By Jason Apuzzo. • It would be very easy these days to devote a post per day to James Cameron. He’s everywhere, commenting on everything, seeing analogies to Avatar everywhere, and apparently not turning down many interviews. Perhaps this is what working out of the public eye for so many years does to you. In any case, Cameron is in the news again today for many different reasons on the eve of the Avatar re-release. In the LA Times he indicates that he wants Avatar to compete with Star Wars, Star Trek and the Tolkein ‘franchise’ on a macro-pop culture scale (it won’t, for many reasons). He also sees analogies to the despoiling of Pandora in the BP oil spill, and now comes word today – and this certainly is no surprise – that the Iraq war represented a major impetus behind Cameron’s writing of Avatar.
Mr. Cameron strikes me as being something akin to a mad scientist from a 1950s sci-fi film, in that there is undoubtable genius at work in what he does … yet this ‘genius’ (which is of both a technical and narrative variety) is put to ends that are, ultimately, insane in their basic conception. The irony is that Avatar reverses so many things that Cameron’s films seemed to stand for in the past in terms of the basic justness of American military interventions abroad – whether one thinks here of Aliens or True Lies or even Rambo II (which Cameron co-wrote). Cameron has gotten lost in his own technology, his own personal Pandora of anti-Americanism, pseudo-mysticism and eco-extremism – and it’s becoming increasingly unpleasant to watch.
• In related sci-fi/fantasy news, check out this interesting interview featuring Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, circa 1980, in which we learn that George Lucas was, indeed, planning his Star Wars prequels even back then (down to the 20 year timeline interval between trilogies). George is nothing if not methodical. Also today: someone has put together a ‘silent film’ version of The Empire Strikes Back, which is a lot of fun; there are also indications that big news will soon be coming out about Peter Jackson’s Hobbit; and Tron: Legacy has a new international teaser poster out, featuring Beau Garrett. I’m really looking forward to this film, and hoping it’s been worth the wait.
• The Wrap thinks movie ticket prices are too damn high. They’re right. The major culprit? 3D. It’s true; I caught a 10am screening of Piranha 3D last week and the ticket cost $9, which is crazy. For that price, the underwater ballet should’ve been at least 5 minutes longer.
• The Academy will be giving honory Oscars out this year to Francis Ford Coppola (Irving Thalberg Award), Jean-Luc Godard, Eli Wallach and Kevin Brownlow … all richly deserved, in my opinion. Coppola and Godard are among my all-time favorites, Kevin Brownlow is easily one of our best film writers … and who doesn’t love Eli Wallach? The funny part of all this is, though, that nobody can find Godard to tell him! Typical Godard. He’s probably living in Alphaville.
• Did you like Frank Miller’s Gucci ad from the other day? Not to be outdone, Martin Scorsese just shot a slick new ad for Chanel.
• Katy Perry looked and sounded great on Letterman’s show yesterday. We’re eager to promote her stuff, in the midst of this bad economy, because we recently learned from the LA Times that the ‘real’ subject of her music is “consumerism.”
• Christina Hendricks is now doing ads for London Fog, which provides trenchcoats for Mad Men. I didn’t think trenchcoats could fight so tightly on a gal.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Piranha 3D’s Riley Steele has a birthday today, which is appropriate considering that she’ll be wearing her birthday suit on screens all across America this weekend.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 26th, 2010 at 6:57pm.
The funniest part of Cameron’s comments is he timing. He was clearly too cowardly to stand behind the themes of his movie because he waited until after its initial run to confirm the content most of us already knew existed. At least now, there is no one who can doubt Cameron’s intentions. And believe me, there still were people who didn’t believe the allegory with the Iraq war. I personally knew two of them.
I know such people, as well. The only silver lining I take from all this is that nobody went to see the movie because of their interest in Cameron’s take on the war. It was purely and simply the spectacle that drew audiences.
Avatar will never compete with those properties mentioned for many reasons. I can say that with certainty because it already failed miserably in that arena; the Avatar merchandise crashed and burned, including the video game.
The film was a marketing phenomenon. It was shiny and pretty, and wrapped in a 3D bow just in time for the Holidays. Like Titanic, word of mouth spread, and matters got out of hand at the box office.
It all stops there because Cameron’s world has no sense of danger or exploration, and it can’t stand on any sort of mythos because it crumbles on the weight of its own seventh-grade politics.
Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings reach in and grab the ties that bind us, and immerse us in places we KNOW we’ve been in before, while thrusting us in amazing worlds — that’s the rush.
Avatar is anti-everything — it attacks everything people hold closely to them. That’s why it hasn’t took a hold on culture, and because it’s not intellectually honest, it’s just high-tech propaganda.
On this point, Vince, I am in complete agreement with you – and I also think that Cameron’s age, and tyrannical will to control his productions, is going to hurt him here. Both George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry hired endless numbers of talented people to work with them in the fleshing-out of the universes they’d created. Cameron will never have the time to do that, nor necessarily the inclination – because that would entail relaxing his grip on the political message Avatar is conveying. Essentially, Cameron is too angry a guy with too many grudges to get enough people to go along with him on this.
Christina Hendricks is now doing ads for London Fog
Ms. Hendricks takes the irony out of the term “supermodel”.
Trenchcoats! Who would’ve thought?
Someone needs to read the “Secret History of Star Wars” by Michael Kaminski. Lucas’ comical, Orwellian (“twelve parts, no always was nine parts, no always six”) dictates over the years about his true intentions, his suppression of footage that contradicts what he claimed he always maintained, and the dollar signs that obviously formed in his eyes when his movie took off makes for good reading. This well-documented history explains what was really going on with Star Wars. It blows my mind that the average person on the street, for instance, and even sci-fi geeks under a certain age, believes that “episode 4” was always there at the beginning. That addition’s a minor point, but very symptomatic of the Lucas mythology that he built up around a movie that started as a cross between “Hidden Fortress” and “American Grafitti in Space”. It’s also scary in its support of the old adage that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
You gotta love posts like these about the SHOCKING revelations about the EEEVIL George Lucas and all the EVIL, SINISTER goings-on behind the scenes of “Star Wars”. You mean to say he actually changed his mind a few times about the direction of his franchise, or that not everyone is aware that the 1st film was not always “Episode 4”? OMG…it’s a CONSPIRACY!!! Quick — call the FBI and the CIA!!! What other terrible things has he been hiding from the public?! This dangerous man MUST be exposed for the good of us all!!!!
Touche.
On The Hobbit Front, I’ve never been a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro. I felt The Hobbit was too big of a picture for him with source material that’s too well defined and beloved. I cried crocodile tears when he backed out. He’s a top Director however The Hobbit is a movie of large themes with sincere emotional content. (One example is the scene towards the end of the Fellowship when Legolas, Arogorn and Gimli lament the capture of Pippin and Merry and vow to not abandon their friends) I find del Toro’s movies well done with a unique signature vision but sorely lacking on the emotional side and for that reason I cannot connect completely into his movies. My reaction to del Toro’s movies is typically “that’s a cool scene” then onto the next “cool” scene. Just a collection of “cool” scenes. I enjoy his movies but felt all along that he was wrong for The Hobbit. On the other hand the perfect person is still Peter Jackson who actually has the opposite problem. Guillermo would have been perfect for the Lovely Bones. I also realize that to a degree I’m contradicting myself.