Chattanooga Pulse

A few weeks before James Cameron’s Titanic hit theaters in 1997, I remember seeing a special on ABC about the making of the film.  Mind you, this was a one-hour television special aired on a major network before the release of a film.  Such a thing was unheard of, and I remember being taken aback by it.

Nevertheless, I watched in awed wonderment as Cameron guided us through his towering achievement—not just a film set with a glitzy backdrop or two on some tawdry studio back lot, but what was essentially a functional recreation of the inside of the unsinkable ship.  And to imagine that it would all be destroyed by the time the movie wrapped shooting!

It is no secret that Titanic was a game-changer for American movies.  It remains one of the highest grossing motion pictures of all time and, though many have grown tired of the pop-culture phenomenon engendered by it, there can be no denying that it was an entirely fresh film and one that valued quality (if a bit quixotic) storytelling even in the presence of eye-catching visual spectacle and grandeur.

Such is the way of director James Cameron, the visionary auteur who has always made lavish, expensive films that push the boundaries of what the medium can do.  His films, Terminator 2, True Lies, Aliens, Titanic, are iconic in the canon of American cinema and this weekend, his first film in 12 years will be released: Avatar.

He took a similar approach to the primetime Titanic special to promote this new film.  A few weeks ago, he hijacked the Fox television show Bones with an episode where some main characters stand in line for hours on end to get tickets for Avatar.  You can decide for yourself whether the choice was innovative or simply forceful.

Cameron wrote the treatment for Avatar in 1995, but the technology he wanted to use was not yet available.  His idea was to detail an American military operation to a planet called Pandora, on which exists a humanoid race called the Na’vi.  To create the Na’vi, Cameron wanted to use motion-capture technology—the technology behind Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean, and the great ape in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake—to create a whole race of computer-generated beings based on the captured movement of real actors.

“Not only did we want absolute reality in terms of human performance by our actors,” Cameron says in Avatar’s press kit, “but we had to do it for a large number of characters where previously it had been done only for one character.”  This absolute authenticity is a hallmark of a James Cameron film, and he is more than willing to push his cast and crew to the breaking point to achieve it.

For example: In 1989, Cameron made The Abyss, the most formidable and terrifying underwater film ever made.  For the production, he filled the containment vessel of an abandoned nuclear-power facility with eight million gallons of water and submerged the whole show.  An infection spread through the water, cast and crew got pneumonia, the frigid temperatures caused hair to freeze and break off, but Cameron kept rolling ten-hour days even in the dead of winter.  In the end, he got his movie.

Avatar was screened for critics in large cities last Friday night and 20th Century Fox put an embargo on reviews, saying that they could not be published until the film’s release on December 18.  Few critics listened to this suggestion and published their reactions right away.  Some directors would be upset by this, but Cameron’s Twitter (@JFCameron) told otherwise: “I’m typically a modest person,” he said, “but all of these great reviews are on the mark. I made a fantastic film, and it really shows.”

Will Avatar live up to all the praise or be added to a long list of 2009’s hyped disappointments?  I don’t know—I haven’t seen it yet.  But I’ll be glued to my theater seat on opening day to find out what James Cameron has in store and glimpse what will perhaps (just maybe) be the future of blockbuster entertainment.

Avatar
Directed by James Cameron
Starring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana
Rated PG-13
Running time: 162 minutes