How getting “spanked” on a movie steered James Cameron towards history
Once upon a time, James Cameron used to make movies on a regular basis. It sounds scarcely believable when he’s only made two since 1997, but as a director, he used to be a fairly prolific one.
It would be an understatement of epic proportions to say that times have changed since then, but it’s hard to argue that being exponentially more selective has reaped the biggest possible rewards. Cameron is no longer a mere filmmaker, he’s a history maker who turns each of his productions into a game-changing event.
As a result, his career has been split into two distinct eras. There’s the one that saw him helm seven features in 15 years between his debut Piranha II: The Spawning and the all-conquering Titanic, and then there’s his current – and ongoing – status as the guy who doesn’t seem to be interested in anything other than Avatar sequels.
There are a lot of filmgoers out there who’d love nothing more than to see Cameron craft something that isn’t set on the far-flung planet of Pandora, but it’s not going to happen. He can do whatever he wants, and as the director of three of the four highest-grossing releases in cinema history, it’s right there in the numbers that folks are going to show up in their droves no matter how long they have to wait.
Titanic became the top-earning film of all time, scooping 11 Academy Awards from 14 nominations. Avatar came along a dozen years later and toppled the disaster drama from its fiscal perch, winning three Oscars from nine nods and making the shortlist for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
By his lofty standards Avatar: The Way of Water fell short, only becoming the fourth most lucrative film ever made, earning a paltry four Oscar nominations and winning just one for its visual effects. Of course, those are accolades the majority of movies could only ever dream of, but Cameron is held to an entirely different standard than almost anyone else.
He’s developed an innate ability to give audiences exactly what they want to see, whether they know it or not. Aliens upended the template of its predecessor to go all-guns-blazing, becoming one of the best action flicks, sequels, sci-fi, and horror films committed to film in the process.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day was the most expensive movie ever when cameras started rolling, and it too exists among the finest sci-fi stories and franchise follow-ups of all time. True Lies was Cameron at his most playful and unrestrained, giving Arnold Schwarzenegger the platform for career-best work in a light-hearted and fleet-footed blockbuster that furthered the groundbreaking advances in visual effects pioneered by their previous collaboration.
It didn’t happen by accident, either, with Cameron admitting to the Directors Guild of America that a very rare misstep ended up sending his career spiralling in a completely different direction. “I have often said I couldn’t have made Titanic a good film if I hadn’t done The Abyss, and I hadn’t made the mistake of losing sight of where the human drama was eclipsed by the necessity for spectacle,” he suggested before explaining how deeply it affected him.
“I don’t think you get spanked by an audience not liking a movie. I think you get spanked by you not liking a movie, the feeling of frustration that you didn’t communicate what you wanted to,” Cameron continued. “It’s getting the tech in balance with the drama and the emotion. I think I was a little more in love with the visuals on The Abyss, and by the time we got to Titanic, I thought I can’t do that. I’ve got to pick my battles.”
Cameron’s post-Abyss ventures have been defined not only by the director taking his sweet time, but using the boundary-pushing digital trickery as a means to further the story, not as superficial eye candy. He veered too far into the latter on his aquatic escapade and ended up paying the price when it received a lukewarm reception from all corners, and it wasn’t a mistake he was willing to repeat again.
He’s only made four movies in the four decades since, but every single one of them has been entirely reflective of the message he wanted to convey, making The Abyss the genesis of his newfound – and painstaking – direction from that moment on.
