Monsters Vs. Aliens: James Cameron’s Love/Hate Relationship with Technology

How the "Avatar" director can keep making state-of-the-art films about the terrors of advances in technology.

In “Avatar,” the ecological wonders of Pandora — bioluminescent plants, floating mountains — are depicted with the wide-eyed fascination and slow, graceful camera moves of a nature documentary, techniques Cameron honed with nature docs “Ghosts of the Abyss” and “Aliens of the Deep,” the only other features he directed this decade. The visuals are stunning, and in contrast to many modern action movies that rush from chase scene to battle scene without a moment to catch their breath, “Avatar” repeatedly slows down to luxuriate in its sumptuous imagery, to celebrate these natural wonders that technology is coming to destroy.

But what a strange paradox that situation creates — without the CGI technology of Weta Digital, those natural wonders wouldn’t exist in the first place. In fact, “Avatar” has less of a hold on the natural world than almost every live action film before it. The Pandora sequences were shot on a barren soundstage nicknamed “The Volume,” with performers who wore high-tech motion detecting camera rigs rather than costumes or makeup. The impressively convincing Na’vi creatures were built by artists working for years to perfect their lithe bodies and expressive eyes and tails.

All of “Avatar”‘s darkest scenes involve human technology — bulldozers and heavily armed helicopters — being used to destroy the ecological beauty of Pandora. Jake Sully, the paralyzed human protagonist who discovers the magic of Pandora through his use of an avatar body and his relationship with one of the natives, eventually sides with the outgunned Na’vi against the heavily armed humans. Asked about the seemingly paradoxical relationship between his technologically advanced film and its Luddite philosophy in a recent interview with /Film.com, Cameron replied, “To me its not paradoxical. For me, film is a technical medium. And you can use a technical medium to celebrate something that is purely natural. I think you can use the most cutting edge technology available, which we did, to basically celebrate the inventiveness of nature, which we did. For me, technology in and of itself is not evil, but there is a great potential for evil in the human misapplication of technology… [I'm] just asking people to be accountable. Accountable in their use of technology.”

At the film’s conclusion, after Jake has helped defeat the humans (who he now refers to as “aliens”), he decides to transfer his consciousness permanently from his human body into his Na’vi avatar via the aliens’ magical tree and its fiber-optics-like roots and branches. Within the world of the movie, it’s a gesture meant to symbolize the importance of living harmoniously and responsibly with nature. But consider the other symbolism in this scene. Jake casts off his human body for his Na’vi one and essentially rejects the physical body of Sam Worthington for the one created in a laboratory by scientists (but really by Cameron and his digital effects artists). Though Jake may consider the Na’vi a more humane society, he literally rejects his own humanity to embrace their world. And if we look at the Na’vi as a triumph of special effects, then the image of Jake’s consciousness taking up permanent residence in this artificial home represents its own opposite, simultaneous proof of power of nature and the power of technology.

In that sense, the world left at the end of “Avatar” is one completely free of humanity, a potentially unnerving prospect for anyone who worries about a time in the future when movies might be made by entirely by computers without any human actors at all. The impressive advancements made by “Avatar” in the field of performance-captured characters inch us closer to a world where that is possible. We may someday hold Cameron accountable for the impact Cameron’s technological breakthrough had on the course of cinema history. Thanks to Cameron’s masterful use of that technology, though, it’s a development that almost feels natural.

[Additional photos: "The Terminator," Orion Pictures, 1984; "Aliens," Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1986]

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