I always knew I was going to see Avatar: The Way of Water. From the moment it was announced I knew I would buy a 3D IMAX ticket on the largest screen available. And it’s not because I’m a huge Avatar fan - I hardly remember the first movie. It’s because over a decade ago I adopted a simple slogan: never sleep on James Cameron.
I have some proof that this is not some Monday-morning quarterbacking now that the new Avatar is a success. A tweet from September 2017, for example, when the Avatar sequels were first announced I replied to someone saying that the Avatar films were a “bad idea,” with, “If there's one truism I could gleam from four decades of learning and processing, it's never, ever, EVER sleep on James Cameron.” Another tweet from 2010 where I defended Avatar’s Best Picture nomination because, at the end of the day, it was a jaw-dropping piece of work.
I kind of want to talk about both of those sentiments a bit more, starting with never sleeping on James Cameron. Quite often when a movie like an Avatar sequel is announced you get a lot of people saying something like, “Who asked for this?” I think that’s a ridiculous sentiment to hold for any movie, honestly - we shouldn’t be asking for movies, we should discover and be surprised by movies. But I understand we’re in a time of endlessly churning out sequels and stretching stories and because of this, people ask for movies often.
James Cameron does not make movies that people ask for, however; James Cameron makes good movies. I remember thinking this when I sat in the theater watching Titanic for the third time. I remember when people were laughing at the first Avatar’s disappointing first-weekend box office and I would tell them, “This feels bigger than an opening weekend.” James Cameron knows how to make a movie that you didn’t know you wanted, and that you tell your friends, family, and strangers to go see.
Regarding the Oscar-worthiness of Cameron’s films…I love small, quiet films. I eat them up. I’ve grown cold to all of the MCU movies, I could care less about any new Star Wars flicks. But I also love movie production. I love watching a movie that was made for a big screen, and that’s what Cameron does. With each new project, he takes up more and more screen real estate and makes it functional, not in a way that’s distracting but in a way that immerses you in this world - makes it feel real, makes you become one of the characters. And his third acts are always a grand and thrilling spectacle.
The main Cameron filmography, in order of release, consists of Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water. These are the films that he wrote and directed. Every single one of these movies has a structure where the first act is quick and dirty to get you to the second act which takes its time hanging out in the minutia and world-building while setting up a third act that is simply thrilling. These movies are money-makers and crowd-pleasers; two of the eight films are in the top 3 highest-grossing films of all time, with Avatar still holding the #1 spot. I’d be shocked if Avatar: The Way of Water doesn’t end up in the top five. The money is just an indication of how popular his films are, how they grab audiences in a way that they enjoy what they’ve seen, recommend what they’ve seen, and even go see it again.
Never bet against James Cameron; not because he’s magic, but because he makes movies that were made for movie screens. He makes incredible, best-picture-worthy films. He knows what people want, and he knows how to make it stunning. No one does it better than him, and I’m going to see every movie he ever makes and know that I’m going to walk out of that theater saying, “Now that’s how you make a movie.”
Because James Cameron knows how to make a movie.
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For a fun science aside, I’ve worn an Oura ring for the past year. It’s continuously monitoring my heart rate, heart variability, oxygen saturation, etc. It is very good at determining when I’m sleeping, when I’m active, when I’m sick, etc. My team does some work with biometrics and has looked at Oura (and other wearables) data to predict cognitive and physical performance. What I’m about to share is something that has not happened to me after a year of wearing an Oura, and is not something I’ve ever seen in other data or studies yet: during the second act of Avatar my body was so still and my heart rate was so slow that my Oura ring thought I was asleep - a deep sleep at one point, even. This has never happened at other movies, never happened when laying on the couch and reading or watching television or just listening to music. This was specifically related to Avatar, and how the second act pulled me in so much that I was essentially in a shared waking dream with the rest of the crowded movie theater. You can see a screenshot below - the movie started at 2:15, and you figure about 20 minutes of previews. 30 minutes into the actual film, therefore, my body started to mimic sleep. It’s honestly incredible.
