AVATAR TO THE RESCUE
His blockbuster Titanic became the first movie to take $1 billion, and 12 years later he made history when Avatar broke $2 billion. Now as fans await the sequel, film bosses are hoping James Cameron can work his magic again and get people off their sofas and back in cinemas
NOT all big-screen heroes wear cape s – this one is a 68-yearold man with a passion for deepsea exploration and a knack for directing the biggest films of all time.
James Cameron knows how to pack a cinema better than anybody. He doesn’t make many movies, but each one is an event. His 1997 blockbuster Titanic became the first film to take $1 billion (then about R5bn). Twelve years later he was king of the world again when his sci-fi epic Avatar became the first to break $2bn (then about R14bn). It remains the highest-grossing movie of all time.
Not bad when your CV also includes two timeless Terminator films with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Aliens (1986).
Now, after 13 years away, he’s made Avatar: The Way of Water. It’s the first of four planned sequels in 3D that will further explore the world of those tall, blue aliens. And Hollywood is banking on it to save cinema.
Steven Spielberg called the original Avatar “the most evocative sci-fi film since Star Wars”. It came out in 2009, when Hollywood was jittery because online piracy was threatening a business that relies on viewers not watching stuff at home.
Enter James Cameron. Avatar demanded to be seen on a big screen. It told of evil human colonists arriving on the distant planet Pandora and battling the native Na’vi people for natural resources. But the plot was secondary because the 3D immersed us in James’ vivid world. It was an experience, and allowed cinemas to charge more for tickets.
The sequel arrives in December and couldn’t be more timely. Cinema is again under attack, but on two fresh fronts. The rise of streamers such as Netflix and Amazon allows millions to watch blockbusters at home. And the legacy of Covid is that many people have lost the cinema habit – audiences are down about 20%.
Avatar 2 is made for cinemas. I saw 3D footage of the new blockbuster and can safely say it won’t be as good on the box. Will Avatar work a second time? “I guess we’ll find out if people show up for Avatar 2,” James says on the other end of a Zoom call. He grins.
The Canadian-born director is in New Zealand, where he’s based, working on his franchise. The third Avatar is already filmed and comes out in 2024, there’s a fourth due in 2026 and another planned after that.
He’s clearly, understandably, confident. A teaser trailer hit 148 million views in 24 hours. The film already has a themepark ride, some Lego and a book series. What’s James’ secret of success? “I don’t know,” says the man whose films have made a combined $6bn (R108bn) plus. “I don’t make any decisions on movies thinking, ‘That will be worth an extra $5 million [R90m].’ You just follow your nose as a storyteller.
“That said, when I sat down with my writers to start Avatar 2, I said we can’t do the next one until we understand why the first one did so well. We must crack the code of what the hell happened.” What were his conclusions? “Well, all films work on different levels. The first is surface, which is character, problem and resolution. The second is thematic. What’s the movie trying to say? But Avatar also works on a third level, the subconscious.”
This explains why so many people saw the original more than once, James says.
“I wrote an entire script for the sequel, read it and realised it didn’t get to level three. Boom. Start over. That took a year.”
But that isn’t the only reason it’s taken so many years to make the follow-up.
“Well, I was also off doing deep-ocean exploration for a while,” James says with a laugh.
Quick aside – James, arguably the most successful director in history, only makes films as a hobby.
“Jim’s a scientist,” says Sigourney Weaver, who worked with him on Aliens and both Avatars. “That might be his first love.”
TEN years ago James piloted the first solo dive into the Mariana Trench, almost 11km below the western Pacific Ocean. A prominent oceanographer called him a modern-day Jacques Cousteau [a pioneering oceanographer].
“We treated it like a space mission,” James says of his submarine trip to the deepest place on Earth. “I wasn’t surprised it worked, but you’re always a little relieved because the alternative isn’t pretty.”
I think he approaches films in a similar fashion.
As the title suggests, a lot of The Way of Water takes place in the ocean – I saw clips that looked like David Attenborough’s Blue Planet but with blue aliens. Was it inspired by the Mariana Trench trip?
“I don’t do deep-sea exploration to become a better filmmaker,” James says. “I’m a filmmaker so I can pay for my expeditions. I’d much prefer to be out exploring and seeing things nobody imagined existed for real rather than making them up. But I’m good at making them up too. So I do that as well.”
Cinemas fighting for life after lockdown hope his popular touch is undiminished. In July lenders took control of Vue, which has 91 cinemas in the UK, and in August Cineworld, which has
‘I’M A FILMMAKER SO I CAN PAY FOR MY EXPEDITIONS. I PREFER TO BE OUT EXPLORING’
751 cinemas around the world, entered rescue talks.
Tom Cruise did his bit for this year’s box office with his exhilarating Top Gun: Maverick, already the 12th-most successful film of all time. But no superhero film broke the $1bn (R18bn) barrier this year, despite the fanfare that greeted Robert Pattinson’s arrival as The Batman.
Maybe audiences are bored with Hollywood’s increasingly formulaic fare. It’s astonishing that since Avatar there have been 26 Marvel films, five Star Wars films and five Harry Potter sequels or spinoffs, yet none knocked Avatar off its perch as the biggest film of all time.
Jon Landau is a producer who’s worked with James since Titanic. When we meet he’s wearing Avatar-branded vegan trainers (there’s a strong eco theme in the films that clearly spreads to its marketing).
“Hollywood has an aversion to new intellectual properties,” he says. “The easiest thing for a studio to say is no – nobody ever got fired for not making a movie. Yes, you can get fired for making the wrong movie, but you have to take chances. Our business is about gut decisions and everyone should be looking for new stories.”
For a while Avatar not only persuaded people to flock to cinemas, but also that 3D was finally the future. Studios have been trying to push 3D since the 1920s, but Avatar’s 3D was different; it was a window into the world rather than a world jumping out of the window.
Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011) and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012) also excelled, but then the cheap 3D rip-offs arrived.
I watched a remake of Clash of the Titans in 2010, with retro-fitted 3D effects, and already knew the format was dying – yet again.
“When filmmakers created 3D and made it a part of their art,” James says of Scorsese and Lee, “those results were spectacular. But when studios thought they could slap it on in postproduction it went sideways. But 3D isn’t dead.
“When Avatar came out there were around 4 500 3D screens in the world. Now there are around 120 000. I’d love this new film to remind us what that experience can look like – it’s not just a way to make an extra 10% [by charging more at the box office].”
“3D doesn’t make a film better,” Jon adds. “It exacerbates what exists. So if the movie isn’t good, 3D will just point that out. Hollywood takes a long time to learn.”
When James started Avatar in 2005, he says it felt like the Manhattan Project [the code name for the American-led effort to develop an atomic weapon during World War 2]. He means the scale and the technical leaps involved – new cameras were designed specifically.
Sam Worthington, who plays the soldier Jake Sully, and Zoe Saldana, who’s the main Na’vi, Neytiri, are back for the sequels and the first film feels like it’s from a different lifetime. “It felt like a weird indie,” Sam recalls. “It felt like an experiment,” Zoe says. “We knew that every day we were going to be working in uncharted territory,” James says. “It was three years before I
saw one shot of the final film and I sat in my edit room staring at it for an hour. I just realised, ‘We f**king did this.’ It was the first time I could relax. To the extent that I ever relax.”
Avatar would go on to make $2,85bn (then R19,95bn). Now it has its greatest competitor to date: its sequel. A film that cinemas need more than ever.
The first Avatar movie is currently being rescreened at South African cinemas in the run-up to the 16 December release of Avatar: The Way of Water.