James Cameron blames 'anti-AI backlash' for Avatar 2 Oscars snub
James Cameron has blamed an "anti-AI backlash" for Avatar: The Way of Water's failure to live up to the success of the first film at the Academy Awards.
James Cameron has blamed an "anti-AI backlash" for Avatar: The Way of Water's underwhelming performance at the Oscars.
The 2009 original Avatar film was nominated for nine Academy Awards including best picture and best director and won three - for best art direction, cinematography and visual effects - while its 2022 sequel was nominated for three and won one - for best visual effects - but failed to lands nods in the most prestigious categories. Director Cameron has now revealed he believes the lacklustre performance at the 2023 Oscars was down to a misconception over the use of artificial intelligence.
During an appearance on The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast, Cameron explained: "Look, we’ll never know [with the first movie]: 'Did we lose by one vote or 500?’
"But we were there. We were in play. We weren’t in play at all on Avatar 2, and I consider that to be, in many ways, the most beautiful film that I’ve ever made.
"I won’t say I wasn’t disappointed, but I will say that my analysis of it after the fact, seeing what happened with the writers strike and how everybody went to the mat over fear of AI.
"I think that our filmmaking community, not understanding how I make these films and thinking: 'Oh, it’s made by computer and they’re probably usual generative AI and it’s probably a complete perversion of the acting process and blah-blah-blah'.
"You can kind of write the script for that."
He went on to double-down on his insistence that he didn't use "generative AI" at all during the making of Avatar: The Way of Water.
The moviemaker added: "I think we got hit by an anti-AI backlash on that, even though we don’t use the stuff! We’ve never used generative AI - there’s not one image in the new film that was created by generative AI.
"I think we just got painted by a very broad brush and a backlash at that moment. Now, that said, people may have legitimately just not thought the movie was good. I happen to think it was f****** good enough. It was good enough, guys!"
