James Cameron Probably Hates You

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.

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:

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

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.

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.

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

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

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

James Cameron = Michael Bay

Therefore, transitivity implies that Michael Bay > Scorcese

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.

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

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."

"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?

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Suspect's Reviews

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.;

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).

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