Maybe It’s Best that James Cameron Never Directed a Comic Book Movie

credit: Terminator 2

Either various media sites are getting things confused, or James Cameron is confused since the issue of whether he would have ever filmed a superhero movie is kind of undercut by the idea that he’s joined the bandwagon when it comes to badmouthing said movies. But…he then apparently said that he doesn’t want to be someone that disses comic book movies, which makes things confusing yet again. In any case, it might be best that he never took the time to make such a movie in the first place since he kind of did anyway, looking at the types of movies that he’s made over the years. It’s easy to argue against that point since some of his more fantastic movies aren’t exactly the comic book type. Or are they? The Terminator franchise, The Abyss, Avatar, True Lies, Aliens, pretty much all of those have a lot of unrealistic elements that could have been attributed to a comic book movie, but of course, none of them were owned by Marvel or DC, so it’s fair to say that he’s never joined the group of directors that have stepped into that particular arena. But again, it might be a good thing that he never did since it’s easy to think that things might have gotten darker than necessary or could have gone off the beaten track thanks to Cameron’s unique filming style. 

credit: The Abyss

He did have an interest in creating a superhero movie at one time. 

It’s been revealed that if he’d had a chance, Cameron would have liked to direct a Spider-Man movie. In all honesty, that might have been interesting since it’s fair to say that Spider-Man and many other heroes do have fairly dark histories that could have been expanded upon. But now that Disney and Sony have a firm hold of the wallcrawling hero, it’s safe to say that James wouldn’t bother to even try convincing anyone that he should get a chance. How he really feels about the MCU is still unknown since, while he has spoken out about the franchise, it’s been noted that he might not be adamant in his wording when it comes to comic book movies. In fact, it’s fair to say that a lot of directors might change their tune if they were offered the right budget and the freedom to do whatever they wanted with one story or another. 

His stories have usually been darker than most superhero movies. 

In some ways, it does feel as though the darker themes that have been seen in his stories over the years might not have been welcome in superhero movies to start with. That’s hard to affirm since the comic book movies didn’t really get going until the 90s, but seeing as how Aliens and a few other movies were fairly dark and gritty, it’s not tough at all to imagine that James would have twisted the stories in ways that fans might not have fully understood or been ready to see. Most of this is speculation at this point since, as of now, it’s not hard to point out that James’ way of thinking has been changing over the years, and now he appears to be adamant that such a movie would never have his name attached to it. 

credit: Avatar

He would have looked like a massive hypocrite had he ever directed a superhero movie. 

Imagine if James had directed a Spider-Man movie in the past and was heard to speak of the MCU the way he does now. That would make him a massive hypocrite since even contributing one or two movies to the comic book genre would make it easy to state that he’d believed in it at some point but had, for some reason, turned his back on the idea. People would rise to defend him, of course, since the truth is that people get to change their minds, and age has a way of making people think differently about what they’ve done in the past. But it still stands out as an amusing idea that he had designs on creating a superhero movie at one time but is of the mind that the comic book genre isn’t worth as much as his current projects. 

His movies aren’t too far removed from the superhero genre. 

There would no doubt be plenty of arguments to debunk this idea, but James Cameron’s movies do have a certain comic book quality to them since if anyone really looks into the stories that he tells, there are several elements that can be used to describe his movies in such a way. Not only are the stories unreal in so many ways, but they do have a formulaic feel to them that makes the villains stand out in a very obvious way, and the heroes cover an emotional spectrum from noble hero to antihero. It’s kind of funny how that works.