James Cameron pulled a lot of inspiration from films like ‘Star Wars’, a film that upset him when he originally saw it.
Star Wars has inspired many creatives and filmmakers alike, including movie director James Cameron. But Cameron had a surprising reaction the first time he saw the film in theaters.
How James Cameron was impacted by ‘Star Wars’
As is the case with many filmmakers, Cameron was inspired by several directors and films while carving out his own path as a filmmaker. Cameron has frequently spoken about Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey influencing him in his younger years. The Don Chaffey movie Jason and the Argonauts also left an unforgettable impression on a young Cameron.
“I remember distinctly my grandfather taking me to the local cinema in Ontario, and being absolutely blown away by the film’s vivid colors, the brightness, the reality of the skeleton fight. Of course, looking at it four decades later, it’s laughable,” Cameron once told DGA. “But I came back to my third-grade class and began quickly sketching my own version of the movie.”
But perhaps the film that motivated Cameron the most was George Lucas’ Star Wars. Cameron was a truck driver at the time with aspirations of creating his own film. Star Wars, however, helped give the Oscar-winner the push he might have needed.
“I was pissed off,” Cameron once told Premiere (via Terminator Files). “I wanted to make that movie. That’s when I got busy.”
James Cameron hoped to compete with ‘Star Wars’ with his own sci-fi franchise
Years later, Cameron would attempt to create his own series of sci-fi films with Avatar. One of his goals with his new Avatar universe was for it to have the same cinematic reach as Star Wars.
“You’ve got to compete head on with these other epic works of fantasy and fiction, the Tolkiens and the Star Wars and the Star Treks,” Cameron once told Chicago Tribune. “People want a persistent alternate reality to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time. They want to live somewhere else. Like Pandora.”
Back then, it seemed Avatar was well on its way to doing that after becoming the highest-grossing film of all time. Still, despite the film’s success, some questioned if the movie’s legacy matched the same as Star Wars in scope. Cameron addressed the comparison in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter not too long ago.
“There’s skepticism in the marketplace around, ‘Oh, did it ever make any real cultural impact?’ ‘Can anybody even remember the characters’ names?’ If people are less likely to remember Jake Sully than, say, Luke Skywalker, that’s partly because Avatar is only one movie into its mythology,” Cameron said.
What James Cameron thought of the ‘Star Wars’ sequel trilogy without George Lucas
Lucas would eventually hand over the keys of the Star Wars universe to Disney in a lucrative deal. Disney would create their own Star Wars trilogy afterwards. Although financially successful, the Star Was sequel trilogy directed by J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson caused some division among its fan-base.
Back in 2016, Cameron commented on what he thought about the first film in the new trilogy The Force Awakens. He didn’t want to go into too much detail because of his respect for Abrams. But he confided that he was waiting to see what new direction Star Wars was headed in before finalizing his judgment.
“I have to say that George’s group of six films had more innovative visual imagination, and this film was more of a retrenchment to things you had seen before and characters you had seen before, and it took a few baby steps forward with new characters. So for me, the jury’s out. I want to see where they go with it,” Cameron said according to Yahoo.
