Veteran filmmaker James Cameron has compared "Avatar" sequels to "The Godfather" saying his upcoming projects are generational family saga just like the 1972 iconic film and its follow-ups.
The writer-director was speaking at a press event to promote his new AMC documentary show, "AMC Visionaries: James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction".
"I found myself as a father of five, starting to think about what would an 'Avatar' story be like if it was a family drama, if it was 'The Godfather'. Obviously very different genre, but I got intrigued by that idea. So, that's really what it is. It's a generational family saga. And that's very different from the first film. Now, it's the same type of setting, and there's the same respect for the shock of the new, that we want to show you things that not only you haven't seen, but haven't imagined.
"I think that's absolutely critical to it. But the story's very different. It's a continuation of the same characters, but what happen when warriors that are willing to go on suicide charges, and leap off cliffs on to the back of big orange toruks, what happens when they grow up and have their own kids? It becomes a very different story. Now the kids are the risk-takers and the change-makers. So, it's interesting, but it makes sense to me. Everybody's either a parent, or they had parents at the very least, and if you look at the big successful franchises now, they're pretty much uninterested in that," Cameron said.
"James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction" is a six-part show in which the "Titanic" director discusses the genre with several of his peers, including Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and George Lucas.
According to Entertainment Weekly, it was hard for Cameron to get Lucas on board for the documentary show.
"I had to talk George into doing it. He said, 'I don't do stuff like this.' I said, 'I know, I know. But if you're going to do stuff like this, you should do this one, because you've defined a certain genre of pop culture-science fiction, you created it. You know, it sprang from your forehead. Were all living in the after-shocks of that now, even forty years later.'