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CAMERON, JAMES (1954– ). Canadian director, writer, producer.
Co-wrote with Jay Cocks,
co-edited (uncredited) with Howard Smith, and produced: Strange Days
(Kathryn Bigelow 1995).
Produced: Dark Angel
(tv series) (and created with Eglee) (2000-2002); Solaris (Steven
Soderbergh 2002).
Production designer and second-unit director: Galaxy of
Terror (Bruce D. Clark 1981). Visual effects: Battle Beyond the Stars (Jimmy
T. Murakawi and Roger CORMAN,
uncredited 1980); Escape from New York (John CARPENTER 1981); Apollo
13 (uncredited consultant) (Ron HOWARD 1995). Film based on his and Hurd's work: The Terminator: Dawn
of Fate (video game) (J. D. Smith 2002); Terminator 3: Rise of the
Machines (Jonathan Mostow 2003); Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
(video game) (2003); Terminator 3: Redemption (video game) (Shawn Wright
and Smith 2004); Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (tv series)
(2008-2009); Terminator Salvation (McG 2009).
Might I get away with a brief summary? James Cameron has an
uncanny knack for coming up with "original" screen stories that
usually—though not always—manage to barely escape legal claims of plagiarism. He is
an absolute master at overseeing magnificent cinematic entertainments that will
entrance even the most resistant of filmgoers. And, despite his own pretensions
to the contrary, he is a filmmaker with absolutely nothing to say, who
embarrasses himself whenever he says it.
Cameron is at his best, then, when accompanied by a strong
personality, like producer and ex-wife Gale Anne
HURD or action
star Arnold SCHWARZENEGGER, to impose
restraint upon his tendency toward bloated, self-indulgent excess. The results
in those cases? Others might rave about the taut energy and surprising
intelligence of The Terminator, or the way that Cameron made Aliens
a much better adaptation of Robert A.
HEINLEIN's Starship
Troopers than the official Paul VERHOEVEN version (did Heinlein consider
suing?). But I think my favorite Cameron film is True Lies, a superbly
crafted, utterly mindless action film with compelling action scenes balanced by
precisely the right amount of domestic comedy as to placate the wives and
girlfriends who were dragged into the theatre to watch it. (And while we're
celebrating schlock, let's not forget his beginnings as a nifty special-effects
artist for colorful time-wasters like Battle Beyond the Stars, Galaxy
of Terror, and Escape from New York.)
As for his other films: well, surely the marriage to Hurd
fell apart, and she effectively abandoned their final project, when it became
apparent that there was nothing she could do to rescue the sinking ship that
was The Abyss. Do I have to say anything about Titanic simply
because of the fleeting element of fantasy in its saccharine conclusion? Someday,
I promise, I will force myself to sit through the whole thing and offer an
informed opinion. Its chief virtue is that, for a while, the money that movie
earned encouraged Cameron to restrict his directorial outings to inoffensive
documentaries while he presided as producer over other directors' follies. But
then, out of and into the blue, came Avatar, about which I have waxed
eloquent in another venue. In a nutshell, all the trolls in cyberspace will
never alter my view that it is little more than a vexing mixture of visual
excitement and intellectual mush. Members of the Academy must have agreed,
which is why they gave another of Cameron's ex-wives, Kathryn Bigelow, the
directing Oscar for not directing Avatar, and her film the Best Picture
Award for not being Avatar.
Looking toward the future, our best hope is that, after a
number of successful lawsuits, Cameron will give up plans for a sequel to Avatar,
upon realizing that he would have to share the rewards with the innumerable
people who can present a convincing case involving stolen ideas in the original
film, and instead decide to do something else—perhaps teaming up with a
certain ex-governor of California and a certain ex-wife and producer to offer a
3-D sequel to True Lies? Or maybe, for once, actually purchasing the
rights to a published science fiction story as the basis for a screen epic?
(Perhaps, to compensate Orson Scott Card for dragooning him into writing the
novelization of The Abyss, he could tackle Ender's Game, an ideal
vehicle for a director with a flair for sound and fury, signifying nothing.)
Still, given his recent track record, I must report that he now has something
else (other than fabulous, inexplicable success) in common with Spielberg: I
watch his films only when somebody pays me to review them. And since I'm not
getting paid for writing this entry, and since its topic brings me no joy,
forgive me its abrupt conclusion.
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