James Cameron has exceeded testosterone. He says

James Cameron (68) is modestly seated on a bench on the left, not central, during the press conference. Bee Avatar: The Way of the Water everything listens attentively, as when launching a mammoth tanker. After thirteen years, here is the sequel to his sci-fi epic avatar, which became the highest-grossing film of all time in 2009, grossing $2.92 billion at the box office. Number three on this honors list – na Avengers: Endgame – is also from Cameron: Titanic.

In avatar In 2154, Jake Sully, a marine with spinal cord injury, had to spy a blue body raised for him under the nine-foot Na’vi of the moon Pandora. These primitive aliens stand in the way of mining the rare metal unobtanium. Sully, however, finds a new tribe and a new love in this new body. Under his leadership, the Na’vi cast off the techno-colonial yoke of humanity.

A sequel wasn’t a foregone conclusion, says London’s Cameron. “Did Steven Spielberg ever get a sequel to HEY established? It was the highest-grossing film of the time. As a filmmaker, you have doubts. Can you make lightning strike the same place twice? Around 2013 he started making serious plans, now he’s filmed two “back-to-back” sequels. The fourth part is half finished, the scenario and the design of the fifth part are in preparation. To get out of the red, you have to Avatar: The Way of the Water raise more than $2 billion, Cameron previously calculated. Studio Fox and parent company Disney know this too, which already opened an Avatar theme park in 2017. Pandora’s world – open to Disney World.

This “franchise” is too big to fail; the marketing machine is running at full speed. Trailers, social media operations, filming documentaries and big interviews are behind us, this week is the finishing touch: press roundtables, five-minute interviews, press conference, red carpet.

Hollywood’s Scariest Man

Publicity risks must be recognized and covered in a timely manner. Because it’s James Cameron’s former reputation as “the scariest man in Hollywood.” On the film set, he was both Elon Musk and Matthijs van Nieuwkerk, tortured his team, shouted and declaimed, tolerated no contradiction. Bee Titanic followed by discharge if you went to the toilet. Bee avatar he nailed all the ringing cell phones to the wall with a stapler. A demanding and aggressive perfectionist, that’s what we call him. And a micro-manager.

Actress Kate Winslet was after Titanic (1997) directed with James Cameron. “An incredible temper,” she said The Guardian. “They will have to pay me dearly to work with Jim again.” Her first day of filming Titanic started at 5am and ended at 1am. It became the norm, for 160 days. Afterwards, she was sick, black and blue, miserable. “Like a battered wife.” At a meeting in 2012, the atmosphere was colder than the water tanks in which Cameron sat his teeth chattering for hours.

But now watch Kate Winslet giggle with Cameron, seated modestly in the corner. Winslet got back into business with him, for how much money we don’t know. And again in an underwater movie, with lots of beating in water tanks. Cameron teases Winslet about her assertiveness: In scuba training, she became the record holder by holding her breath for 7 minutes and 14 seconds. The insecure girl became an alpha female, he says. Cameron has mellowed, Winslet said. Elsewhere, she mentioned a helpful tip from co-star Zoe Saldana. During filming, Cameron often becomes so possessed that he forgets to eat. If he gets grumpy, just go to a muesli bar.

Also read the review: Pandora’s visually unrivaled water fun doesn’t depend on its story

Fifteen years ago, Cameron ignored the critics. A dictator ? Filming on an epic scale requires a militaristic attitude. Now it’s called “transgressive behavior”, so the new James Cameron is suddenly a sweet penitent grandfather. As teenagers, his children all read him the ‘riot act’, he says QG. Being on the road half the time and then enforcing everyone’s rules at home? Certainly not. Along with fellow actor Ron Howard, one of the nicest men in Hollywood, Cameron learned that kindness breeds loyalty and hard work. “I thought: what a moron I am.” So no more fuckbombs and screams. “I see testosterone as a poison that you have to slowly eliminate from your body” (The Hollywood Reporter).

revenge of the nerd

James Cameron is a product of the “counter-culture of the 60s”: libertarian left, passionate about ecology, feminist. His choice of tough, muscular female action heroines was groundbreaking: Linda Hamilton in terminatorSigourney Weaver Aliens.

This idealism rubs a little with its jerks; Cameron himself likes to portray his success as the nerd’s revenge. Originally from Ontario, Canada, he says he was a clumsy, lonely and bullied schoolboy, obsessed with science, sci-fi and design, he fired homemade rockets, rode the bus for Toronto to design Etruscan helmets and dinosaur skeletons at the museum. Dreamer too: many film ideas come to him in his sleep.

When he was seventeen, his parents moved to California, where he hustled as a student of physics and English. He was a stoner for a while, making a living as a janitor and truck driver, while reading everything he could find on film technique. Hollywood’s B-movie king Roger Corman – himself a techie and problem-solver – gave it a shot: he was thrilled when a horror flick saw young Cameron rock the maggots on command by electrifying them. At Corman, he was a model maker, scenographer, tour specialist, writer, production assistant. Often all at once: that’s how it happened at Corman.

After his breakthrough terminator (1984) each film was more ambitious, bigger and more expensive than the last: Cameron’s films are technologically revolutionary events. This constant search for the superlative is reflected in increasingly longer gaps between his feature films: twelve years later Titanicthirteen years later avatar.

Waterloo

Cinema is just one of his areas of interest: James Cameron is also an inventor, organic farmer, activist, adventurer. He explored wrecks, descended in 2012 in the Deepsea Challenger bathyscaphe deep in the Mariana Trench. He developed a camera for NASA expeditions to Mars, bought and sold a winery, founded a vegan school. He recently moved to New Zealand with his fifth wife, Suzi Amis, where he runs a 5,000-acre hemp and vegetable biofarm and started a fake meat and plant-based milk business with colleague Peter Jackson. .

His Waterloo has been predicted many times. To the very dear Titanic weren’t zinc metaphors air, avatar would be too weird for a wide audience. Now you hear that Avatar: The Way of the Water failed because the first part is said to have faded from pop cultural memory. Who remembers Jake Sully? Unlike Luke Skywalker, he only starred in one movie, Cameron maintains. This time we get to know him as a father. “We have already seen him jump without a parachute on the back of Pandora’s most dangerous predator. Does Jake always take so many risks as a father? I do not think so.”

Says the man who descended into the Mariana Trench at 58, father of five. But it’s different, Cameron once said. He takes controlled risks, with no element of arbitrariness. Whitewater rafting? didn’t see me.” Just as he leaves little room for chance in his films. Will he still bluff the skeptics? Yes because Avatar: The Way of the Wateris really something else, says James Cameron. Fans come to watch two or three times. He may not be a jerk anymore, he has confidence.

Read also: The 25 best films of 2022 according to NRC