MICHAEL BAY AT IT AGAIN!!

Professor Smooth · Post by **Professor Smooth** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:30 am

Just when I think I'm out, you pull me back in.

James Cameron, eh? The same James Cameron that made Terminator's 1 and 2? The same Terminator franchise that rather underperformed in the hands of different directors, despite being "robot blowing stuff up movies"? The premise of which, I'm told, should have brought in swarms of theater goers and their combined hundreds of millions of dollars?

The same James Cameron who made Titanic, the highest grossing movie of all time? A record that remained unchallenged...until the next time James Cameron made a movie?

That James Cameron? You think he'd have produced a movie that would have been as financially successful as Michael Bay's while being better received by longtime fans and critics?

Seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? And it's hard to imagine what James Cameron would have done with Transformers. It's not like he has much of a track record with licensed properties. Although, I mean, you COULD argue that Avatar was a knockoff of Dances With Wolves, but if your version of Dances With Wolves involves an epic air battle between dinosaur riding cat people and gigantic war machines, then you MIGHT be the right guy to direct the movie about giant robots in a war.

But...wait. There WAS this one time that James Cameron was tapped to direct a licensed property. I believe it was some little known character called Spider-Man.

Yeah, that's it! James Cameron was totally going to do the first big-screen Spider-Man movie! It was going to have Arnold Strong (or whatever the hell he changed his name to after that Hercules movie) as Professor Octopus. And the end of the movie was going to feature a Wizard of Oz-type flying house...in space!

They may have shot Aunt May's house to meet space Aliens, but that movie would have tanked like the Titanic directly into the Abyss, Terminated at the box office, forever an Avatar of terrible movie adaptations.

Post by **snarl** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:27 am

That's not the James Cameron Spider-Man story I've heard, although I did see a hyperactive internet **** just say it on cracked.com, so it must be true.

As I understand it, the mental **** spider-man was written by a mental, **** **** who had got the Spider-Man rights in the mid 80s. Those rights ran out and Carolco got them, Cameron became attached to direct.

When variety reported this, they said that that mental script was JCs. It seems like his name may have found his way onto it somehow, but it wasn't what he intended to produce, and a few months later, Cameron put out his own script / narrative.

What actually would have happened in the James Cameron Spider-Man is here:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2000/02/15/r ... scriptment

As for the Terminator films, the market they aim at is traditionally much smaller, it's not as simple as saying "It has robots in so is the same as TFs"...

The one imo most directly comparable to Transformers is T2... which did tremendous business and is still an amazing film.

Regardless, the ones that Cameron didn't direct still did bring in swarms of theatre goers, so I don't really see your point.

I don't remember anybody saying that Bay was not a money making director. Just that he makes **** films.

And also, interestingly enough, I think I DO remember LOTS of people saying that any HALF DECENT director could make a good movie and good box office returns with the TF property, such was it's brand strength.

The last terminator film was directed by McG.

It was directed by somebody so ******* stupid that he cant even remember his own name.

This is McG.

Somebody has evidently just asked him what his full name is

And the gross of Terminator Salvation, with a **** at the helm, still pretty much doubled it's huge budget.

A Cameron Transformers wouldn't definitely have smashed it, but I just thought:

Has Cameron ever done gritty, awesome Sci-Fi?
Has Cameron ever done massive special effects?
Has Cameron ever done close robot father to human son relationships?
Has Cameron ever done a film that has set new standards in terms of box office takings?

And it was a resounding yes to all those Qs.

I reckon they must have asked him and he told them to [composite word including 'f*ck'] off.

Apparently, he is a ****** to work for / with.

inflatable dalek · Post by **inflatable dalek** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:58 am

Cameron pulled forward through time from around True Lies (which is probably the most unashamed dumb but fun film he's made, no real subtext or message there) would likely make a pretty damn awesome Transformers film. Though probably not one hugely insanely different from Bay, the main difference being he'd have probably married Megan Fox afterwards before dumping her for whoever he cast in his following film.

Though that's presuming he'd have any affinity for the material, he doesn't strike me as someone who'd normally be terribly interested in projects they weren't the originator of (he got to do pretty much what he wanted with Aliens and Spider-Man would have been a full on fanboy project).

Though there are few films that annoy me more than Titanic with it's odd "It's far better to be a poor Irish person than an Englishman (I nearly said rich Englishman, but even David Warner's butler character is a ****)" message. Which is even undermined by the film itself as all the poor Irish people die horribly.

Avatar... I saw half an hour of it. It wasn't that it was terrible that made me turn it off, it seemed a perfectly fine silly action film. But no film that took ten years to make should have wound up feeling that derivative and OKish. If it had been knocked out in six months then fair enough, but the creative process must have gone something like this:

"Right, what we'll do is remake Star Trek Insurrection, but give the humans the look of the marines from Aliens and make the aliens blue". Seriously, what did they then do for the next nine years, eleven months, 30 days and 23 and three quarter hours?

The point I gave up was when a Power Loader from Aliens went past and I turned to my brother (who'd seen it) and said "That'll have a fight with one of the blue things near the end won't it? Like in Aliens", to which he replied "Yep". So I went to do something less predicable. Though I suppose he could have been lying...

Though my personal peeves with Cameron's recent works of course doesn't mean he wouldn't have delivered box office gold of course.

EDIT @ Snarl: Though I'm sure Paramount would have loved to have him (and it's not as if their final choice of director doesn't also have a tendancy to rub people up the wrong way) I can't see them even having thought to ask him when he was coming to the end of his famous big ten year period of not directing any (fiction) films because of doing the prep work for Avatar.

Post by **snarl** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 8:57 am

Yep, that is probably right actually.

I had no idea he spent so long on that film, was actually wondering why he did suddenly stop making films (although he did make Dark Angel for the tele).

inflatable dalek · Post by **inflatable dalek** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 9:18 am

I think it was getting the CGI where he wanted and developing the 3D technique that took the time (which is another way the film doesn't work for me, the most expensive and most technological movie made up to that time has the big moral that capitalism is bad and we should all get back to nature).

He could have spent more than an afternoon on the script though.

In terms of the Terminator sequels... I actually like the third one. No great shakes but Arnie is good fun and there's some nice stuff in it. There's a surprising number of people out there who hate the "happy" ending of the second one and prefer the third to it for "putting things back on track".

Still not seen the forth, regardless of McG's potentially poisonous involvement I'm just not interested in the future stuff beyond some cool flashbacks in the main narrative. Michael Ironside aside.

I'm still amazed it's never occurred to them to bring Robert Patrick back, his shape shifting powers would actually explain why he looks older as well.

Professor Smooth · Post by **Professor Smooth** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 12:42 pm

Loved T3. Arguably fanwank done right.

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 10:07 pm

Yeah, that's a big reason of why James Cameron made Avatar instead of Transformers: Something; he's a saavy businessman. "Why don't I just make the characters and keep ALL of the licensing rights?"

But I do agree with Snarl that that would have been a HELL of a movie.

My personal thinking is perhaps Brad Bird? Somewhere between the Iron Giant, the Incredibles, and Mission Impossible:Ghost Protocol is a great TF movie.