James Cameron does Pan’s Labyrinth

I know this is an old post, but I felt like commenting.

“Astronomers don’t necessarily make good astronauts.”

The other comment about Fern Gully is quite right. “Avatar” rips-off a lot of ideas and themes from (arguably) a ton of popular movies, TV shows, books, and other media.

The entire “Avatar” movie, in my opinion, got a lot of undeserved attention because it was the first (?) of the new generation of stereoscopic 3D movies in theaters. If “Avatar” was released a few years earlier in standard 2D silver-screen, before James Cameron finished making the 3D cameras used to shoot the film, it probably would have gotten terrible reviews. Which brings me to a good point; James Cameron is no doubt an incredibly talented and accomplished person; he invented the 3D movie camera, which undoubtedly took a lot of intelligence and dedication. However, as I titled this comment, astronomers don’t always make good astronauts. Just because James Cameron can invent an amazing new kind of camera, doesn’t mean he is a good filmmaker.
On the other hand, Guillermo del Toro, who is has an amazing imagination, a real penchant for storytelling, and he creates amazing things seemingly out of thin-air. Drawing on both traditional fictional elements and creative new ideas, he executes all of his works flawlessly. However, I would bet that Mr. Del Toro knows much about how to build a camera from scratch, let alone invent one.

There is no doubt that when James Cameron started making “Avatar”, he needed a lot of help in the creative process. Someone who is so devoted to the technical aspect of film making isn’t likely to have much room left for creating a riveting story; one can only do so much! Thus, what came of his ideas and those of his collaborators was quite obviously a mediocre film; “Avatar” was pretty creative, yet so blatantly and inextricably bound to the notion that they wanted to, and had to make money and please the audience with the movie. I could go on for another hundred words about all the fan-pleasing and rip-offs from original ideas, but it’s pointless.

Finally, you have Guillermo del Toro’s work in comparison; in this case Pan’s Labyrinth (which is an amazing piece of work), and it makes “Avatar” look like a bad Sci-Fi movie you see on late-night cable TV. Aside from good cinematography in both movies, “Avatar” isn’t even on the same level as “Pan’s Labyrinth”.

To make the long story longer:

Guillermo del Toro should keep writing more movies and James Cameron should keep making cameras.