James Cameron is the director of two of the highest grossing films of all time, Titanic and Avatar. The concept for Avatar came from Cameron's interest in pushing visual effects, particularly realistic humanoid characters. Though the technology was not ready when he first conceived of Avatar in the 1990s, by the time he returned to the project after making Titanic, effects had advanced enough to realize his vision. Avatar's story of human colonialism destroying an indigenous culture carries a message of environmentalism and criticism of militarism that was timely given issues like climate change when the film was released.

1. James Cameron and Avatar<br />I choose to make a unit who treats about James Cameron because is the movie director who realized the two best movie in the cinema’s story.<br />Video :<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km2UpEcSUGY<br />Interview of James Cameron<br />How did the concept of Avatar occur to you? <br />How you decide to make a film is different for each one. For Terminator, for example, I thought, ‘Ok, what kind of movie can I make as a first-time director? Should it involve effects? Because I know effects and I can sell that. But it’s got to be shot in the streets of L.A. on the cheap, so that’s my setting. So how do I get effects into that setting? Well something comes from space or it comes from the future. Well space has been done so let’s do the future …’ So you know I have these very mercenary things that drove me to a story, then I came up with a story that fit those parameters. <br />Avatar is very similar in that I was the C.E.O. of Digital Domain, which overnight had sprung to being the kind of second-best visual effects house in the world, and I didn’t want to be second-best. I.L.M. (Industrial Light and Magic) had a big lead, having done the Jurassic Park films. And Stan Winston, with whom I founded the company, and I wanted to really push the art of C.G. character creation, creature creation, all of that. So I took every bit of character creation that I’d done as an illustrator, just doodling around since I was in middle school, hunkered down behind the textbooks in class.<br />I had thousands and thousands of drawings, lots and lots of ideas, so I just worked it all up into one big story. But it was too sprawling. It was very novelistic. It wasn’t thematically focused, but it was just a treatment, a working document to get the conversation started with the studio. And the consensus was that just the idea of doing photo-realistic humanoid expressive characters in C.G. was not possible, at that time. All of the breakthrough stuff we had done, like the pseudopod sequence in The Abyss, which had facial C.G. and transparency and reflection and fluid surface, and all that sort of stuff, was done within the confines of that 14-month production and we had to know going in that we could get there. And then the same thing with Terminator 2, which was an extension of same techniques of The Abyss—we had to know if we could get to synched dialogue after the facial performance and that sort of thing. So the thought was if we started down the path of actually making Avatar, we’d get hammered because we wouldn’t get through the development cycle in time, so I thought, ‘Alright guys, I’m giving you fair warning: I’m going to go make Titanic and that will take me two years. When I come back let’s talk again.’<br />But of course, if you don’t have a project driving the technology, it just lies dormant because you don’t have a big R & D department just sitting there working [pro bono]. Everything is done for a reason. So I came back two years later and nothing had happened. And then I started thinking, ‘Well, I want to make my next feature in 3-D. Avatar’s probably not a good choice for that because it’s just way too complicated, I’ve got to do something simpler first.’ And he said, ‘No no no, if you want to do Avatar, do Avatar.’ He said, ‘You do your biggest and your best idea in 3-D because that’s what this deserves.’ He even used the example of Star Wars. He said, ‘If you were going to make your Star Wars, you would do it in this technique.’ He just had this strong, visceral reaction to it, and you know Stan and I had been friends and partners for a long time, so I actually listened to that. So I looked at Avatar and I thought, ‘Well hmm, maybe the time is right.’ Because Peter Jackson had done Gollum. And people were talking about Gollum’s performance when he talks to himself.’<br />The military-industrial complex has been responsible for a lot of human technological advancement in the past hundred or so years, but is faced with problems of ecological integration. The disadvantages of the way we do science and the way our scientific advancement is tied to our society’s military prowess are highlighted – that we have to destroy and establish our own society and methods somewhere, rather than integrate into an existing society or culture. A case in point is how India has handled syncretism and integration and the stark contrasts with the Portuguese and Spanish conquistadors who destroyed indigenous civilizations in “Latin” America ( now attributed more to their filthiness and infestation with pathogens than to their military prowess). Avatar is probably the only movie made in Hollywood where humans are pitted as an aggressive race and who conquer other races. This is probably somewhat true, as well – humans seem to be more competitive than harmonious, if our own environment and other species living in them are anything to go by.<br />Does Avatar carry a message? Avatar comes at a time when the Copenhagen summit called on to discuss climate change issues failed spectacularly. It comes at a time when indigenous cultures are being wiped out by globalization and when fast environmental degradation is leading to a loss of biological habitat for many species that may not make it through the next few decades. Our dispirited militarization and industrial callousness has messed with the balance of life and environment that sustains us all, and we often do this without full knowledge of what we deal with. The militarism is not necessarily a good thing either, and despite being a very connected world, more than ever before, there’s hostility in our world on a large scale. In conclusion, Avatar is a must-watch, not merely because of the great movie-going experience and the stunning imagery, but also because it carries a message for each of us.<br />http://philramble.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/avatars-critique-of-human-society/<br />