James Cameron has dismissed criticism of 3D and high frame rate in his Avatar movies, pointing to their enormous box office success as evidence that audiences don’t mind it, and explaining why he likes the tech.
Ahead of the release of the third Avatar movie, Fire and Ash, Discussing Film asked Cameron if he’s bothered by negative feedback to the CGI-heavy franchise’s use of 3D and associated high frame rate.
“I think $2.3 billion says you might be wrong on that,” Cameron replied. “Well, that’s the argument from authority. But the argument from artistic is: I happen to like it, and it’s my movie.”
The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has earned a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. (Avengers: Endgame overtook Avatar for a brief period, before Avatar then stole its crown back via a fresh re-release.) 2022 sequel Avatar: The Way of Water earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing it as the third-highest grossing film of all time — just ahead of Cameron’s own Titanic, which floats on $2.2 billion.
Avatar: Fire and Ash is expected to follow suit — and the pressure is on it to deliver for Disney so director James Cameron can realize his vision and release Avatar 4 and 5 over the next six years. But Cameron has sounded words of caution recently. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted he was feeling nervous about Avatar: Fire and Ash’s box office performance, and was mindful of the “forces” working against theatrical releases in 2025.
Expanding on his point about 3D and high frame rate, Cameron got technical, saying he likes the high frame rate to “smooth out” the 3D experience.
“We have a lot of different neurons that do a lot of difficult things,” he said. “But we have dedicated neurons for parallax. So when people say they get eye strain watching 3D, it’s not eye strain, it’s brain strain. Because we integrate into a stereoscopic perception of the world in our visual cortex. Those parallax sensitive neurons can’t fire if the vertical edges of things are jumping. The brain can’t process that. So if we’re having a stroboscopic effect that’s degrading the 3D experience then we’ll use high frame rate. It interpolates to a level that we actually can process 3D, and then that brain strain goes away.”
On the issue of Avatar’s box office, Cameron admitted he was “absolutely” ready to walk away from Avatar if Fire and Ash flops. “I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,” he said. “Actually 30 years because I wrote it in ‘95, but I wasn’t working continuously on it for those first 10 years. Yeah, absolutely, sure. If this is where it ends, cool.” But Disney reportedly has a plan to encourage repeat viewings of Avatar: Fire and Ash in theaters — and it involves four different Avengers: Doomsday trailers.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
