Avatar director James Cameron is starting to compare himself to The Lord of the Rings creators. Having created Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Titanic, Cameron has become quite the name at the box office. The project which is taking up most of his time, the Avatar franchise, has led to a highly successful franchise that rivals even The Lord of the Rings.
With both Avatar films managing to gross over $2 billion at the box office, Cameron is proud of his world and isn't afraid to show it. The box office that Cameron's films earn is impressive since three of the top four best-selling movies of all time were his creations. Now, in an interview with TIME Magazine, Cameron admits that he started to compare himself with J. R. R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson of The Lord of the Rings. Check out his quote below:
“I was trying to do a simulation of, OK, I’m Peter Jackson making Lord of the Rings except Lord of the Rings doesn’t exist yet, so I need to go be Tolkien and create Lord of the Rings, and then I can go be Peter Jackson. A little bit cheeky and ambitious, but I wasn’t adapting some big pantheon of books that existed. I had to go do that.”
Why Creating The World Of Avatar Is Such A Challenge
Creating the Avatar world hasn't been easy for Cameron or for any cast and crew member since Avatar: The Way of Water alone took 13 years to develop. Thankfully, the next movie will be coming out at a much more reasonable pace since Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3 were filmed back to back.
Given how much of the Pandora world is completely external, CGI is necessary to render many of its plants and animals. Where the Lord of the Rings trilogy benefited from using the New Zealand landscape and rarely having to implement much more than practical effects, Cameron has the added challenge of an unseen world to resolve in Avatar. That didn't mean that The Lord of the Rings doesn't have similar challenges, but the extent of the unfamiliarity was larger for Cameron.
Underwater filming has also posed a serious problem, as actors had to train with Navy SEAL instructors to survive Avatar: The Way of Water's production. The larger-than-life CGI characters were also difficult to work with, and Cameron is often forced to create new Avatar details on the spot. It isn't a surprise that Cameron sees his challenge as being as difficult as Tolkien's and Jackson's, as he is both creating the world and filming it at once.
Source: TIME Magazine
