The Cameron Conundrum

This article originally began as a musing on the films that have gained the properties of being game-changing. Though that article will certainly be forthcoming I think this might be a good time to express my feelings on the director James Cameron. Now among those of us with an interest in film which borders on the absurd, Cameron is considered with mixed feelings. Having been the spawning point of one of the sci-fi generations greatest hero’s by combining smart science with burly Austrians followed by pretty much inventing the Space Marine he is held aloft as a hero and a saint. However in his two biggest financial successes he has found mutiny among his more geekie of followers, those successes being Titanic and Avatar. In many ways the most apt comparison to make is to say that James Cameron is the films worlds Bill Gates. I say this because the men have both obviously keen intellects with great prowess in their chosen fields but are defined by a single almost astounding skill. That skill being to take their passions and channel them into absurdly large piles of money.

Cameron in both his artistically grand and generically bland days has been defined by his sheer profitability. Many have ragged on the lack luster plot of Avatar (myself definitively included) in its similarity to stories we have heard a hundred times and how we expected more from it. There’s a thing to be noticed here though in a preceding statement, that being ‘financial success’. If anyone wanders how Cameron feels about your dislike of his chosen plot, I would recommend you take some scuba courses, because to find him so as to ask you will likely have to dive through his enormous pool of money. Avatar cost more than 200 million dollars to make but earned over 2 billion dollars worldwide. It is due to numbers like that you realize that faulting Cameron is a futile gesture because the man is quite obviously doing something very very right for his work to be accepted and consumed in such staggering volumes.

It should also be noted however a more neglected fact. That being that Cameron has had many opportunities in which to outright sacrificing his powers as a film maker so as to exert his abilities as a money maker. I would ask you to imagine for a moment how a project like avatar would have looked in the hands of a man like Michael Bay. Cameron for all his monetary accomplishments is still one of the true cinematic masters of this age and though perhaps not as emotionally empowered as Spielberg, Classy as Coppola or forcefully accurate as Scorsese it is he who has mastered, as none of them have, the ability to make quality cinema for the largest possible audience to enjoy and enjoy thoroughly. Is the man a hack? Though it pains me to admit it, I think not. But is he a talented film maker with a big taste for the Benjamin’s? Oh hell yes. And you know what, we cant really fault him for that. However we may well start by the end of Avatar 3.

RSH