The unlikely movie Michael Mann called “an extraordinary achievement”
With acclaimed movies like Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, and Collateral under his belt, Michael Mann has firmly established himself as one of Hollywood’s most successful directors.
Mann released his first movie, Thief, in 1981, with James Caan in the starring role. It received instant acclaim, even competing for the Palme d’Or. The director continued to release movies to widespread success, finding particular praise when he released 1995’s Heat, starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Grossing over $187million, Mann’s film was a commercial and critical hit, remaining one of the most impressive crime movies ever made.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mann cites Stanley Kubrick as one of his biggest influences, shaping the way he perceived cinema when he was young. Reflecting on his impact, Mann told LA Weekly that watching Dr Strangelove “said to my whole generation of filmmakers that you could make an individual statement of high integrity and have that film be successfully seen by a mass audience all at the same time.”
He added: “In other words, you didn’t have to be making Seven Brides for Seven Brothers if you wanted to work in the mainstream film industry or be reduced to niche filmmaking if you wanted to be serious about cinema. So that’s what Kubrick meant, aside from the fact that Strangelove was a revelation.”
Alongside a wealth of other contemporary filmmakers, Mann has aided the development of cinema, particularly in the crime drama genre. Cinema has come a long way since Mann first started making movies, with new developments in special effects and CGI. No film has signalled cinema’s rapid growth like Avatar, made by one of Mann’s contemporaries, James Cameron. Upon its release in 2009, Mann found himself enthralled by the science-fiction film.
In 2017, Mann confessed his love for the movie. “Avatar is an extraordinary achievement. It exceeds all the expectations that can be projected on one of his projects. Cameron has always been several frontiers ahead in this area, as he invents technology himself to support his vision.”
Moreover, in 2012, Mann even chose Avatar as one of his picks for BFI‘s Sight and Sound poll of ‘The Greatest Films of All Time’. He commented: “Upon the foundation of an entirely invented biosystem, Avatar is a brilliant synthesis of mythic tropes, with debts to Lévi-Strauss and Frazier’s The Golden Bough. It soars because, simply, it stones and transports you.”
Avatar used motion capture technology, which was relatively new at the time, and the results were groundbreaking. The movie took years to complete, with Cameron writing the first treatment for Avatar as far back as the early 1990s. When it was finally released, it became the highest-grossing movie of all time, earning over $2billion.
