James Cameron on Avatar
His mega-hits Titanic and Terminator II revolutionised movie special effects. James "King of the World" Cameron returns to sci-fi with the 3D jaw-dropper Avatar, starring Australia's Sam Worthington
What's Avatar about? It's set about 100 years from now. The resources on Earth have been used up and we're scouring other planets. Pandora is a lush, tropical planet rich in resources. The problem is that the air is toxic to humans. The indigenous race on the planet are the Na'vi and the way the [mining conglomerate] communicates with them is by growing Na'vi bodies. Sam Worthington plays Jake Scully, a marine vet who's paralysed from the waist down. He's hired to make the three-year trip to Pandora because he has useful genes - only a small number of humans have the DNA that allows for an avatar body to be grown for them. The controllers wear a headset called the link and while they're controlling the avatar their human body is unconscious. Once Jake arrives on Pandora, he meets Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver). He also meets Zoe [Saldana]'s character, who is a Na'vi princess. They fall in love, and then Jake finds his loyalties are divided.
Why make it in 3D? To heighten the whole storytelling experience in a way that was beyond what we'd done before. So for me the question is not why, it's why not? Why not embrace the new stuff and give the audience more?
Is it true though that you had to put this idea on hold for several years because the technology didn't exist and then you saw Peter Jackson's Gollum and you realised it had advanced leaps and bounds? That is true to a point. I was always investigating where the technology was at, but Peter's movie did blow my mind and made me realise that now was the time to strike.
Can you to explain the technology you've used in lay terms? I'm not sure that's possible! But let's start with basics. You've got two completely separate things going on in Avatar. Thing one is stereoscopic 3D, and thing one divides into live-action stereo because we're shooting 3D with cameras in the real world. The other whole section of it is the performance-capture portion of it. So they're two totally separate things, and this is where people get really bollocksed up. Even the actors coming into it are like, "okay, I'm going to be shot by a 3D camera?" "Yes." "But what's this thing I'm putting on my head?" "Oh, that's for the other thing, the performance capture. Got it?" "No, but we trust you."
Why did you choose Sam Worthington as your star? I'd never heard of him before I started the casting process. He was just another guy on a tape.
Did you get hundreds of tapes? Yes, hundreds and hundreds. And I've always had good luck spotting the diamond in the rough and I look for that. And you can't quantify it, it's just you see something in somebody and it seems different. I don't want to say that I looked at Sam the first time and said he's going to be a star. But it became that within a few weeks of having met him and having worked with him.
This is your first fiction film in over a decade. Why? To everybody it might seem like I dropped off the face of the earth, but to me I've been off doing what I love. Titanic allowed me to go and do whatever I liked. [Laughs] It made a ridiculous amount of money. So I went and made documentaries about deep-ocean exploration. It's every boy's wildest fantasy come true and I got to do it. We did seven deep-ocean expeditions in a ten-year period.
What's next? We've got an expedition planned but there's some equipment we have to build. And there's a number of film projects, but I haven't picked one of them yet. Gaynor Flynn
Avatar screens from 17 Dec.
Instant expert
James Cameron
Piranha 2: Flying Killers (1981) Hired to create the special effects, Canadian-born Cameron took over the reins of this schlock classic when the original director quit
The Terminator (1984) Cameron's first work as writer-director revealed him as an action genius with a sentimental side. The film turned Arnie from a musclebound joke into a movie star
Aliens (1986) A Vietnam War fable in Freudian clothing, Cameron's sequel to Alien is a sci-fi masterpiece that unfortunately spawned several lousy extra sequels
The Abyss (1989) An underwater Close Encounters, The Abyss was the first film to use seamlessly integrated CGI effects - only 75 seconds' worth, but they took six months to generate
Terminator II: Judgement Day (1991) Advances in CGI allowed Cameron to make the new Terminator (Robert Patrick) a shape-shifting creature of liquid metal
True Lies (1994) This remake of French comedy La Totale! showed that humour is not Cameron's forte, but blowing up terrorists is
Titanic (1997) Over-budget, overdue, over-blown, over-sentimental - but against the odds Cameron delivered one of the biggest movie hits ever (it also won 11 Oscars)
Avatar (2009) Mostly computer generated, this 166-minute, 3D sci-fi epic is expected to be a "game-changer" in cinematic history
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