Note: I wrote this way back in 2010. I finally did watch the first film on Disney+ sometime around the 2020 pandemic (yes, I was that bored then). I don’t think anything I wrote below is inaccurate, and I have zero interest in watching any of the sequels he is releasing or planning. By the way, I’m not a total Cameron hater – “Aliens” is one of my all-time favorite films. You know, one of those movies he made before he was rich enough to not worry about characters or story.
Dear James,
Everyone seems to be pressuring me to see your latest epic film, Avatar. And you are giddily leading the charge.
Yes, it’s true. I haven’t seen Avatar, and don’t really want to. It strikes me as Aliens meets Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. And that’s not a combination I can imagine many people pitching to Hollywood producers. Cameron spent 15 years working on the story and script, and the best he could do is a point-for-point rip-off of Disney’s Pocahontas? 15 years? James, I’ve written more original stories in 15 hours.
It’s a green-screen overdose of CGI that’s likely pretty thin on plot and characterization. Yet Cameron’s hype machine is quick to point out that the film uses almost no green-screen. And that’s true, sort of. What they did – they’re calling it “motion capture” – is essentially the same as green-screen, except they didn’t even use the footage shot in front of the green screen. With a production price tag that, according to The New York Times, nearly hit half a million dollars, it’s obvious the bulk of that money went toward visual effects. If you can afford to hire the best visual effects artists in the industry, and can afford to develop brand-new technologies to tell your story in the best possible way, why can’t you afford to hire the best writer (or writers) in the industry to ensure you have a story worth telling?
Motion pictures are primarily a storytelling medium, and secondarily a sensory experience. If you can’t be bothered to tell a good story, you’re making the film equivalent of a rollercoaster ride – cheap thrills that don’t leave a lasting impression. James Cameron has invited us to watch him masturbate for three hours. Freaky pervert. It’s the same mistake Spike Jonze made with Where The Wild Things Are and Terry Gilliam managed to avoid with The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
The best films ever made stand up no matter how you watch them. Films like The Maltese Falcon and Beverly Hills Cop are just as enjoyable on a 13-inch black-and-white TV as they are on a 50-inch HD home theatre with surround sound. Why? Because it’s the storytelling and the characters which drive the experience. Reliance upon special effects over competent storytelling leads to fluff-over-substance films like Van Helsing and The Phantom Menace. Everyone I’ve heard raving about Avatar aren’t talking about the incredible story or amazing character interactions; they’re talking about how neat-o the film looked. Avatar was probably a great sensory experience if you were able to pony up the twenty bucks to catch it at an IMAX theatre (and the 3-D process didn’t give you a headache or leave you with nausea). But I’ll bet the film doesn’t stand up to repeated viewings on a common home television at 27-32 inches.
Relentless advertising for the DVD release of the film pimps it as “the #1 movie of all time”. Get off your high horse, Cameron. It’s easy to rake in the cash when you charge people twenty bucks a ticket. Adjusted for inflation, Avatar doesn’t even crack the Top 10, and it’s earned less than half what the actual top movie of all time, the 1939 classic Gone With The Wind, earned. (By the way, that movie tops my “All-Time Shit List” too). Avatar made money for the same reason circus sideshows always made money – everybody likes to see a spectacle. Avatar is the cinematic equivalent of an Independence Day fireworks show. Cameron expects you to spend your time just looking at the screen and occasionally saying, “Oooh”.
Sorry, Cameron. In your entire career, you’ve created only two movies that combined good storytelling and strong characters – The Abyss and True Lies. There’s a scene cut from the theatrical version of The Abyss that Cameron restored to the DVD release in which a few of the characters, pass the time singing along with a song on the radio. It’s a wonderful character moment, and as such it’s rare in a James Cameron movie. At least his early films The Terminator and Aliens are fun to watch on repeated viewings, even though they offer little more than strung-together action sequences and one-dimensional characterizations of human beings.
Avatar is barely six months old, and hasn’t yet been asked to stand the test of time. I have the feeling it will Darwin itself out of the pop culture gene pool over the years. James, don’t be blinded by the money cannon you’ve spewed all over your projects. Take time to develop a great story and great characters if you really want your movies to be all-time great.
