Industrial Society and the Science Fiction Blockbuster by Mark T. Decker

Author:Mark T. Decker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2016-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

James Cameron Reforms the Company Man in Terminator and T2

James Cameron has more in common with Ridley Scott than also having his name attached to a film in the Alien universe. Both men have a background in set design, and both were given motivation to create popular but thought-provoking science fiction by A New Hope. Cameron has been very open about his motivational debt to George Lucas. In an interview with the Academy of Achievement, Cameron notes that Star Wars “galvanized me to get of my butt and go be a filmmaker” (116). In an interview with John H. Richardson, Cameron indicates that he was “pissed off” after he saw Star Wars because he “wanted to make that movie” (59). And Cameron’s “unofficial” biographer Marc Shapiro argues that Lucas’ film was the catalyst for Cameron’s first attempts to find financial backing for his films (55). Of course, since Alien came out just as Cameron was beginning to work for B-movie king Roger Corman, Ridley Scott’s blockbuster also influenced Cameron. According to biographer Rebecca Kegan, Cameron studied Alien obsessively while working on the 1981 Corman film Galaxy of Terror (49).

Unlike Lucas or Scott, however, James Cameron is more likely to be seen as a somewhat derivative filmmaker—perhaps because The Terminator appeared five years after Alien and seven years after A New Hope—who can nevertheless please casual theatergoers. He has been characterized, in other words, as the ideal type of blockbuster directors. After all, this is a director whose genre films tend to appeal to broad audiences—the first two Terminator films, 1986’s Aliens, and 2009’s Avatar all show an ability to reach beyond the typical science fiction fanbase—and who showed in 1998’s Titanic that he could create an insanely successful historical romance. Consider the critical reputation of the first two Terminator films as evidence of Cameron’s ability to deliver the goods for blockbuster audiences. The Terminator from 1984 has a 100 percent fresh rating on rottentomatoes.com, though not because critics saw it as a cinematic masterpiece. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin, for example, called The Terminator “a B movie with flair” while Variety called the script “clever” and promised action fans that their money would be well spent. Terminator 2 from 1991 received similar qualified praise, with its 92 percent fresh rating also due to admiration for Cameron’s ability to tell a good story. Roger Ebert’s somewhat snarky though generally positive review recommends the film in part because “the movie surpasses itself with special effects.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan similarly remarks that Terminator 2 is “well stocked with the kind of wised-up, shoot-from-the-hip wit” that “action fans crave.”

Unsurprisingly this near-universal critical approbation translated into strong box office results. True, The Terminator is not properly a blockbuster—its 21st place finish in 1984 indicates that it did not quite capture the public’s imagination when it was initially released, but its $78 million worldwide take on a production budget of $6.4 million provided a return on investment that any blockbuster would be envious of.

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