There are very few directors who are honored as “gods” by movie fans, but James Cameron has had the reputation of “card god” for many years, which shows his special status in the hearts of Chinese audiences.
Reputation comes from the past: “True Lies” was one of the first “Hollywood blockbusters” introduced into China, the movie-watching craze of “Titanic” was overwhelming, and “Avatar” promoted the rapid increase in the number of screens and 3D theaters in China Growth… On several representative nodes of the Chinese film industry, Cameron’s masterpieces stand. But as time goes by, “Avatar 2” seems to have dimmed the halo over the head of “Ka Shen”.
This “rescue work” that practitioners have been looking forward to is a little weak in actual performance. Its single-day attendance rate is only 8%. The weekly attendance rate reached more than 15%. The Beacon Professional Edition shows that the pre-screening media box office forecast for the film is 2.2-3.3 billion. As of December 21, the total box office of “Avatar 2” has not exceeded 500 million, which is still far away from the “target”.
In addition to the two main objective factors of the epidemic and high ticket prices, the difficulty of releasing the word-of-mouth potential of “Avatar 2” also affected the box office trend. “If you want special effects, you need special effects, if you want the plot, you need special effects, if you want characters, you still need special effects” has become a hot comment on multiple platforms, and some film critics even think that “Avatar 2” is more like a landscape documentary than a feature film. On Zhihu, Cameron “personally answered” questions about the film in a thousand words, but Gao Zan replied in the comment area: “Don’t make movies, and if you make any more, you will lose the festival.”
“Strong special effects, weak plot” not only made “Avatar 2” not perform as expected in China. Currently, the film’s freshness on Rotten Tomatoes is 78%, and its Metacritic score is 68. The overall reputation is not satisfactory. Overseas mainstream media generally praised the big screen experience brought by the film, but also criticized the story level. As of December 21, the global box office of the film reached 497 million US dollars. According to Cameron himself in an interview, the global box office of “Avatar 2” needs to reach 2 billion US dollars to break even.
However, for Cameron, who has long been famous, whether the work can create a commercial myth may not be the most important thing. “I just put together two of my favorite things in life, movies and the ocean.” He explained the reason for choosing “The Way of Water”. Looking back at Cameron’s past works, there are more or less individualistic paranoia and willfulness.
And his achievements are basically bound to “technical breakthroughs”, and the plots and stories of his works have never escaped the questioning of “clichés”. “Avatar 2” actually also challenged the technical problem, that is, “underwater 3D shooting”: “As long as it is related to water, the difficulty of anything will increase tenfold!” Only this time it did not bring a revolutionary look and feel to the global audience. promote.
To some extent, Cameron has always been loyal to the most essential attribute of “providing spectacle” in big-screen movies-this is the function of the film as an artistic vehicle before it is used for narrative.
Now that “Ka Shen” is nearly 70 years old, I am afraid that he himself may not know whether he can lead the next audio-visual revolution. But as long as he hasn’t retired, the audience can still imagine the new changes he will bring to the big screen.
1、break into hollywood and subvert it
Another director with the title of “God of Movies”, Stanley Kubrick made “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 1968. There was a nearly 10-minute psychedelic special effects shot in the film, which was a rare scene on the screen at that time. The visual spectacle shocked many young people. After walking out of the theater, a 14-year-old boy vomited on the sidewalk for a long time and was excited.
This was the starting point of Cameron’s interest in film technology. His decades-old friend Randall Frakes once commented that Cameron is naturally suitable for complex film projects because his artistic creation and ability to overcome technology are “written in the genes”.
Cameron’s father is a rigorous and rational engineer. He also showed strong hands-on ability since he was a child, and “invented” a bunch of useless but interesting things, such as small trebuchets that can make bullet marks on the ground, such as Make a homemade submarine and send a mouse to the bottom of the Niagara River. His mother loves oil painting and watercolor painting, and would pick up the comic strips that Cameron’s father threw away and give them back to him. Influenced by his mother, Cameron is also happy to doodle on textbooks, drawing some aliens, robots, spaceships… He grew up The era of the US-Soviet space race was in full swing, and Cameron used the time spent on the school bus to read science fiction novels and comics.
Not long after studying in college, Cameron dropped out of school and became a “full-time truck driver and part-time screenwriter”. “I still remember when I parked the truck on the side of the road and hid behind the billboard to write the script, so that other drivers could not see me.” He once recalled.
In 1977, at the age of 23, Cameron watched another movie: George Lucas’ “Star Wars”. In addition to being shocked, this time he felt an anxiety “like being kicked from the back of the ass”. Thinking that it would be too late if he didn’t enter the industry, he and Randall raised a $30,000 investment from a local dental association and made a 12-minute short film “Alien Origin”.
“It’s not easy to enter Hollywood. We have talents but no connections. We can only knock on the boss’s door and promise to create economic benefits for them. Fortunately, there are many opportunities in Hollywood in the 1970s. As long as your ability is convincing, you can Get some money and do some big movies with a small amount of money,” Randall said. They took “Alien Origin” as a stepping stone and knocked on the door of B-grade film director Roger Corman’s “New World Studio”. Young people making low-budget creatives, including Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Cameron later described this experience as “the best university”.
Cameron has been promoted rapidly within the studio, from a modeler to an art director to a director who can take charge of the project alone. The real “Hollywood production” followed, and he was invited into the crew of the blockbuster sequel “Piranha 2” as the special effects director, and was promoted to director because the original director left.
I never thought that the shooting of “Piranha 2” was a nightmare. The film was filmed in Rome, Jamaica and other places, with a full set of Italian crew, young and unable to speak the language, the cooperation between Cameron and the crew was difficult. The producer of the project also “backstabbed” him. The distribution agreement signed by the latter only required an American director to be named. Cameron was ruthlessly fired after less than two weeks of filming in a foreign country.
Another bona fide nightmare that has become the project’s legacy. At that time, he had a high fever due to influenza infection, and was trapped in a hotel in Rome with a sense of confusion. In a trance, he dreamed of a metal skeleton emerging from the flames and dragging his body towards him…
The scene in the dream gave birth to the “Terminator” script. His agent felt that the story concept was very bad and persuaded Cameron to write something else. Cameron immediately fired his agent. During this embarrassing period of “even the worst agent in Hollywood didn’t return my calls”, Cameron spent two years looking for investment everywhere, and finally sold the script for $1, on the condition that he must direct it himself.
In 1984, “The Terminator”, which cost only US$6.5 million, was released with a global box office of US$78 million. The T-800 robot created with the help of makeup and model technology became a classic image on the screen, and Cameron’s fate also turned around.
Later, he received an invitation to shoot “Alien 2”. Some producers advised him that making sequels is usually thankless, “The results will be attributed to Ridley Scott, and the failure will be attributed to you.” But already Cameron, who will not lose the leadership of the project, replied: “Yes, I don’t care.”
For “Alien 2”, Cameron and the model team built a “Alien Queen” that is 4.2 meters high and can only be moved by 16 adults. The global box office of the film reached 131 million US dollars, and Cameron thoroughly proved that I have the strength to control a high budget and bring high returns.
The success of “Terminator” and “Alien 2” has benefited from the exquisite physical special effects, but Cameron did not go down this road. On the contrary, he recognized that “physical special effects are a dying art”, and Personally brought special effects production into a new field.
2、“King of the world”
Released in 1989, “The Abyss” is less regarded as Cameron’s masterpiece, but it was the beginning of his experiment with CG technology and underwater shooting.
At that time, computer special effects were not long used in film production, and the effect was still questioned. In 1985, the first CG character in history was born in the film “Acme of God”. It was a two-dimensional knight who jumped out of an oil painting. There are only six or seven shots, without any facial expressions. Cameron imagined a kind of intelligent creature living in the deep sea in “The Abyss”. When they greeted the humans in the submarine, they shaped the water column into a human face, imitating the protagonist’s smile.
Cameron made plaster casts for the record, and handed over digital effects to Industrial Light and Magic, the studio George Lucas had founded for Star Wars. It took Industrial Light and Magic 9 months to present this set of 75-second shots. After seeing the finished product, Cameron decisively decided to abandon the model.
“The Abyss” also brought a process innovation, that is, to distribute all special effects work to multiple companies for production at the same time. This is now standard in Hollywood movies, but it was the first time at the time.
Along with “The Abyss”, Cameron’s title of “studio tyrant” was also spread. When discussing the budget with producer Leonard Goldberg, Cameron said: “You have to understand, once the film starts, nothing will stop me, unless you kill me.” Goldberg later recalled : “Look into his eyes and you will understand that this man really thinks so. He is a tyrant who can rashly decide the fate of himself and others.”
After the filming started, Cameron pulled the crew to an abandoned nuclear power plant, put 8 million gallons of water into the reservoir, and covered the water with fine polypropylene foam to prevent reflections. This huge pool is the main filming location of “The Abyss”. The crew has to work in the water for more than 10 hours a day, and more than 10,000 oxygen tubes were used during the 10 week of filming. Goldberg came down with pneumonia after an afternoon on set, and at one point Ed Harris, a man of many tough guys, stopped to cry on his way home.
Although the overbudget “Abyss” made the studio lose money after its release, the good effects of liquid CG inspired Cameron. He established his own special effects company “Digital Realm”, retrieved Schwarzenegger and started filming “Terminator 2”. The metal robot killer T-1000, no one has tried such difficult CG special effects before him.
It is obviously not in line with the law of business to expect the fighting scene at the climax of the film to be based on new technology, but for Cameron, the reason is precisely: “No one has done it. It’s that simple. Every movie should try something that no one has done before. done.”
It is no exaggeration to say that the success of “Terminator 2” promoted CG technology to become mainstream in film production. Pixar founder Edwin Catmull once concluded: “The huge commercial success of “Terminator 2” and “Beauty and the Beast” shocked everyone. 1991 was a turning point… Later CG took over like a storm. All over Hollywood, all the studios are starting to form their own CG production departments.”
This alone is enough for Cameron to leave a name in film history, but Cameron’s madness didn’t stop there. Next, he used model, CG and underwater shooting technology at the same time, and burned 200 million US dollars to shoot “Titanic”. The film brought his stress and popularity to a peak.
During the filming, because the cost continued to exceed the budget, the outside world swarmed with doubts. Cameron offered to give up the follow-up dividends to the producer, but the Fox negotiators hoped that he would also give up half of the dividends of the next film, and Cameron withdrew it on the spot. Suggested, angrily reprimanded: “Get out.”
He kept a razor next to his work computer on set, with a post-it note next to it saying, “If the movie screwed up, use this knife to kill yourself,” as a reminder that he was desperate.
The pressure was also passed on to his collaborators. The leading actor Leonardo DiCaprio told the media: “He is simply a devil. For a shot that may be deleted, we will soak in seawater for a while.” All day long.” Some crew members printed T-shirts that read: “You can’t scare me, I’m working for Cameron.”
The final results of “Titanic” are well known. It has been the box office champion of film history for 11 years, won 14 Oscar nominations and won 11 awards including best director and best picture. Also at the awards ceremony, Cameron faced the camera and shouted the famous phrase vigorously: “I am the king of the world!”
Although he explained many times that that sentence was just a quote from Jack in the film, over time, whether it was out of arrogance or not is no longer important, and “king of the world” has become a label that “card god believers” talk about.
His biographer Rebecca Gunkey summed up the success of “Titanic” in this way: “The 1990s was a decade of cynicism and satirical culture, so a film with a particular sincerity caught the audience’s attention. It was as if It’s the kind of old-school emotional release that audiences around the world have been waiting for and needing.”
3、The Dilemma of “Ka Shen”
As early as after “Terminator 2” was released, Cameron published a dozen-page “Digital Manifesto”, predicting that CG special effects and virtual shooting will become the basic means of film production, and mentioned it for the first time in it. The concept of “performance capture”. Later, people saw the magic of mature motion capture technology in masterpieces such as “King Kong”, “Lord of the Rings” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”.
More than ten years later, “Avatar” created Pandora. It not only used motion capture to shape Pandora’s characters, but also set off a 3D format revolution in the global film industry. In the conversation with Peter Jackson, Cameron also predicted that “3D technology will be as popular as color movies in the future.” Regardless of the actual 3D effects of subsequent massive movies, we have indeed become accustomed to 3D movies in the past ten years.
However, the leap-like technological progress of “from scratch” is hard to come by after all. After all, Cameron himself has to wait for the development of hardware conditions if he wants to shoot “Avatar”. The last time he appeared in the audience’s field of vision, he participated in “Alita: Battle Angel” as a producer. This film also reflects technological progress. Strictly speaking, he created the first purely CG human character created by motion capture. But the audience has already seen “humanoid characters” such as King Kong, Gulu, and Pandora, as well as pure CG animals. Is it really necessary to use CG?”, the film’s global box office is only a little over 400 million US dollars.
Forty-five years ago, “Star Wars” was extremely popular when it was released in the United States. John Lester, a member of Industrial Light and Magic, said: “I queued for a full six hours.” On the day of the screening, my wife and I just finished watching it, then walked to the ticket line and waited for two hours to watch it again. There are many, many audiences like us.” A common first impression is: I have never seen this kind of thing.
If you look at it now, the special effects of the first “Star Wars” may only be described as rough. Cameron once said: “My goal is to rekindle the magical moment that made them awe in the hearts of the audience, just like my generation felt when they first saw “2001: A Space Odyssey”, just like the generation after me. People feel the same way when they see “Star Wars.” This goal itself is a shackle—the paradox of creating a visual spectacle with technology ahead of its time is that it can only shock audiences of the same generation. The main force of the new generation of movie viewers may not be surprised when they look back at “Terminator 2” or “Avatar”, let alone “Alita” or “Avatar 2”, which only have “upgrades” but no “creation”.
A bigger trap of the times is that “technology-driven box office” may have become a thing of the past. In the 1960s, the New Hollywood movement flourished. One of the backgrounds of the movement was the popularization of television. Theaters needed to compete with home television for audiences. Upgrading the big-screen experience was an inevitable solution. As a result of the movement, genre films represented by science fiction and monsters have gradually become the mainstream of commercial films.
Cameron did not participate in the upsurge of the New Hollywood movement, but he is of the same age as Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas and other representatives, and he has essentially inherited the “high-budget, high-quality , high-tech commercial blockbusters” legacy. This technology-driven box office route was replaced by the branded and IP-based route represented by Marvel in the second decade of the 21st century, and the “blockbuster bombing” guided by branding and IP has already attracted audiences around the world. A certain amount of visual fatigue was produced.
In fact, since entering the 21st century, Cameron himself seems to have lost his desire to express himself. He once said that the success of “Titanic” has two major benefits for him: one is to have income, and the other is that since it has been proved that none of the previous works were a fluke, then he can do other things. “When I’m 80, it’s impossible to lead an expedition to explore the deep sea where aliens live, but I can still make movies at that time, so the expedition should be done earlier.”
As a result, the number of his film works dropped sharply, but there were dozens of deep-sea explorations, the most famous of which was reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench, becoming the first person to dive alone in human history. He can even joke: “Hollywood director is just my part-time job.”
Even the iconic paranoid temper and tyrant style are more restrained after “Titanic”. During the announcement of “Alita”, actor Christoph Waltz claimed: “Before I met Cameron, I thought he was a monster dragon, the kind that would breathe fire. But after meeting him, he is a very kind person.” People.” Rosa Salazar, the heroine who plays Alita, also said: “I don’t even know where those scary claims come from.”
Perhaps as Cameron grows older and his mentality changes, it is difficult for the audience to expect him to lead an audio-visual revolution. Of course, he does not owe film history anything. What is gratifying is that Cameron did not really regard filmmaking as a part-time job, but was still occasionally active in the front line of filming.
When faced with questions in the 1990s, his answer was extreme: “Sooner or later, I will die at the preview of my own movie, such as dying of a heart attack. I know where the end of my life is.” Five years ago When asked again “worried about losing creativity”, his answer was much calmer, but still firm: “Maybe my senses will age and degenerate, for example, if I lose one eye, I will not be able to shoot 3D. But my soul will not age .”
Author of this article: Poison Eye Editorial Department, source: Poison Eye, original title: “Cameron: The Dilemma of the Technologist”
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