James Cameron and the Art of Fine-Tuned, So-Called Simplicity (Patreon)

[Don't worry, no spoilers for The Way of Water within]

A little over three decades ago there was a movement in fine dining that emerged and it was called “essentialism.” It was a term applied to chefs like Joel Robuchon and Thomas Keller and while the definition is sort of nebulous, it was the vague idea that “the food should taste like itself.” But, like, a really great version of itself. For instance, a chef would center a dish on the taste of tomato. But they would turn into this intense MOST tomato-y tomato-like thing you’ve ever tasted. Like, they would try pureeing it and reducing it down into a rich, intense consommé. But then they would make the flavor pop with all these little unseen touches. It’s not just seasoning it with salt to perfection. It’s the touch of champagne vinegar for brightness. Or the vegetal sweetness of the basil that’s been strained out. And the fact the tomatoes were lightly smoked beforehand thus giving this complexity and depth you wouldn’t even think of. Yes, they would make the dish look pretty, too. Clean, elegant, composed, and with not an atom out of place, but it would still look like a layer of red sauce. And when you were to finally taste that consommé you would go “wow, this really, really tastes like a great tomato!” You would think it was simple, but the dish was twice as delicious for all these complex, unseen reasons. But that’s the whole approach to essentialism. Unlike the movement of molecular gastronomy, you don’t want it to show complexity on the surface. You just want it to taste like itself.

I think James Cameron is an essentialist filmmaker.

He serves up movies that time and time and time again are described as “simple” and yet always seem to delight the big honking palate of the masses. Yes, they often make use of big archetypal stories. The kinds of ABC structural affairs that rarely indulge a flourish of dialogue or the like, but instead work toward singularly focused goals of the story. State X’s motivation. Make Y endearing. Make you afraid of Z. The films go after these goals with workman-like rigidity. They use dialogue that’s “on the nose.” But they often are there for a reason. And all the times the narrative does stop for a bit of seeming dalliance? It’s often for equally critical reasons. The interactions with young John Connor and the Terminator bonding in the desert go for a massive payoff. Even the infamously silly spitting scene in Titanic gets called back for her big confrontation with Billy Zane. Perhaps less apparent are the asides of the Avatar films, the spots It’s often to indulge in the environmental wonder of what has been put on screen - is all part of what makes you care about that environment when it’s threatened. There’s a purpose to all this. One that depends on an unshowy, constant bit of magic trickery. For there are all these times you could suddenly stop and wonder “wait, how did they do this?” But you wonder because you don’t see the strings. You just see the movie, which is the clean, elegant, and composed result.

But it comes with the reminder that the strings behind the filmmaking itself are incredibly complicated. Whenever I watch the chase scenes from Terminator 2 I think how the fuck did they do that motorcycle stunt with him on the bike? Or how’d they get that Helicopter under the overpass? Or when watching the Avatar films I constantly question how those CGI and real elements are interacting so seamlessly. But the reason we often don’t stop is because Cameron rarely stops or slows down to emphasize the stunt, nor does he repeat it from five different angles. Instead, it’s part of the movement of the action ever forward at a brisk, breathless pace that feels like it never really stops. Of all of Cameron’s filmmaking chops, it’s his cinematography that deserves the most praise. Because it is deeply un-show-y or making you aware of the camera. Instead, he’s a master of action geography because he always wants you to know where everyone is at all times (I’m pretty sure the river chase in T2 never breaks the line). And not the classical style where he always uses a character’s eyes to lead you to where the next shot is going to be. These things are “simple” filmmaking fundamentals, but executing on them is incredibly complex and requires endless diligence. Watch the making of documentaries of these films and you see just how much time, planning, and consideration goes into just about everything. In Titanic, you watch a robot flip a board over in the underwater set and I just sit there and go “I know that probably took 10 hours.” But most of the time, you’re not even thinking about it at all.

You’re thinking “this really tastes like tomato.”

Which is the whole point.

And yet, time and time again, I see people go “yeah yeah, it’s a technical marvel” and then lambast that so-called simplicity of the storytelling I highlight above. Literally just last night I was chatting with someone I ran into and they regurgitated the same tired “it’s just fern gully” observation about Avatar. As if there aren’t loads of bare bones stories of similar shape. And more importantly, no one laments The Magnificent Seven “for just being” a riff on The Seven Samurai. None of these things are actual problems. But they’re sensitive to something and thus these things are the tangible details to hang onto. But what I will argue - and really what I have been arguing for over a decade now - is that this simple structural writing with well-drawn rooting mechanics is incredibly difficult. We’ll watch a big chunk of Hollywood efforts fail miserably on the same front and sit there wondering why nothing feels dramatic, motivations get lost, arcs don’t actualize, and action scenes feel airless. And by embracing “simplicity” of function, Cameron tells stories that actually feel dramatic. It’s not easy, it takes time, effort, and constant drafting. And the constant throwing out of ideas until you get the one that works for the story. And in the end? You get characters that have motivations. That pays off with arcs. And action beats that don’t just have physical weight behind, but loss and impact.

It’s that notion of IMPACT that I keep coming back to. I’ve spent the last week rewatching every Cameron film, many of them on the twitch streams with others, and I can tell you they play like gangbusters. And the reason is because all that “simple” storytelling makes you care about the characters and then it puts them in the constant stress of genuine danger. While watching Titanic one person remarked “Wtf I didn’t remember any of this. This is a damn horror movie” to which the user rougegoat replied with a quote I love “You don't win a James Cameron action sequence. You survive, barely.” Nothing speaks better to that commitment to be dramatic above all else. To have scenes that have stakes instead of trying to merely wow with the whiz-bang effect. Which is the reason they all become rousing, maximalist successes. All part of the argument that he makes the most crowd pleasing movies of all time.

So why does everyone keep discounting him?

Want to make it clear that I’m not saying Cameron’s work is above reproach. For one, Weta needs a reckoning for their pay and work issues. I also agree that society's reverence for the egotistical asshole genius needs to go away completely (and to whatever credit, much of the media coverage lately is about how he’s softened the last decade). And the white savior / noble savage tropes of Avatar need to go away just as hard. But please understand my lack of interest in talking about them further is only because these criticisms are all well-worn ground that others are much better at anyway. And there are other questions I find much more interesting. For instance, so many snarksters made fun of him for calling something “unobtanium” when really it’s a prime example of The Tiffany Complex, which is the idea that something could be factually correct, but still won’t come off right on screen. It’s called that because it’s a historical fact that Tiffany was actually very popular in the middle ages, but if you named a character in a middle ages story Tiffany people would be like “why is there a character with a Valley girl name?” That’s basically what Cameron did here. Unobtainium is a real scientific term “used in engineering and common situations for a material ideal for a particular application but impractically hard to get.” He probably thought it would help in the clarity. He just didn’t realize it would sound made-up to us. Which makes him “wrong” in the most James Cameron way possible. But is this some grand cardinal sin, even if it was just a term he came up with? Nope. Because none of these things account for the big “why” when it comes to the reason people really seem to be discounting his recent work.

I think the real reason is probably because Cameron hasn’t made a movie that’s completely “for boys” since Terminator 2 (which, granted, might be the perfection of the form). It all changed with Titanic, an emotional saga that was a cultural landmark that everyone saw, enjoyed, and emoted with - but ended up getting derided because, you know, society hates things young girls like. And there were scores of boys who not only resented that, but because of all the same reasons they often shy away from “manipulative” movies that are just good at tugging at their heartstrings. Which is a shame because Titanic remains one of our best epics. And going off that same consideration, I’m more interested in why people keep saying Avatar had “no cultural impact” and yet don’t realize what they’re really saying. Because everyone saw that movie, right? And try as they may to forget, most people liked it. Most were blown away by its use of 3D. The movie worked like gangbusters and there’s a reason it became the biggest film of all time. So what is the “impact” we’re really talking about here?

It’s because Avatar isn’t cool.

The incredible episode of How To with John Wilson speaks to much of this. The mega fans of the film are treated as weirdos within fan communities (much the way many of these sci-fi properties were once upon a time) and yet the episode highlights their sincerity and shows great empathy for them in turn. Because no one bothers to ask the “why” there’s the separation. And it’s because Avatar wasn’t trying to be cool. In fact, the “cool” marines are the rote dunderhead bad guys we cant wait to see get comeuppance. And the good guys are the characters who are big soft, hippy environmentalists types who just wanna, like, chill in the woods in stuff. That’s literally the arc of Jake Sully going from one to the other (and you get a sense this is Cameron’s big journey too). There is no MCU snark to be found here. For all the pretense, it’s after something so much more innocent, dorky, and peaceful. And yet, the thing no one admits is that is a fundamental part of the reason the film was so successful with everyone. Cameron knows coolness is a trap. He knows crafting the feeling of danger is more involving to an audience than displaying badassery. Which is why he constantly strives to make the characters low status. They aren’t movies you project yourself into in a fantasy way, they are movies that make you FEEL. Which means he’s making a movie that’s genuinely for everyone. However broad, the sincerity is what moves you as you watch. And it’s why so many people deny the connection they felt afterward. And it’s why there was a discounted lack of interest going into the sequels. But as the adage goes, “never bet against James Cameron.” Because he’ll end up making the movie that works every time.

I saw Avatar: The Way of Water last night and it’s great.

People seem to love it with more ubiquity than previous entry, as if implying it’s some massive improvement. But I’d argue it’s great for all the same things that made the first one good, too. It’s just more sure-footed and streamlined with fewer missteps. Though I suppose that speaks to exactly why people may feel the difference. Part of the old Hawks adage that a good movie has “three great scenes and no bad ones.” But the film is once again a technical marvel. The kind of picture that reminds me that “oh yeah, these things used to be about genuine spectacle” much the way Top Gun: Maverick did too. It’s part of the way we used to make films that tried to push the medium. Where the special effects could be a genuine draw instead of part of the same rushed, obligatory fare that haunts so many recent blockbusters.

What was surprisingly interesting to me was the film’s use of high frame rate, which is something I’ve been AGHAST at for the most part, but here I finally see the promise. Once again, it came down to Cameron’s understanding of how eyeballs actually work. Specifically, the understanding that layering an entire film with one frame rate is counter-productive madness. Why? Because we actually process different rates of movement better or worse depending on said rate. The obvious solution? Have every single shot have a different frame rate and fine tune each one for the movement on screen. It sounds so obvious, but of course it took this long to figure it out. Granted, I’ll admit it took me a good thirty minutes to start gelling with it. But by the last hour you feel integrated to what it’s doing. And weirdly it's not the action that makes it stand-out, but the close-ups where you see every bit of emotion and micro-expression play out on a character's face. The intimacy is the grandest special effect it seems. So the use of High Frame Rate is not perfect, but Cameron certainly solved the approach.

But perhaps I really wasn’t expecting from The Way of Water was for it to feel so intimate and personal, even for me (as it’s weirdly evocative of old fishing town politics and food sustainability!?). And on the theme and character front, it draws into both environmentalism and family dynamics. The former is clearly Cameron’s big passion. And the latter makes use of many of the well-worn (if heteronormative) tropes that befit the trials and tribulations of a loving family unit. But it IS loving. And all these stories get explored with the open hearted and “uncool” dynamics that ring true, even if they’re perhaps unalluring to someone who wants to cosplay. I don’t know, really. Because I don’t go to the movies because I want that kind of continued escape. The escape in the moment is enough for me. And few do that kind of escape better than Cameron. Because I’m escaping into something wondrous, beautiful, and scary. I’m leaning forward or back or jumping in my seat at a moment's notice. And what I’m being served is something that feels new, but familiar. Perhaps like the most intense tomato flavor you’ve ever tasted. It’s something seemingly simple, but we know it’s anything but. Because in the end, it adds up to something better than that…

It’s something essential.

<3HULK