“It was like coming home from the Crusades”: the arduous James Cameron shoot the crew compared to fighting a war
Many filmmakers have found themselves frustrated by the technological limitations of their time, but whenever that situation has arisen for James Cameron, more often than not, he simply goes ahead and creates the technology from the ground up so his vision remains uncompromised.
It’s not a position or skillset that the majority of auteurs possess, which is just one of the many reasons why there’s nobody else quite like Cameron. Once he graduated from the guerrilla-style shoot of The Terminator and into an arena where he was the number one shot-caller, he refused to be shackled by the tools at his disposal.
The Abyss pushed the boundaries of visual effects further than any movie ever had before his own Terminator 2: Judgement Day raised the bar even higher for the incoming CGI revolution. Titanic took so long and cost so much that it was predicted as a disaster by many, both in and outside of the industry, only to win 11 Academy Awards and become cinema’s first billion-dollar box office hit.
Even now that Cameron appears to be dedicating the remainder of his career to the Avatar franchise, the painstaking development process has placed innovation at the forefront. When viewed in the way its creator intended, the sci-fi epics are staggering on a visual and immersive level, with the director able to take his sweet time because he knows well that audiences will show up in droves.
He’s responsible for three of the four highest-grossing films ever made, so he knows what it takes to put butts in seats. What he asks of his crew is often capable of pushing them to their very limits, but someone as driven and determined as Cameron isn’t going to hire anyone he doesn’t believe is capable of matching his fierce work ethic.
From the outside looking in, True Lies is the most straightforward picture he’s made in decades. Admittedly, it was the most expensive production ever mounted and featured plenty of cutting-edge visual effects and practical pyrotechnics, but at the end of the day, it’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger action comedy that wasn’t seeking to reinvent the art form to a significant – or even minor – extent.
And yet, first-time collaborator Russell Carpenter compared the arduous seven-month shoot to an extensive military campaign. “It was like coming home from the Crusades,” he told Entertainment Weekly, describing the end of the taxing schedule as not all that different from a soldier returning from war.
It’s all part of his process, though, with Cameron’s combative personality pushing his crew to up their game. “Jim does not accept anything as being as perfect as Jim imagined it was going to be,” Carpenter explained. “One minute, he’d tell me I didn’t know how to read a light meter properly. The next, he’d be designing a shot. Working for Jim, you have to know you’re an extension of his vision.”
He may have been a weary warrior in the aftermath of True Lies, but with Carpenter having served as DP on Titanic as well as the second and third Avatar movies, he evidently made enough of an impression to be welcomed into the inner circle as his Cameron-driven Crusades continue.
