Nowadays, cult directors like Martin Scorsese complain about the uncreative Hollywood, which consists only of franchises. But this was already a topic over ten years ago. The same goes for James Cameron.
In a Spiegel interview from 2011 with James Cameron, he spoke about Hollywood’s problem of bringing new and creative films to the screen. Back then, a film about which he had nothing good to say was Battleship.
When thinking about movies like Cocaine Bear or Barbie today, one might wonder how such ideas come about, then they have forgotten about Battleship. The film is based on the Battleship game. The film starred people like Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, and also Rihanna. With 41 points on Metacritic, the film was not a qualitative success.
For James Cameron, this film was a good example of the crisis that resembles today’s discourse with the MCU and an uncreative Hollywood.
Here you can see the trailer for Battleship:
We have a story crisis
Similar to Martin Scorsese, who also likes to speak out against the MCU and franchises, Cameron also negatively commented on the state of Hollywood back then. He spoke about a story crisis
and how Hollywood only consists of making sequels out of something already successful.
This also fits into the current discourse about the MCU franchise or so-called legacy sequels
like recently The Exorcist – Believer, Halloween Ends, or Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which try to attract audiences with old characters and familiar faces.
Back then, Cameron was still promoting the first Avatar film, which had no source material and built a world and story from scratch. However, now one can also call this a franchise that will soon even get a game:
If you look at the cinema today, it seems that not much has changed in the Hollywood landscape. Something is successful and is supposed to become a franchise. A current example would be Barbie.
What do you think of Cameron’s opinion and the current situation in cinema? Let us know in the comments.
James Cameron also did not start as a great director and had to come out of a low point:
