“Blockbusters, 3D, and the End of James Cameron’s Quiet Years”
In the years between his blockbuster films Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), James Cameron was an active documentary producer and director. Where many saw these years as a retreat from the mainstream of the film industry, this period helped solidify his relationship with scientific discovery and the development of cinema technology, most notably 3D. His films Expedition: Bismarck (2002), Ghosts of the Abyss (2003), and Aliens of the Deep (2005) are large-budget documentary films involving deep-sea expeditions and in which the technologies of physical and visual access to the subject matter figures prominently. These films connect aesthetically and thematically with Avatar, but importantly they helped to extend Cameron’s persona as a “technological auteur.” With analysis of the historical role of taste and technology to the development of blockbuster films, this study shows us how the business of film is bound up with a range of media products, new technological forms, and types of intellectual property, revealing the technological imperative lodged in conceptions of the future of cinema.