Posted on 10/19/2014 1:53:44 PM PDT by EveningStar
It’s been 30 years since James Cameron made his name with a futuristic sci-fi actioner starring ex-bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, inspired by his own nightmare vision of a murderous mecha-skeleton. Shot for $5.6 million in 1984, The Terminator changed everything for Cameron and his fellow Roger Corman disciple and producer Gale Anne Hurd. The two have since carved their own influential paths – Cameron with Aliens, Titanic, and his $2.7 billion Avatar franchise, Hurd with AMC's ratings juggernaut The Walking Dead. And they're still proving that original ideas can be profitable in spite of Hollywood’s "fear-based" decision-making, while keeping a polite distance from the Terminator: Genisys that’s coming in 2015 like a T-800 from the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at deadline.com ...
ping
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(everybody else is doing it!)
Every time I read about the making/beginning of the whole Terminator franchise, I find it amusing to think that OJ Simpson’s name had been brought up for the title role, but Cameron rejected it because he didn’t think Simpson would make a convincing killer.
I beg to differ. As fright laden a film fest as it would be...Terminator (ask Harlan Ellison) Alien and Avatar were Science Fiction. They had the scary bits thrown in to make them marketable. Nothing more. In fact, at the time of Alien and Terminator...it was probably the only way that Ridley Scott and James Cameron could get them to the big screen.
Excerpt...
Cameron’s lean and mean Terminator fought its share of uphill battles before and after filming. “Ninety-nine people rejected The Terminator,” said Hurd. “All you need is the 100th to say yes.”
Even when Orion Pictures and Hemdale Pictures said yes, Cameron and Hurd had to stand their ground, like when Orion head Mike Medavoy insisted they cast two guys he’d met at a party: O.J. Simpson as the T-800 opposite Schwarzenegger as Kyle Reese. “I think I was on my knees retching,” Cameron recalled.
He met with Arnold anyway and cast him after a meeting when the cash-strapped filmmaker forgot his wallet (“I didn’t have any money, so why would I need an ATM card?”) and the Conan star paid for lunch.
Really, they are implying that Avatar was an original idea?
Avatar IMO is nothing more than “FernGully: The Last Rainforest” repackaged as Sci-Fi which was nothing but an animated screed against industry and capitalism designed to indoctrinate children into Green Socialism.
And as Hollyweird movies go that is the real formula for all movies isn’t it; Anti-Capitalism, anti-business and pro-Liberalism. .
Yep, the only thing remarkable in Avatar is the Hi-Def CGA.
And even the CGA is only evolutionary not ground breaking.
And another after post-production and release.
Harlan Ellison successfully sued Orion Pictures and received an amount of cash and a credit in later releases of the film. He stated that the film bore an unmistakeable resemblance to his story "Soldier".
Milius - Trailer (John Milius Documentary)
Says Sam Elliot: "He doesn't write for p***ies and he doesn't write for women. He writes for men."
I remember that, it is pretty awesome
Just looked at a list of stuff Milius did... you’re not kidding.
Alien was always supposed to be a horror film. That’s how co-writer Dan O’Bannon envisioned it - a scary version of ‘Dark Star’ which he had co-written with John Carpenter several years earlier.
Avatar was pretty much an unaccredited adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1972 novella “The Word for World Is Forest”, which was about a benevolent race of alien beings who happily inhabit dense forests while living in harmony with nature until they are attacked and slaughtered by invading human soldiers.
That’s not the “fear-based” they’re talking about. They’re talking about Hollywood studios being afraid to take a chance on “risky” properties.
That being said, Alien is a horror movie that happens to be in space, but it is most definitely a horror movie. It’s go almost the exact same beats as Black Christmas and as such Halloween, it’s a slasher flick.
Children’s entertainment, craved by so called contemporary adults of all ages.
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