James Cameron has blamed an 'anti-AI backlash' for Avatar: The Way of Water's underwhelming performance at the Oscars

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."