The time when Star Wars movies took the world by storm. A 23-year-old man watched the fourth installment of Star Wars, New Hope, and thought: ‘This is my only way’. The young man was James Francis Cameron, who had already dropped out of college midway and became a truck driver. The one and only James Cameron has taken theaters around the world to the pinnacle of wonder.
James, who was born in Ontario, Canada and immigrated to California, USA, was an academic failure. Although his paintings were excellent, no one could digest their hyperbole. His thoughts were strange, full of swimming birds and flying fish. With Avatar, which changed the course of world cinema years later, James Cameron dazzled the masses with the same hyperbole, the hilarious climax.
Starting with 1984’s Terminator, the filmmaker took the audience to another level of fantasy. Later came the Cameron era, the Cameron era of surprises.
At the beginning of the films, when the name James Cameron was written and shown, the audience’s mind was prepared. The reason is that what is going to be seen and heard will not be ordinary movie viewings. Although the hyperbole pictures drawn in childhood were a joke to many, when the characters hit the silver screen, they became masterpieces that shocked the world. Before Terminator, there was a Pandora in that mind. In 1994, he even prepared an 80-page blueprint for the movie Avatar. After Titanic, the plan was to release Avatar in 99. But the shooting was shelved as current technologies could not give perfection to the characters and scenes he had in mind. Cameron is also a perfectionist.
James Cameron once said. All his pictures are based on love. Yes, in Cameron films you can find unusual love, love as deep as the sea tested under unusual circumstances. Like on the Titanic.
Released in 1997, Titanic won 11 Oscars. The film broke the previous collection records. It took another Cameron film, Avatar, to break that record 12 years later. At that time, the name Cameron was the only thing that gave a company like 20th century fox the confidence to make a 3-hour film for 20 crores. By then, films like Aliens, Terminator 2 and The Abyss had made Cameron a global brand.
Those who don’t know the names Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet keep Jack, Rose and their love in the back of their minds.
Strong female characters also became the lifeblood of Cameron’s films. In Terminator 2, the female character who knows how to save herself and fight back has disrupted the action hero concept up to that point. Hero costumes were redesigned by actress Linda Hamilton. Female characters were not restricted to being female. The male protagonists were somehow introduced as well. It was accepted by the audience. The strength of those successes was the core of the character and the innovation of the presentation.
During the filming of the 1989 film The Abyss, crew members wrote on their T-shirts: You can’t scare me, I work for Jim Cameron. It also answers how director James Cameron became such a crowd puller. There is no other director who has been trusted by the audience so much. This belief is the reason why the world audience is eagerly waiting for the movie Avatar 2.
When Avatar came out in 2009, it cost US$237 million. Again, 20th Century Fox is willing to spend such a large amount of money because of the trust that James Cameron gained through Titanic. Avatar grossed $77 million on its release day alone, bringing the total to $2.8 billion. The previous record of 2.2 billion was broken by Titanic. It took 13 years for that record to be broken, with Avengers Endgame. But with the re-release of Avatar in September 2022, Avatar returned to become the world’s highest-grossing film, with a record $2.910 billion. It is amazing that even a re-release of a film can earn 30 million. That’s why anticipation for Avatar 2 The Way of Water, which is slated to release in December 2022, is as high as the sea.
No matter how powerful the technology, the world has witnessed time and time again that stories and films without a core fall flat. It is there that Cameron continues to amaze the audience with his life-beating story and technique. Long live the Cameron era of hyperbole. The world is waiting to look at the screen in awe.