James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

The comments thread for James Cameron Probably Hates You.

I like this essay. I've long found Cameron's work bloated and self important though I do respect his technical prowess. Do you have a favorite Cameron film? Mine would probably be True Lies and that's because I don't remember it well.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

An interesting read. I think Cameron has always been more of a great businessman than a great filmmaker, he has an incredible ability to predict what audiences want before they know themselves. Because of his success and subsequent imitators, he is also one of the people most responsible for the state of Hollywood today, for better or worse.

I can't say I particularly like anything he has done outside of the Terminator franchise, but I have to respect what he has accomplished, even if his legacy is not necessarily something to be proud of. Also I can certainly sympathize with his misanthropy.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I've never thought of him as misanthropic. Haneke, on the other hand...

I remember Cameron hyping Avatar at the time by telling us that movies would forever be different once that movie came out. Turns out it felt more like the hype surrounding the introduction of the Segway. :D

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Very good read Yoda. I don't have anything to add at this point. You did illuminate some things about Cameron that I had no idea about. Going to be interested to read the comments on this one.

I dont remember the hype about the segway but that sounds painful.

My bro has worked with him and said he has a mind like a steel trap - knows more about elements of film making than the specialists. I dont recall bro saying anything about his 'religious' views. Interesting rticle.

If Cameron and Peter Jackson got stranded on a desert island and were no longer able to make films, I wouldn't miss 60fps or 120 fps digital projected movies as the norm. The wave of the future would be waving goodbye. Here's hoping for a one way ticket to the Bermuda Triangle.

They'd probably kill each other within one hour of making a raft.

Anything other than 24fps is an abomination. It's supposed to be a film not a video game, bah!

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

It's okay, aside from Terminator 1, I'm not a big fan of his either.

I think that movie ruined him for me forever.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I had to quote this because it made me laugh, and it's so true

I really like his films although I'll probably never get around to seeing Titnic, but he does so love to smash you right in the face over and over.

Exactly. They make big announcements about turning cinema into reality tv sony handicam land and think they're doing people a favor lol.

And then there was his ridiculous GG acceptance speech partly in Na'vi. CRINGE!!!!

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

My favorite part is:

"Who are you?"

"Jake. One of the people send here to kill you and mine out your land."

"Okay, you seem cool. Meet my daughter."

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

regarding your views on titanic , it would not have been such a great movie if it had shown the truth and movie makers are allowed cinematic liberty . i simply think that titanic is one of the greatest movies ever made....

my review of the movie is in this thread---

https://www.movieforums.com/communit...hlight=titanic

They hyped the Segway (before anyone had seen it or knew anything about it) by saying that it was going to completely revolutionize how humans traveled. (The hype was more hyped than that, actually.)

We were all hoping for a hover-car, you know. We got the Segway. Seemed exactly like Cameron's hype over Avatar (supposedly) changing how movies would be made forevermore.

Whatever. :)

LOL, Damn I want to see the segway hype now.

I think Jim thought the cameron Pace fusion camera system would take off more than it did. Is that what he was referring to re: revolutionising film mking or am I missing something, Mama Yods? Need my daily quota of caffeine

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I don't remember filmmaking details -- just that we laymen got to hear him say that Avatar was going to change how films were made from that point on. I figure nobody should hype anything as much as he did because you can never live up to the expectations. And he didn't.

Here you go:

https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/09...ways-timeline/

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-ye...s-flop-2011-12

And there are many, many more... :)

I got the impression that he thought that human beings would be so inspired by his movie that we'd be moved to treat our own planet well.

I dont think he took into account the huge number of the cinema going population who are stereo blind (I read an article about this when vatar first came out) and refuse to watch 3D because it scrambles their brain - migraines, seizures, vertigo etc.

Thnks for the segway linkies. Will have a read. This should be fun.

Didn't he also say something about creating the first animated character that nerdy boys would rose their palms to?

I guess he never saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Yeah, the delusions were strong with him in this one. :rolleyes:

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Just back to the segway hype for a sec, that's amazing but I must say, I've never seen one 'in the flesh', not even in an american shopping mall, and I had no idea a segway killed the creator. Fascinating. Thanks again, Mama Yods, and Yoda cant smack our bums for hijacking because you're the culprit this time LOL.

Back to Jim and his ideas on revolutionising film, I think he's of the mindset because he has such a mammoth ego that what he loves the entire audience will love. He lives in his own head, but that's OK because from what I've been told, he's an utter genius, and an absolute perfectionist and work-a-holic (which is no doubt what gets so many people offside. You can see it in the making of Abyss where someone calls for a break after some incredibly lengthy day of shooting and he says something like No, I'm good to continue for another few hours. LOL. Bro said that if he decided to make a movie about a brain surgeon, by the end of the shoot he'd know more about brain surgery than the surgeon.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

He hasn't directed a movie worth watching in 20-30 years depending on how you feel about Titanic.

He seems to do everything "right" and goes above and beyond on a technical level, which is awesome, but there is something missing. As detail oriented as he is, he misses human details and those are the most important thing in a story about pleasing the planet, etc. He glosses over with some version of humanity and particularity, but nothing that ever made me laugh.

Or Aliens, or The Abyss, or T2

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

The Terminator and Aliens are fun but i don't really feel like seeing them again, not for a long while anyway. Hate the rest, haven't seen The Abyss though.

Remember this thread - https://www.movieforums.com/communit...hlight=cameron

Wonder if Yoda was trying to hold back his material for this essay in that thread :D

Also i've not read the essay yet so that comment may not make sense haha.

The essay is a mighty fine read. I read it a few times. And The Abyss is really good (but typically cheesy as is his want to do) as is The Making Of.

You hate T2 and True Lies?
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/250x25...re-you-sir.jpg

I meant to type The Terminators, feel the same about T2 as the first one and Aliens.

Yeah, True Lies is pretty crappy.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Has this been published elsewhere, @Yoda?


I swear down I saw this trending on Facebook about 25 minutes ago and now I can't find it on there.

I linked it on Facebook; if you saw it trending, well, that'd be nice if it really were, but I'm guessing it's just a personalized algorithm.

You really should use a gif/video from the movie we are talking about. Dunno it always feels out of place and like a missed opportunity when you use a gif from The X Files when we are talking about Alien.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Ah, found it now... I think it was in my trending because I've "Liked" MoFo on FB and the post has 1 share as well.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I'm sorry but... who gives a flying f**k? He could be the biggest twat on the planet, it doesn't change the fact that The Terminator, T2, Aliens and True Lies are all in my all time top 10 films and likely always will be. True he's long since passed his prime nowadays, but that doesn't diminish what he achieved while he was in his prime. Maybe a few more directors should be total jerks if they could have a filmography like that...

In that case...
http://replygif.net/i/1448.gif

http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/6a2b948b...c526190ebc.gif

Fun Police!

I didnt even know you hd FB. Looks good.

Terminator 2 was 1991. That's almost 30 years ago, bud.

Hell, the guy achieved the Mariana Trench Dive without killing himself or his crew. Pretty huge achievement. :up:

Or Terminator, or True Lies

Serious question: did you read it?

Your meme is what I expected, so I'll save it for the future!... I think "Titanic" might be the only movie of his I saw, which started as an event to take my three little cousins to the theater... They became obsessed, and every time they came to our house, they'd want to watch it.... probably hoping Jack wouldn't die at the end..

"I'll never let you go" (while she lets him go)

or as Slavoj Zizek says, "Titanic tells another story, the story of a spoiled high-society girl in an identity-crisis: she is confused, doesn't know what to do with herself, and, much more than her love partner, di Caprio is a kind of "vanishing mediator" whose function is to restore her sense of identity and purpose in life, her self-image (quite literally, also: he draws her image); once his job is done, he can disappear."

(there's more at http://www.lacan.com/zizfamily.htm )

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Curiosity question, why that title, Yods?

Well, it's amusing and provocative, for one. ;) I won't pick a title that doesn't fit just to make it more interesting, but obviously if you can say something interesting or cheeky that still conveys the general idea, that's always better.

It also ties into the dissonance between nihilism and crowd-pleasing mentioned near the beginning (and again at the end).

Cool. Do you mind if I send it to my bro? I think he'd enjoy that as much as I did.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

By all means; thank you. :)

I'll ask for feedback and report back.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Now I'm wondering where True Lies fits into your greater unifying theory of Cameron's misanthropy. That whole second act where Schwarzenegger uses government resources to secretly blackmail Curtis into a fake spy operation because he suspects her of cheating on him certainly seems like it takes a dim view of authority figures.

Aye. I think it fits fine for the reason you mention. But it's neither a clear exception to the rule, nor a particularly egregious example of it, so there isn't a lot to say about it.

I will say that I think True Lies is one of his more "complete" films, because the writing is a lot better than it is in the films he's better known for, and I think the fact that it has less of an agenda than the others probably has something to do with that.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I figured it wasn't as clear an example as the others so it didn't deserve any particular mentioning - since the subtext I suggested isn't addressed as obviously as it is in his other films, it's debatable as to how much of it was truly intended by Cameron himself.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Yeah, and I believe it's a sorta-kinda remake of a French film which was more overtly comedic, so this might be one of those cases--and this seems like a common thing--where a very technically talented filmmaker actually benefits from the restraints of working with or around a preexisting property.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I found True Lies to be funny and campy consistently throughout the movie. I think I can still rewatch that one precisely because it's not trying to prove a point or shove an agenda down my throat. It's just fun.

I'm not surprised it's based on another film because it doesn't have that Cameron almost cartoonishly heavy-handed moralizing in the background anywhere.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I enjoyed this, and partially because I've been in discussions around Kendrick's latest album, and what his releases tell us about the person. I think music does an alright job of having discussions about what discographies tell us about their creators, but I don't see it about filmographies as much (might just be uniformed there though).

Especially interesting with regards to what stays consistent among different films, and how those core pieces' gravity affects the movies (as in, some directors have consistent elements among films, but those pieces don't bend the film towards that element in a way that feels unnatural, where I take it part of why Yoda chose Cameron is that he noticed that there wasn't just a common set of core ideas, but that the film also seemed to have that core as a fixture).

I am curious, which came first? Noticing there was a common theme in the movies and wanting to explore that? Hearing about his off-screen personality and wondering if it informed his movies? Something else?

A nicely-written essay. I do see your point that Cameron probably isn't a very good director as he tends to make his messages too unsubtle, and he doesn't seem like a very friendly person in real life either, but I'm not sure if it would be correct or fair to call him a misanthrope. He may think humanity is flawed, but by holding a mirror up to its face he's at least trying to make it aware of its flaws, trying to get it to change, as his Earth Day speech suggests.

But what about those other "blockbuster" directors? The ones who make "simplistic, crowd-pleasing" films, as the first line of the essay suggests? The ones whose films don't have any artistic merit, and don't even have a message either? The ones whose films glorify violence, sexism, war, and the general cultural flaws that Cameron's films criticise? The ones who keep on making the same formulaic, meaningless films and yet still expect people to come and see them? Aren't they more like misanthropes?

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

“Both Cameron and Scott worked themselves to a frazzle. You have to give them a hundred percent because they’re giving a hundred and eighty percent.

And the incredible thing about Cameron is, because he’s been a production designer and a special-effects supervisor, you can’t pull the wool over his eyes. If you give him what he wants then he’s over the moon, if you don’t give him what he wants, the **** hits the fan and he goes out there and does it himself. He knows how to do practically everything associated with a film.

What you have to remember is: If you say to Cameron, ‘Look, I really don’t think I can do this this way, but I can do it that way!’ He’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, he won’t say ‘You’ve got to do it this way!!’ But, after you’ve said what you can do, if you don’t then do it ... look out."
He has a reputation of being a real tyrant.

“No, he’s a very charming man, actually. When he’s under pressure, he can be tough, but most of the time, I really liked him. You’ve heard the stories about the crew wearing t-shirts saying ‘You can’t scare me, I’ve worked with Cameron’, well, the truth is, he’s an incredibly generous man.

I was up for an Oscar for the work I did on Aliens, but I had my nomination squashed by Twentieth Century Fox. I’d shot most of the model-shots during live-action shooting, and over-saw all the post-production stuff, and because of that Cameron asked for my name to be put on the nomination list. But, at that time, the Academy were only accepting four names per nomination and, because I’d started work last, my name came fifth.

Jim Cameron stood up, at the Academy nominations committee meeting, and argued on my behalf, for three-quarters of an hour, that my name should be on as I’d done more work than some of those whose names came before mine. He said it was a complete injustice. But Fox had the say, and because of regulations, they would have had to pay a penalty of about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars to remove an undeserving name and replace it with mine, so that was it.

Well, I understand that’s how it works; but Jim and Gale didn’t accept it. They had a special Academy Nomination prize made for me by Tiffany’s, which they presented to me as a consolation prize. I thought that was really sweet of them.”

That's a quote from Brian Johnson who won an Oscar for his work on Alien. He also worked on the sequel with Cameron. Basically he expects nothing but the best from the crew and can be extremely short with you if you don't do your job. Regarding Aliens, it doesn't help when the crew is questioning EVERY single thing you do as a director. Obviously tensions are going to be high and it creates a hostile working environment. But in all honesty, a crew should have faith in their director. The crew of Aliens did not and it wasn't until the saw the final product that they realized the guy is extremely talented.

He has a big ego, there is no doubt about that, but he can back that up. The two biggest films of all-time are his. He invented camera and pre-viz for Avatar. He talked big game about Avatar and changing the industry, but it was the industries half ass attempt at cashing in on 3D that is giving it a bad name. All the post conversion crap we see. Avatar looked glorious in theatres and I don't care if people complain about originality, Cameron can tell an entertaining story. I'll be interested in seeing where he takes the world of Avatar.

I don't care about any of his religious views or how that would change my viewing of his films.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Great post usual suspects. That Tiffany award sounds pretty cool.
He also arranged discounted Limited Edition deep sea challenge Rolex watches for the crew on that shoot

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Yoda da best, great read.

It'd be pretty amazing if he didn't have any positive anecdotes after over 30 years in the business. I think we'd probably agree the bulk of them are negative, though. Though this one certainly gives us some additional insight into what most of the conflict is about, so thanks for posting it. :up:

Well, yeah, but that's how all meglomaniacs are: they're very nice if you do what they want, and awful to you if you don't.

I don't see how we can blame the crew when he's had the same kinds of problems with other crews, on other movies, and with actors, too. I agree there was a "hostile working environment," but that's pretty clearly something Cameron brings with him to all these films.

Of course. I don't think anyone questions his talent, at least on the technical side.

Gotta disagree on the 3D. While the 3D I saw on Avatar was better than the post conversion stuff, it was still pretty bad. I think that's an example of his desire to be groundbreaking interfering with the quality of the film itself, just as the desire to hammer his points home interferes with the quality of the writing.

The point of mentioning his religious views wasn't about the views themselves: it was to illustrate that they exert a clear negative influence on his films.

Well, that was probably the most hopeful quote I could find, and it still contained the phrase "we're all doomed." :laugh: As mentioned in the part about The Abyss, the negativity is always the point and the positivity is always an addendum. But it'll be interesting to see if he drifts this way (towards more constructive critiques of humanity) now that he's later in his career, though. I could see that.

I can't really guess what this would look like, though, since in Avatar it's ostensibly a "back to nature" kinda deal, which is gonna be tough to marry with all the technocracy stuff.

This is a good question. I think "humanity sucks" is a lot more misanthropic than just pandering to audiences, because you can make a film that panders and still just regard it as mindless entertainment that the audience knows has little redeeming value. It doesn't have to indicate that you think the audience is vapid just because the film is. IE: the world needs junk food, too.

Also, while a lot of blockbusters are all the things you describe, most of the films at the top of the historical box office are a lot less so. Star Wars, Gone With the Wind, E.T., et cetera. The vapid stuff can still make a lot of money (to my chagrin), but most of the stuff at the very top is more thoughtful and hopeful. Cameron's films really stick out up there.

That's a good point. Two guesses as to why:

1) Films are more overtly team affairs than songs. Even when directors write the film themselves, everything you see on screen is still the product of a dozen other people's work. And when they don't even write it themselves, then the primary trace of the director's own worldview is merely that they chose it.

2) Remnant of the old pre-auteur theory concept of directing, where they're more like hired guns, having not quite faded away. Which probably existed in the first place in part because of point #1.

Yes, definitely. I went out of my way a couple of times to note that just returning to a theme wasn't especially noteworthy by itself. Like anyone, I can get tired of a director going to the same well too often (Tim Burton, anyone?), but what stuck out to me here was that it had clearly and overtly made great films worse, and aligned with the director's personal life and beliefs so obviously.

I really like this question. I'm actually not positive, but I think it was primarily two things: first, reading a book called The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters and being aghast at how badly he twisted things in that third act, and then reading about the Director's Cut of The Abyss (a film I've always loved, by the way). I was barely aware of the off-screen stuff until I started looking into him more.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

In regard to the lengthy post with the quote from one of the crew (and the Tiffany award thing):

Am I the only one who read that whole anecdote and thought Cameron could have been arguing his case because then it would have netted HIS FILM another nomination? You do realize that HE benefits from winning one of his crew a nomination, right? The fact that he did a lovely thing (the Tiffany item) later doesn't negate that. (And he could have done that at the behest of someone else, or just because he had given the poor guy hope he'd have his nomination, only to have failed him completely. Trying to save face somewhat?)

Yeah, call me a skeptic on this one. :D

Is there any 3D film you think that did it well? In my opinion Avatar set the bar and no other film has come close to it. He compensated the dimness of the glasses by making everything bright. He thinks of everything.

I enjoyed the 3D for Avatar and hate pretty much everything else.

Honestly...no. :laugh: I've never liked it. The only time I think I liked it even a little was in the re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, where they just stuck a few objects in the foreground. It was subtle and didn't distract from the film itself much. So I've liked it in proportion to how little it was used.

I agree that Cameron did it better by making it brighter, but to me that's the absolute minimum. It's cinematic malpractice when someone doesn't.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

In the spirit of full disclosure, though, Yoda, would you say that, like your sainted mother, you might have slight motion sickness issues that would make 3D less tolerable? I think you and I both had issues with a video game or two (Jazz Punk, for instance) that were related to a low-level motion sickness. I've never gone to a 3D movie for this very reason. Not willing to take the chance. Some of those cliff dives in Avatar even without the 3D were enough for me. :D

LOL that happens to me and I dont need 3D to set it off. Even looking at a photo of someone on the edge of a cliff gives me vertigo.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Oddly, I don't recall feeling any motion sickness watching 3D movies. Totally makes sense that I would, given that I'm weirdly susceptible to it in other contexts, but I feel fine watching them. Go figure.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Parking this here for MamaYods who I think will find it interesting, and anyone else who gets physical symptoms from watching 3D - links back to a comment I made earlier about stereo blindness which maybe Cameron didn't take into account

https://covdblog.wordpress.com/2010/...ision-problem/

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Thanks for this, Dani. Pretty sure my issue is a combination of motion sickness (which I have had all my life in many contexts) and fear of heights. I get my eyes checked by a specialist twice a year (we have excellent eye care coverage and I have diabetes, so it's important to have the eyes checked more often, and for more things).

The Jazz Punk game Yoda and I have had issues with is known for its issues with lots of people (almost the way strobe lights affect people, I think), and I was relieved when Yoda told me this because I'd been playing the game a lot and then had felt queasy the whole rest of the day and had no idea why. I wouldn't have thought to connect the two.

I don't have any desire to see a 3D movie and don't feel I'm missing out, so I won't try to solve something I don't currently consider a problem. Plus, I do NOT want to sit through Avatar again! :D :D

Avatar didnt make you want to be a tall blue monkey and go hug a tree, MamaYods?

I dont get motion sickness. I think I had it once slightly in rough seas but that could have been because I drank more than one caipirinha. I only get vertigo watching movies or tv because of my fear of heights, but I also get it if my husband asks me to check out what he's killing ina computer game. The only problem 3D causes me is I focus on the visuals and miss dialogue, but that's a good thing because when I watched Gravity in 2D I realised the dialogue was caca.

3D serves stop-motion animation extremely well. Coraline did a pretty good job at it and I would probably put that second to Avatar. I take back my previous statement about nothing coming close.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

That's a smart angle re: stop motion working better with it. Hadn't thought of that, but you're right.

Ratings prove you wrong. I am going to provide Rotten Tomatoes(%) ratings and imdb for his last 7 films
Terminator 100% vs 8/10
Aliens 98% vs 8.4/10
The Abyss 89% vs 7.6/10
Terminator 2 93% vs 8.5/10
True Lies 72% vs 7.2/10
Titanic 88% vs 7.7/10
Avatar 83% vs 7.8/10

What the above percentages and fractions say is that critics and audiences agree that James Cameron is a master at story telling. He is one of the greatest filmmaker of all time. He is consistent in delivering quality films. He is the 4th highest grossing Director and he has only 7 movies that were shown in cinemas while the other have dozens.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Here we go again.

They don't say that at all. Filmmaking is not a synonym for storytelling. Films are a multi-faceted art form and it's not at all unusual for films with mediocre (or even bad) stories to nevertheless succeed as films due to, say, elaborate special effects, particularly if you only measure success by popularity.

We've also already discussed why you can't use ratings to establish greatness.

I hear you but ratings are a greater indicator than anything else. Can all James Cameron's positively rated 7 movies by critics and audiences alike be actually bad movies ? I don't think James has been lucky but that he is actually talented.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Well, yes, bad movies can sometimes be rated well, for reasons explained in those two links I posted. And I don't think anyone has disputed that he is talented, and there's a distinction between being a bad movie and having a bad story. I think Avatar is a pretty crappy story, but even I don't think that necessarily makes it a bad movie. And even a quick perusal through some of the film's reviews makes it clear that a lot of critics make a similar distinction.

Bump, for an article I just came across called Terminator 2: Judgment Day” Is Still a Deeply Upsetting Blockbusterp which touches on some of the same things. Excerpt:

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

I clicked on your news story link but it said Page Not Found.

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Ah, superfluous quote. Should be good now.

Thanks, I read it now.

It's been many years since I seen T2, maybe 15 years or longer, so I hardly remember it. I do remember liking it, but I don't recall the specter of nuclear annihilation being the soul of the film as the article says. Of course it was the underpinning that drove the movie's story line...but to me T2 and especially T1 were about human's love of and need for, technology.

I suppose like everyone's 'truth' it's a personal truth and so very subjective. But when I think of the Terminator films I don't think of a nuclear holocaust, I think of a distant future where humans lust after technology so much that it will be their undoing. I'm not saying that will happen in the real world, but that's what I always thought Cameron was saying with his Terminator films.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Yeah, I think the article is a little off, in that it's stopping one level too soon. Sure it's ostensibly about nuclear war, but only as the latest version of "people suck and ruin everything," a recurring motif for Cameron that he naturally marries to his interest in technology. As soon as society turned its focus away from nuclear annihilation, he just turned to a different misanthropic boogieman for the films that have followed, and I suspect if he directs long enough it'll happen again.

A lot of people can agree with you on that. I always thought of it as Space Pocahontas. But the real problem was Cameron was hyper-focusing on visuals, not that he tried very hard on the story, especially since the film was conceived in the 90's but technical limitations got involved. There are some great stories he's had in the past, like Terminator 2, which pretty much kept me literally on the edge of my seat. Aliens is one of my two absolute favorite horror movies, but I never loved it for the story, since it re-envisioned a lot of setting and story-building ideas from the original film with the addition of a little girl backstory and a deadline, which normally seem a bit typical for a movie but were incorporated perfectly. And Titanic has a lot of interesting plot points but squanders the romantic side for your everyday romance story from a Harlequin novel, allowing the real spectacle go to the ship and its history rather than the characters.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

He's a hack. Let him hate me. I'll pour Icees on his grave.

A "bad movie that is rated well" is a movie someone dislikes that is highly rated by the set of people that person who rated it refers too. In other words, it is a movie that someone (Bob) did not like but that other people that Bob knows or knows their opinions about it liked.

The quality of a movie (or anything involving art and entertainment) is subjective, the only objective thing about it is a person x's impression on the movie's quality. A movie like Citizen Kane is just a movie that a lot of movie critics and buffs rated highly.

I find Avatar to be a decent movie but its story is so crappy that the rest of the movie just cannot compensate for it. Alita, which has the same kind of special effects but uses those for the service of a much better story is perhaps a movie that realized the potential of Avatar.

Now that was a nice review: https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/08...g-blockbuster/, Terminator 2 is indeed one of the best action movies ever made. Way superior to any blockbuster movie Hollywood churned out in the past 15 years.

James Cameron > Scorcese :D

James Cameron = Michael Bay :D

Therefore, transitivity implies that Michael Bay > Scorcese :D

I'm not sure if you read the discussion surrounding what you're quoting, but it wasn't an argument about the subjectivity of artistic opinions, something which is technically true but also so obvious as to border on the banal, and so well-tread that it scarcely warrants mentioning unless someone is explicitly suggesting otherwise. It's also usually mentioned to erase the obvious distinction between well-informed and thoughtful opinions and more reflexive ones, even though the former is a lot more valuable. But I digress.

In the bit you quoted, I was replying to someone who suggested to me that my gripes with Cameron's works were in conflict with the fact that the films are rated fairly well. So I pointed out (this is present in the second half of the part you quoted, whereas you seem to be responding only to the first half) that this was perfectly consistent with those criticisms, since a lot of critics seem to concede the critiques of most of his films, but simply fine them positive on net anyway, buttressed by things like special effects and sheer scope.

Relevant: 'Terminator' Director Tim Miller Reflects on Box Office Trauma and James Cameron Fights: "I'm Processing":

I watched the movie yesterday. Creative battles? I'm sorry, but there was nothing creative about this unnecessary and pointless 6th entry in this doomed Terminator franchise. It added nothing of value to the series and was just a rehash of many elements from all the previous films.

They should have ended it at T2.

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Well, to be fair, "creative battle" usually means a battle over how creative something should be. ;)

Reminds me of someone, D.L. Hughley I think, who said that he had creative differences with someone: "I was creative, and they were different."

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

"I can say no, but it has nothing to do with whatever trauma I have from the experience. It's more that I just don't want to be in a situation again where I don't have the control to do what I think is right," said Miller.

Clearly referring to Deadpool, yes?

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

Yeah, he mentions Deadpool specifically in another part of the article, IIRC.

Anyway, just add this dude to the list of people who worked with Cameron and found him unreasonable. It's a pretty long list.;

Re: James Cameron Probably Hates You
 

What I found interesting about that article (especially in the context of the original essay) is how Miller and Cameron disagreed on whether or not Dark Fate's human resistance should be winning or losing the war at the point where the time travel occurs - Miller wanting them to make a last stand in the past in order to save a seemingly doomed timeline would be a notable divergence from the escort missions of the other installments. Considering certain plot developments, I have to wonder exactly how much of Cameron's apparent nihilism translates through to the finished product (especially when it has six credited writers and also Miller putting his own spin on things).