By Alex Hudson
July 31, 2002
The visionary-as-director needs possess an array of deep-seated personality traits to harness the profound, to procure his vision and translate this vision to the screen, unimpeded. Only a bold ego, a relentless taskmaster and a resilient dreamer has the intellectual hardcore-ness and fortitude to envision and then realize his vision. If there is a contemporary filmmaker to whom these traits best apply, it is James Cameron.
Action
Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone legitimized the director of action as auteur. Their balletics of action paved the way for a generation of filmmakers to specialize in action films. Peckinpah and Leone re-invented the western with grotesquely seductive violence, startling camerawork and fast cutting, but applied these same tactics to different genres in their twilight years. Just as Peckinpah's and Leone's equally-sterling careers were near end, a plethora of filmmakers emerged worldwide to carry the proverbial torch. John McTiernan, John Woo, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron surfaced, and each brought his own distinctive style to the action film.
Blue Collar
The story of how a director became a director is usually a compelling one. Determination and deceit, luck and lying, the path to the director's chair is rarely an easy one. For Ontario-born James Cameron, this path included years of laborious effects and model work, interspersed with jobs as a truck driver and machinist. Legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman plucked Cameron from obscurity, giving him a chance to prove himself on the production side of a string of low-budget movies.
Cameron made the most of this opportunity, rising in ranks quickly, and impressing producers at every turn. He finally ascended to the director's chair on Piranha II: The Spawning. Unfortunately, Cameron had the tale of flying killer piranhas taken from him by producer Ovidio Assonitis. Assonitis was contractually obligated to hire an American director on the project, but he intended to mold and edit the film to his liking, barring Cameron from the editing process. Cameron flew to Italy - where the Italian Assonitis and post-production crew were editing the film - and broke into the editing room and re-cut the film. Cameron was caught, and Assonitis restored the film back to his version.
It was in Italy, sick and distraught and desperately trying to save his first movie, that Cameron dreamt of apocalypse. The darkness of the nothingness is all there is 'til the harbinger from the future brings salvation. On his heels, a beast of fury. Cameron's fever dream: The Terminator, a crude and raw brethren to Blade Runner - a divine child of 2001 - science fiction meets pure action meets tech noir. On a scant $6 million budget, The Terminator made $36.9 million and burned itself into the minds of a generation of moviegoers.
Into the Abyss
Cameron's third film, Aliens, would strip the deliberate pace and careful thrills of Ridley Scott's Alien and re-posit the premise as a high-octane, viscerally-charged, pure actioner. Aliens is an extension of The Terminator in style and narrative approach; relentless, foreboding, always on the brink of oblivion. What elevates Aliens, and the reason the film achieves resonance, is the maternal relationship between Ripley and Newt (little Carrie Henn, looking like a battered rag-doll). Ripley's love for the girl, her pseudo-daughter, propels both her will to survive and her will to destroy the ungodly killing machine.
When directors achieve success, - and Cameron had consecutive hits on his hands - they afford themselves the chance to make the film of their dreams; big-budget epics of scope of dubious commercial appeal. Usually it's a one-shot deal, as these vanity projects invariably bomb. The Abyss is such a film. Based on a story Cameron wrote as a 17-year-old high-school student, The Abyss tells of a group of blue-collar underwater oil riggers who are enlisted to assist a team of Navy SEAL divers locate a crashed American nuclear submarine.
Trauma
At the heart of The Abyss is a love story. All Cameron films are love stories at the core, with the emotional coupling taking precedence over larger, traumatic backdrops. The trauma central to each Cameron film will define the relationship between his protagonists and, in fact, define the nature of his protagonists. How the Cameron protagonist responds to the trauma ultimately shapes his protagonists and how we, the audience, in turn view the protagonists.
Cameron places his protagonists in the worst imaginable traumatic situations, real or unreal. In The Abyss, his fiery heroine, Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), is thrust into several gut-wrenching, life-or-death scenarios. The high point of the film and the pinnacle of Cameron's career is Lindsey's drowning. She has sacrificed herself to save her husband, letting him use the lone diving suit and allowing herself to drown, in the almost futile attempt to be resuscitated minutes later. Against all odds, her lifeless, seemingly dead body is brought to life again, revealing the depth of love Cameron has for his creations, and the irrational, almost superhuman will to survive with which he blesses them.
For his sixth film, True Lies, Cameron manufactures an unreal scenario involving terrorists, nuclear bombs, and the obliteration of a Florida Key or two. Though the material has grimly been rendered more prescient in recent years, True Lies is a giant excuse for Cameron to show off the special-effects wizardry of his then-newly launched effects company, Digital Domain, in elaborately ridiculous and ridiculously elaborate action sequences. The rediscovery of love between Harry (Arnold) and Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) Tasker - the love story central to the film - is unfocused and unwisely takes a back seat to the special-effects smorgasbord.
Unsurprisingly, True Lies feasted at the box office, making just shy of $150 million domestic and $218 million abroad, proving that quality and box office are irrelevant and that Cameron had regained his Midas touch.
Titanic Juggernaut
Titanic holds the rare distinction of being one of the most loved and hated films ever made. With success and popularity comes backlash. But lost in the backlash, and the 11 Oscars and $600 million gross, is the fact that Titanic is the definitive James Cameron film: an action film, love story and special-effects orgy all at once.
The scope of the Titanic juggernaut remains jaw-droppingly impressive to this day. The film garnered 14 Oscar nominations in all, winning for Best Picture, Director, cinematography, art direction, costume design, sound effects, visual effects, editing, original score, song, and sound. Titanic made $1.2 billion abroad, $600 million domestic, and $30 million from NBC for five airings, plus earnings generated from rentals and sales of the video and DVD, the best-selling soundtrack, book tie-ins, and merchandising.
Future
Titanic tarnished Cameron's status amongst film buffs. Titanic still holds a connotation as an undeserved pageant winner; an overdone, overblown thing whose appeal to teen girls stands as an indictment to the merits of the film's love story. Time will judge whether this condemnation is fair, but for now, Cameron's best defense will come in the form of his future works.
This future should have included Spider-Man, a project on which Cameron spent years doing extensive pre-production work, including writing a "scriptment". Cameron is currently eyeing a possible True Lies sequel. Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown, U-571) was chosen to helm the third Terminator installment, Rise of the Machines, due out the first weekend in July 2003, some 12 years after Terminator 2: Judgment Day took theaters by storm.
Regardless of what James Cameron's next projects will be, they will undoubtedly feature groundbreaking special effects, high production values, and action to spare. More importantly, though, they will probably involve love stories surrounding epic-sized traumas. There will be an empowered heroine, strong-willed and resourceful, in a gothic romance. Box office will be shattered, the heights of entertainment reached.
View other columns by Alex Hudson
