- Terminator 2 where he takes credit for CGI work already developed and used in Willow (three years earlier).
The work in
Terminator 2 is on an entirely different level than what we saw in
Willow. In
Willow, most of what we see is morphing from one set of photos to another in a fixed location. In T2, the morphing involves an actual person, there's all sorts of movement while it's morphing, and at times it it is seamlessly attached to a human actor.
Also, please show me where he "took credit" for this. I don't recall any press junkets or behind-the-scenes documentaries where Cameron jumped up and down and said "I'm the only person who's ever done anything even remotely like this!" Directors tend to get most of the credit, but that doesn't mean they "take" it.
- Titanic (his little expedition he undertook to promote his movie) where he attempted to take the glory from Bob Ballard, who found the Titanic.
Again, show me how he "took the glory." And please explain why the fact that someone else
found the Titanic somehow invalidates the creation of the film
Titanic. The discovery of the ship helped with theories about how things went down, and allowed them to replicate certain rooms, but if anything that made his work on the film harder, as he suddenly had a more detailed and reliable history to (try to) match. Either way, they're two entirely separate events and the fact that Cameron is praised for
Titanic is a reflection of the incredible skill and effort that went into it, none of which is even remotely minimized by who discovered the ship.
- Space engineering technologies, where he has been working with NASA and putting forward other people’s ideas as somehow original. Some pretty stupid ideas, too.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
- And now Avatar – which looks like nothing more than a continuation of the work done in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. 3D CGI and integration of CGI and live action. Dare I say, Who Killed Roger Rabbit?
Er, no. Whether or not
Avatar looks particularly great, or is a particularly great film remains to be seen, but there's simply no denying that it represents a new manner of filmmaking. Your examples are mind-bendingly goofy.
Who Killed Roger Rabbit? required painstaking precision with no margin for error, where animation had to be settled on long in advance and physical actors were restricted so as not to interfere with the later stages of production.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and
The Phantom Menace are simply CGI productions, overlayed on film.
Avatar is motion-capture based (if you wanted to mock it, you should've referenced
Beowulf or something), for one, and it uses a "virtual" camera that can change the angle on its CGI in real-time (at least, from what I understand of the technology). This is simply unprecedented. Being able to make changes to CGI films without having to completely re-render or re-orchestrate a shot or scene is a big deal any way you look at it.
Now he will be hailed as a genius for spending $200 million on a cartoon. And guess what folks? The true artists that made this movie will get no fame. They will get paid, maybe get an Oscar and industry work – but James Cameron will get all the real public credit.
Make up your mind: either it's a stupid retread "cartoon" or you're concerned about the "true artists" getting credit. It can't be both.
Besides, if this is your real gripe, it applies to any film with significant special effects. Sometimes CGI creation is an art, and sometimes it's more of a skill. Are the CGI "artists" the ones thinking up these creatures, or are they duplicating something Cameron drew or orchestrated? The former is creative; the latter is not, and from what I understand, this is a world Cameron dreamt up.
And in ten years it will look like crap – like all CGI movies. From what I have seen of it already, I actually expect it to look shabby in just a couple of years. The trailer looks stiff to me, even now.
By this logic, all CGI is bad because it'll look dated eventually.
Of course, Jurassic Park is 16 years old. The Abyss is about 20 years old, I believe. Neither of them looks crappy.