James Cameron believes he has made the most successful environmental movie in history with Avatar. The Canadian director explained how his film, the top grossing film of all time and currently nominated for nine Oscars, was also an important contributor to raising environmental consciousness, at a recent Natural Resources Defense fundraiser.
“There is no studio anywhere in the world who would say an environmental message would make $3 billion. I can’t think of any other really commercially successful ones, can you?” he explained during an interview at the event. However, his desire to make an environmental film was not initially welcomed by studio executives after they read his script proposal.
“When they read it, they sort of said, 'Can we take some of this tree-hugging, "FernGully" crap out of this movie?' " Cameron explained in a recent MTV News interview. "And I said, 'No, because that's why I'm making the film.' "
Although the film contains blatant environmental themes, the fact that the story takes place on another planet may actually create distance between the viewer and the world of Avatar. Cameron sees things quite differently.
“My feeling was if we have to go four light years away to another planet to appreciate what we have here on earth, that’s okay,” explains Cameron.
There is a school of filmic thought that believes societal angst and worries are ‘contained’ in mainstream narrative cinema when they are explored on screen. Fears about global climate change, exploitation of indigenous peoples, and destruction of the forests are actualized on the big screen, allowing people to feel as if their concerns are resolved.
Whether or not Cameron has made the most successful environmental film of all time is not really the question the media should be debating. Rather, the true measure of success is how many people Avatar moves to action.
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