When James Cameron accepted his Best Director Oscar for Titanic by exclaiming, “I’m the King of the World!” the title stuck to him whether he wanted it to or not – and now it’s often seen as an example of Cameron’s ego more so than his talent as a filmmaker. Then again, considering how everything associated with James Cameron is huge, it’s not such a wild claim. It has become impossible to discuss Cameron’s latest film, Avatar, without discussing its size. Rumored to have cost up to $400 million, everyone talks about how much it cost or how much it’s making or how big the screen was when you saw it and how impressive the 3D was. Sure, people are also talking about the movie itself, and while it’s been critically praised and is seen as a major Oscar contender, there has definitely been criticism about the film’s simplistic plotline. Anyone who has that gripe certainly has a point: Avatar isn’t the most original movie ever made, but it feels to me like that wasn’t the point of it, either. Cameron is fashioning something that’s more of an experience than anything else, and whether you like Avatar as a movie or not, it’s difficult to argue with the experience of it. It’s not a movie you can see at any old movie theater, but one that you must experience in digital 3D or IMAX to really get the movie. Avatar is a movie that requires it be seen in a movie theater – not on Blu-Ray or DVD or digital download – to really be appreciated, and that is truly a beautiful thing.
What’s interesting now in light of Avatar’s success is how Cameron has taken the image of the filmmaker back to an age before the superstar director or even the Auteur theory but that of Movie Director as Showman, luring audiences in not so much with an original story or deep characters but with the promise that you’re going to see something spectacular that you can only get at the movies. Beyond the 3D and the technical innovations, Avatar gives you a humongous package of big-screen entertainment that truly rates as spectacle. It’s an old-fashioned roadshow approach that harkens back to the Cinemascope and 70mm epics of the ’50s and ’60s more so than anything you get these days. Forget trying to outdo Steven Spielberg or George Lucas; James Cameron is out to be the next Cecil B. DeMille, and he’s getting closer and closer with each film he makes.
Like Cameron, DeMille was a somewhat larger-than-life figure who made big movies and made them his way, usually with large budgets and casts of thousands
. Never really a critic’s darling (De Mille’s silent films and early talkies are often seen as his best work), he was respected within the industry (his circus epic, The Greatest Show on Earth, won the Best Picture Oscar in 1952), but was usually a thorn in the side of studio heads who had to give in to most of his demands. Audiences, however, loved him and flocked to each of his pictures because he seemed to know what they wanted, usually making his films one of the top box office hits of that year. DeMille was often seen as the star of his own movies, well above such box office names as Charlton Heston or Gary Cooper, and he even introduces The Ten Commandments itself. Like Cameron, DeMille’s films were never known for great writing or acting, but they offered (here comes that word again) big-screen spectacle that was pretty much unprecedented during its time. They both know how to put on a show, one that’s different from other movies and is best experienced in a theater with an audience, more than any other setting or format, and that’s a fine art that Hollywood seems to have lost. With Avatar, James Cameron is brining it back.
Lots of other guys can make special-effects movies that offer nothing more than big action scenes, but Cameron seems to understand how to deliver it in a manner that actually gives back to the audience. Sure, spectacle can only go so far, but in Cameron’s hands it goes very far, indeed; I don’t know if Avatar is a great film, but it’s definitely a great movie-going experience and I don’t fault it for just being that. It’s a night at the movies that reminds you of just what is so great about going to the movies in the first place.
Cameron has proved once again that even without Arnold Schwarzenegger he can make huge movies on his terms and get what he wants. King of the World? Maybe not. But King of Hollywood? Well, that might just be accurate.
