James Cameron wants moviegoers to know before “Avatar: Fire and Ash” opens in theatres worldwide that no generative AI was used in the making of the sequel. Speaking to ComicBook.com, the Oscar winner said he was speaking out on the matter not because he has a vendetta against generative AI but because he has an issue with people thinking anything but real human actors were used to bring the “Avatar” characters to life via performance capture technology.
“I’m not negative about generative AI,” Cameron said. “I just wanted to point out we don’t use it on the ‘Avatar’ films. We honor and celebrate actors. We don’t replace actors. That’s going to find its level. I think Hollywood will be self-policing on that. We’ll find our way through that. But we can only find our way through it as artists if we exist. So it’s the existential threat from big AI that worries me more than all that stuff.”
Cameron and his “Avatar” actors have spent decades trying to show the industry just how real the performances are in the franchise. Zoe Saldaña, who plays Neytiri in the “Avatar” movies, told Beyond Noise earlier this year that performance capture “is the most empowering form of acting” because “it gives us the credit, the ability to own 100 percent of our performance on screen.”
“Performance capture means that ‘Avatar’ wouldn’t exist if Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, myself, and the entire cast didn’t get up and put those dots on our faces,” she said. “From the archery, the martial arts, the free diving, the scuba diving – so that you can hold your breath under water for longer than five minutes – to the language [James] conceived out of thin air, to physically training with former gymnasts, circus performers, and acrobats so you can learn how to walk like an extraterrestrial human species… That’s all us, and a group of incredible stunt actors that make our characters feel bionic. God bless them. With the technology that Jim creates, he gives the artist the power of complete ownership.”
Cameron told Variety in 2024 as part of a Saldaña cover story that the Oscars are overdue to recognize her work as Neytiri in the “Avatar” franchise.
“I’ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there’s nothing that Zoe’s doing that’s of a caliber less than that,” the director said. “But because in my film she’s playing a ‘CG character,’ it kind of doesn’t count in some way, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. She can go from regal to, in two nanoseconds, utterly feral. The woman is ferocious. She is a freaking lioness.”
Cameron remains dedicated to human performers when it comes to the acting in his movies. He told CBS’ Sunday Morning last month that it is “horrifying” how generative AI can now create artificial actors for the screen.
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“Uou’ve got generative AI, where they can make up a character,” Cameron said. “They can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt. It’s like, no. That’s horrifying to me.”
But Cameron is not entirely anti-AI when it comes to Hollywood. He announced in September 2024 that he was joining the board of directors for Stability AI, the company behind the text-to-image model Stable Diffusion. Speaking on the “Boz to the Future” podcast earlier ths year, Cameron explained his interest in AI by saying the future of blockbuster filmmaking hinges on being able to “cut the cost of [VFX] in half.” The director openly admitted he was exploring ways to responsibly filter AI into the VFX workflow.
“If we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I’ve always loved and that I like to make and that I will go to see — ‘Dune,’ ‘Dune: Part Two,’ or one of my films or big effects-heavy, CG-heavy films — we’ve got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half,” he said at the time. “Now that’s not about laying off half the staff and at the effects company. That’s about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things and then other cool things, right? That’s my sort of vision for that.”
For Cameron, the intersection of AI and Hollywood will be in the post-production process and not in the actual filmmaking and development process. In an interview with CTV News, the director expressed doubt over AI being able to write “a good story” and phase out screenwriters.
According to Cameron: “I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it…I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.”
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” opens in theaters Dec. 19 from Disney and 20th Century Studios.
From Variety US