James Cameron not making non-Avatar movies anymore

Sad Professor

Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the “Avatar” business. Period. That’s it. I’m making “Avatar 2,” “Avatar 3,” maybe “Avatar 4,” and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the “Avatar” landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it.

He also compares Zack Snyder to Kubrick and Spielberg.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/james-cameron-on-chinese-filmmakers-censorship-and-potential-co-productions/

krudler

make True Lies 2 dammit!

johnny_ultimate

No big loss. His best days are well behind him.

LOL at the Snyder comment.

rednik

He was never the busiest director.

Skinfull

I'd say with all the time he's spend so deep underwater, something in his brain went *pop*
Also it doesn't say much for "everything he has to say" if he can say it all through the world of Ferngully Avatar.

pixelburp

In fairness, Cameron struck me as the type of person for whom directing was only a job he did to fund his own personal non-filmmaking passions, such as the oceanography stuff - and latterly, the asteroid mining project.

Funny when you look at his CV how slight it is, but it's a pity he feels there's nothing outside of Avatar & his personal hobby-horses that'll stoke his interest; it's very telling how in the interview when talking about the progress of the sequel, he speaks of the technology & software, not the storyboards, scripting, casting or anything traditional.

Galvasean

Odd move. Can't see how Snyder compares to Kubrick though.

Monty Burnz

He hasn't directed a film I like since 1991, so I'm fairly calm about the whole situation...

couch_dweller

pixelburp wrote: »

In fairness, Cameron struck me as the type of person for whom directing was only a job he did to fund his own personal non-filmmaking passions, such as the oceanography stuff - and latterly, the asteroid mining project.

Funny when you look at his CV how slight it is, but it's a pity he feels there's nothing outside of Avatar & his personal hobby-horses that'll stoke his interest; it's very telling how in the interview when talking about the progress of the sequel, he speaks of the technology & software, not the storyboards, scripting, casting or anything traditional.

cameron is more of a scientist - engineer than a film maker , watched avatar again recently ( came to terrestrial tv very quick ) and its a pretty awfull movie if you set aside the astounding special effects

Tea_Bag

Am I the only one that thought Avatar was fairly meh? it reintroduced a technology that's 30 years old, and the movie industry only push it to curb piracy. Maybe I'm just grumpy cause 3D really hurts my eyes for some reason.

all this means is I won't be watching any more James Cameron movies for a while. no big loss.

Sad Professor

I wish he'd hurry up and approve The Abyss transfer so it can be released on Blu-ray. I'm convinced he hates that film and is trying to bury it. Which I can understand in the case of True Lies, but The Abyss is really good. Then again it's years since I've seen it because I refuse to watch that horrible DVD.

krudler

Sad Professor wrote: »

I wish he'd hurry up and approve The Abyss transfer so it can be released on Blu-ray. I'm convinced he hates that film and is trying to bury it. Which I can understand in the case of True Lies, but The Abyss is really good. Then again it's years since I've seen it because I refuse to watch that horrible DVD.

I have the dvd purely for the making of doc, which is absolutely brilliant. the dvd is HORRIBLE though, its non anamorphic and a sh1tty transfer. Until it goes all "we are the world" with the aliens at the end its a taut, really claustrophobic thriller. if you removed all of the alien stuff it would have been just as good. Its a pity Michael Biehns careers went tits up as he gave a great performance in this.

I like Camerons movies, Avatar was a spectacular use of tech but hollow as a film itself. He dos push tech boundaries though and you cant say he isnt passionate about his other interests. He's made some of the biggest grossing movies of all time on a less than ten film cv, which is pretty damn impressive.

johnny_ultimate

I'd be surprised it there's anyone who thinks Avatar is a good film outside of the tech at this stage.

What James Cameron has is money, and lots of it. Sometimes his tech experiments created good films, in more recent examples it hasn't. With the slight exception of The Abyss - which is at least interesting - all of his films have been fairly mindless but ludicrously expensive spectacles. In his prime - Aliens, Terminator 2 - this created some rollicking, thoroughly enjoyable films. Those films may have been totally hollow too, but they got by on the sheer scale, force and enthusiasm of delivery. Those days are long gone, alas, so I'm more than happy to leave him throw money at his elaborate tech demos.

Mickeroo

I only read the quote in the OP but it strikes me as slightly delusional. He genuinely seems to think Avatar was an "important" film outside of the technological aspects. The heavy handed environmentalist message (though I agree with the sentiments somewhat) just came off as someone who took James Lovelock's Gaia theory a bit too literally to me. Having said that, at least he tried to make it socially relative which is more than most do I guess.

argosy2006

Avatar is crap,
What am i missing, wait i'm missing 2 hours , i stopped watching after few mins,
Boring,

pixelburp

Hope that's an exaggeration because otherwise you'd have the world's smallest attention span

Avatar had a garbage script that oversimplified its natives to such an extent even Disney would find it cloying, but it still had a technical prowess that was admirable & Cameron reminded one of how you shoot CGI-heavy action scenes; it really showed how godawful recent explosionfests have become.

krudler

pixelburp wrote: »

Hope that's an exaggeration because otherwise you'd have the world's smallest attention span

Avatar had a garbage script that oversimplified its natives to such an extent even Disney would find it cloying, but it still had a technical prowess that was admirable & Cameron reminded one of how you shoot CGI-heavy action scenes; it really showed how godawful recent explosionfests have become.

I like how Cameron lets the camera sit still when it needs to, unlike one M. Bay who seems to think being unable to see anything is a great way to spend 200 million quid. Cameron is great at framing action, T2 is brilliantly shot throughout all its action setpieces no matter how chaotic they are.

Cork boy 55

I don't care. Does anyone care really?

pixelburp

Well clearly yes people do, including yourself that your inclined to share in this thread