It’s one of those sad phenomena of fame – you work all your life to get rich and famous so people will like you, and then one day you wake up and discover that you’re too rich to relate to normal humans. I’m assuming that’s what happened to James Cameron, as his attempt to depict normal human excitement seems woefully out of touch.
As he recently told Empire about his Avatar sequels:
“I can tell you one thing about them,” Cameron laughs when Empire nonchalantly enquiries about storylines. “They’re gonna be bitchin’. You will sh*t yourself with your mouth wide open.”
I guess if you’ve spent the last six months exploring the bottom of the ocean in a submarine with your picture on the side and being choked by Ukranian prostitutes in a helicopter hovering over Mount Erebus, it starts getting hard to imagine what normal people find exciting. “Think, James, think: What do the plebes like? Hmm, shitting? Standing around with their dumb mouths flapping open? Yeah, let’s go with that.”
I just picture Scott Stapp from Creed on the toilet, his arms outstretched in a Christ pose while he sits on his toilet, singing “With merths werd errrrrpeeeeeen…”
Of course, “it will make you sh*t yourself with your mouth wide open” joins the pantheon of hyperbolic director descriptions alongside “you will have a 70-minute orgasm” (Guillermo Del Toro on Pacific Rim) and “it’s gonna knock your f*ckin balls up your ass,” (McG on Terminator Salvation). Though I hope the Avatar sequels are better at delivering on the director’s vulgar promises than those dumpster fires, because I really want to know what my feces tastes like.
And oh yeah, the Avatar sequels are going to be in 48 frames per second:
Despite early rumours of a move to 60 frames per second, 48 is Cameron’s choice of frame rate for the sequels. “My thinking at the time was that 60 [FPS] might be a better segue to the video market,” he says. “I’ll be plugging into a system that’s a little more mature, so it makes sense for me to do 48 frames at this point.”
James Cameron blew it by letting Peter Jackson release a 48 fps movie before he did. Now 48 fps is forever associated with the first Hobbit, with the dwarves and their dumb speeches and their ugly make-up and horrible pointless movie – the 48 fps equivalent of Edison electrocuting an elephant. Then again, maybe it’s a good thing. Think of how many 3D abominations we could’ve been spared if Clash of the Titans had come out before Avatar.