Issues between icons: James Cameron names his biggest problem with Steven Spielberg
It’s not hyperbolic to say that James Cameron and Steven Spielberg have come closer to perfecting the art of populist filmmaking better than any other directors in cinema history because the evidence to reinforce their shared credentials is about as clear as it gets.
The former has helmed three of the four highest-grossing films ever made and is the only director to ever take the reins on three productions that cleared $2billion at the global box office. Only six movies have ever earned ten figures twice over, and half of them were written and directed by Cameron.
The latter, meanwhile, isn’t only the highest-grossing director to ever wield the megaphone, but he’s the only auteur to accumulate a $10billion filmography, in addition to being the one name to have ever directed the top-earning film of all time on three occasions, which he accomplished through Jaws, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park.
Nobody has ever done spectacle-driven cinema to the same level as Cameron and Spielberg, with a mutual appreciation and deep-seated respect forming between them. They recognise each other as instrumental in not only the advancement of cutting-edge technology but also in pushing the commercial possibilities of the medium to levels that have never been reached before.
They even have a secret club with Guillermo del Toro, where they discuss movies, visit each other’s sets, and give feedback on whatever they’re working on. Needless to say, the record-shattering duo are friends, but there’s one extracurricular activity close to Cameron’s heart that placed Spielberg in the bad books.
When he’s not busy making movies, Cameron can regularly be found trawling the deepest recesses of the ocean, having added environmentalist and explorer to his CV. That’s where Spielberg inadvertently irritated him, but if it makes him feel any better, he feels exactly the same way.
“Steven set the whole shark cause back,” Cameron told The Guardian of how Jaws impacted the public perception of sharks. “Well, sharks are a really important part of the whole food web system as major apex predators. Sharks have a bad rap, but the public is wising up now that sharks play a role and they’re important, and they’ve been around a lot longer than us: something like 300million years.”
Spielberg has already admitted that the single biggest regret he harbours as the director of Jaws was the way it suddenly turned sharks into the bogeymen of the ocean, with amateurs taking to the sea in their droves to track down and kill the animals in alarming numbers having been inspired in all the wrong ways by his aquatic masterpiece.
Cameron is firmly in agreement, but almost half a century has passed since Jaws was released, so there’s been plenty of time to rehabilitate the image of the humble shark.
