Cameron Talks Avatar Director’s Cut, Underwater Sequel(s), 3D Titanic

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Cameron said the Earth Day peg for the Avatar DVD release was thought out a long time ago, and he expressed a clear and urgent passion for some of the ongoing environmental issues that led him to write the sci-fi film in the first place. “Avatar is an environmental film – that’s its reason for existing,” Cameron said. “And it’s been so rewarding, that it has advanced the world dialogue about environmental issues, asking people about what our responsibility is to the planet. I was down in the rainforest twice in the last three weeks, looking at all the logging and dam issues of Brazil, and what’s sort of ironic is that I wrote Avatar thinking about the Navajo and the Sioux and what took place 100 years ago. But then you see what’s going on in Brazil and it hasn’t changed at all. They are going through what we went through 110 or 120 years ago. This is a movie that’s still very relevant to today.”

Beyond the environmental issues, Landau told me about the ways in which Avatar’s 3D success has started to unleash a tectonic shift in the power structure of Hollywood. He said many of the people who mastered this technology on Avatar are now in high demand – and many of them went off immediately after Avatar to work with Steven Spielberg on Tintin. So mark that on your calendars now. I also asked Landau about what the next 3D title was, that looked to take the technology to the next plateau. Granted, we’ve all heard gripes about Clash of the Titans’s rushed conversion, and I wanted to know what movie was going to blow our mind next. “I think it’s going to be Tron,” Landau said. “That’s being authored in 3D, and that’s what I always look for, in terms of people who know what they’re doing. Martin Scorsese has also announced he’s going to work in 3D, so when you start hearing things like that, you know this is the future.”

(More on Techland: Sam Worthington’s Titans Interview: James Cameron Is ‘Definitely My God’)

If Landau was more interested in looking forward to the future, Cameron seemed a little miffed about the present. Maybe not miffed. Pissed.

“It does get a little frustrating, but I’ve done all I can do. I can’t keep evangelizing about 3D. So while the rest of the industry is sitting around I’ll just go off and make another Avatar and make another billion,” Cameron said. “Hollywood has to bite the bullet. They’ve now seen a couple examples back to back, a good example like Avatar and then something like Clash of the Titans. You need to make 3D films, not just rush through conversions. And what’s most surprising to me is how this isn’t inspiring 3D filmmakers. All of the interest shouldn’t be coming from the studio side of things. Filmmakers should be saying: ‘I want to make my movie in 3D,’ but instead those decisions are all coming from the top down, with the studio saying: ‘You’re the filmmaker who’s caretaking this franchise for a year and you’re going to do it in 3D whether you want to or not.’ Filmmakers are asleep at the switch here, and there’s just nothing more I can possibly show them.”

So, for those keeping score, Cameron: Pro-nature, giddy over Avatar sequels, seriously annoyed by his colleagues. It must be lonely to be the king.

More on Techland:

The Avatar Oscar Paradox: A Breakthrough, But Not Worthy of the Trophy

Avatar the Novel: Cameron Vowed if Pandora Made Money, ‘I’d Write a Book’

The Five Underrated Sci-Fi Movie Masterpieces

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