James Cameron names his surprising guilty pleasure movie
From the visionary masterpieces of Stanley Kubrick to the pioneering technical work of Alfred Hitchcock, there are several filmmakers who have pushed the boundaries of cinema, but James Cameron may be the most influential of the lot. Creating some of the most visually stunning movies of all time, Cameron is the industry’s most bankable director, responsible for two of the top three highest-grossing films of all time.
Whilst he may be best known for his box-office goliaths, Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and the 3D spectacular Avatar, Cameron’s appreciation for the grand spectacle of cinema began back in the 1980s. Aside from the sequel Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, which helped him get a foothold in the industry, the director found great success early in his career with such classics as The Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss.
We’d never go so far as to call any of Cameron’s movies ‘guilty pleasures’, with most of his movies being too good, leaving no room for people to feel bad about liking them. With that being said, Titanic is nothing but a melodramatic weepy and Piranha Part Two is a disposable sci-fi, but even still, both films retain a certain cinematic magic that helps them get away with their lack of quality.
As for Cameron, the multi-award-winning filmmaker is partial to a bit of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, as per the list of his top five favourite movies of all time, but his pick for guilty pleasure pales in comparison to such classics.
Speaking to Empire Magazine back in 2020, Cameron surprised the publication when he stated, “One of my guilty-pleasure films that I actually think is quite beautifully made is Resident Evil…Watching Michelle Rodriguez in that film, moving like this feral creature, is joyful”.
Movie adaptations of video games have never gained much commercial or critical acclaim in Hollywood, with the 2002 movie Resident Evil being one of the very few releases that isn’t utterly despised by audiences. Starring Milla Jovovich, the movie, based on the video game series created by Shinji Mikami, follows a special military unit that fights against hordes of scientists who have turned into flesh-eating creatures.
As for Cameron’s fondness for Michelle Rodriguez, this is hardly surprising, with the actor later collaborating with the director for his 2009 movie Avatar. Appearing alongside Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, Rodriguez plays Trudy Chacon, an ex-Marine pilot who comes to help the protagonist at the conclusion of the epic blockbuster.
Spawning five sequels and one reboot, the Resident Evil franchise is one of the most successful video game-turned-movie series of all time, with Netflix recently kicking off a new TV series to revitalise interest in the property. Whilst it was widely hated among fans of the video game, critics looked fairly favourably on the 2022 series that did relatively well in putting together a compelling story teeming with creative villains.
