Fortune Favours the Bold

The two directors whose big risks paid off most this year and one who actually made a great film, too.

James Cameron:

Say what you will about ol’ King o’ the World, the guy has more guts than anyone else working in Hollywood. Don’t believe me? The guy took 14 years and an estimated $400 million dollars and put it into, well, as Cartman called it, Dances with Smurfs.

The man had already made the hands-down biggest film in history, but instead of sitting back and hitting cruise control, he took another incredibly daring risk. It’s easy to say now, with Avatar‘s current worldwide take of $1.4 billion—the second largest gross of all time after a certain other epic—that Cameron wasn’t really risking all that much. Bullshit. Have you seen Avatar? Would you spend a decade-and-a-half of your life making that? No. Does it look in anyway like it was a safe venture? No.

You can argue all you want over the film itself, from its often horrendous dialogue (“Come get some!”) to its tediously familiar story line. But Cameron is a man who knows his audience better than anyone else. I mean, he did this before. Actually he’s done it twice. People doubted him in ‘91, the first time he set the largest budget record, when he spent $102 million on a sequel to a relatively obscure R-rated science fiction film seven years after the original. That was Terminator 2, which also burst with laughable dialogue (“Chill out, dickwad”) and became the highest earning film that year, and to this day holds the record for gross-increase between sequels, improving 434% over the original.

Then came Titanic, which set the budget record again ($200 million this time) and the rest is history. Now Cameron has purchased the rights the non-fiction book Last Train to Hiroshima, about the days following the bombing of Japan in World War Two. Another epic? Maybe. Will it be successful? Well, you’re welcome to doubt the man if you’d like, but just know it’s a fool’s game.

Neill Blomkamp:

The first-time South African-born director may not have had a tonne on the line when he began making his science-fiction satire,District 9, on a relatively miniscule budget of $30 million last year. But nevertheless, the film, which follows in documentary style the plight of a refugee camp for stranded aliens in South Africa which began in the mid-‘80s after their ship inexplicably stalled over the city, is bursting with guts and originality unlike anything Hollywood has produced since Children of Men was released in ‘06.

The real standout here is that audiences took the bait of the film’s nondescript viral marketing and made it one of the biggest success stories of the year ($200 million worldwide). Most studios would shy away from such intelligent fare, and for good reason. Audiences tend to avoid it like the plague. But not this time. Considering Children of Men bombed big time only three years ago, (as nearly 90% of good science fiction films do) District 9‘s success gives me a little more hope for the genre’s future.