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Friday, February 26, 2010

Life Imitates Art?

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A few days ago, Tegan over at The Unofficial Aquaman Website caught this interesting quote from Dwayne McDuffie's Facebook page: "I just got back from the New York premiere of JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS. After the showing, I was on a panel with Andrea Romano and James Woods, and answered some questions. Now for the bizarre part: We're all in the hotel lounge, having dinner...when James Woods spots a friend and drags him over to say hello. It's James Cameron. We talked about Aquaman."

As if that wasn't intriguing enough, here are some quotes from Cameron when he was on the February 18th edition of NPR's Fresh Air (again with the NPR!):

Terry Gross: My guest is James Cameron, and he wrote and directed "Avatar." He also made "Titanic," "Terminator" and "True Lies," oh, and "Aliens," too. You know, in one of your documentaries, one of your deep sea documentaries, you describe underwater life as the most insane life forms ever discovered. So have you seen any creatures, like real creatures, under the sea that helped inspire any of the creatures in "Avatar."

James Cameron: Well, absolutely. I mean, I think first of all, there's the sort of generic answer, which is there's such an inspiration to be had from the, you know, what I call nature's imagination because, you know, I surrounded myself on "Avatar" with these really, really great creature-design artists. And every time we thought we had come we had come up with a brand new idea, somebody would come in with a photograph or a reference, and we realized that nature beat us to it, you know, by probably 300 million years.

****

Terry Gross: And I know you grew up not far from Niagara Falls. Is that right?

James Cameron: Right. Yeah.

Terry Gross: So is it stretching too much to think that the power of the water of Niagara Falls had some kind of influence on you?

James Cameron: Well, you know, I mean I grew up within the sound of Niagara Falls. I lived, you know, with that constant rumble in the background, so I certainly always had a respect for the power and the force of water. And then in the filmmaking, starting with "The Abyss," I saw how, you know, you can dump a dump tank with 10,000 gallons in it and have it destroy your set. I mean literally rip it apart.

And so, overtime, I've learned to really, really respect that force of water from an engineering standpoint. And I'm very rigorous when I work with water, that my, that, you know, my special effects guys and my set construction people, someone really understand what they're dealing with. Because generally speaking, they underestimate the force and energy of water by a factor of 10.


...A few days ago, these comments wouldn't have caught my attention especially, because of course Cameron has directed a couple of water-centric movies, Titanic and The Abyss.

But after hearing he's talking Aquaman with Dwayne McDuffie, it has to make you wonder...could the real-life James Cameron be thinking of an Aquaman movie as his next project? If there's one thing that could move Aquaman from "B"-level comic book character to Giant, A-List Movie Star, a movie directed by James Cameron would be it! I mean, seriously: Cameron's name on an Aquaman movie could single-handedly put the character on the same level in the public consciousness as Batman, Spider-Man, and Iron Man.


You can read a transcript of the whole interview here, and thanks to Tegan for the McDuffie catch!

7 comments:

Airship Over Water said...

Oh, wow! This is big. I know it's all speculation, but wow, this really could happen -- I mean, crazier things have happened, you know?

The only thing I would worry about is if Cameron didn't stay true to the source material. I could see him looking at scripts on Arthur's origin and his enemies and wanting to change A LOT. Hopefully I'm wrong.

I liked Avatar a great deal. It has it's haters, but I still enjoyed it. An Aquaman movie from James Cameron in real life? I'll take it.

wich2 said...

Put me down, after TITANIC and AVATAR, on the "don't!" list...

JasonMotesBowles said...

I'm sure James Cameron could direct Shopping List: The Movie and it would be massive, but I just hate his movies. As technically impressive as they are, the scripts are so hollow and devoid of any REAL emotion. They're just these mishmashes of existing movies, put together with the intention of manipulating the viewer's emotions without any real poignancy or relate-ability. I KNOW I'd just be upset at all the people jumping on the Aqua Bandwagon if this happened and be ticked off that this wasn't "my" Aquaman.

rob! said...

I didn't like Avatar much myself, but I think I'd be okay with Cameron doing an Aquaman just for what it would do for the character--like I said in the piece, it would make Aquaman instantly A-list.

Anonymous said...

I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing a slight re-imagining for the character, if that would get an Aquaman movie out. Besides, if, and I highly doubt it but stil if, we had Dwayne McDuffie write it, and cameron direct it, I think it couild make for a good movie.

Doug said...

I'd like to McDuffie do more with Aquaman, film, TV, comic - whatever.

Oscar Olalde said...

JC's Avatar is to Disney's Pocahontas...

As JC's Aquaman is to Disney's.... Findind Nemo? Little Mermaid? Atlantis?