James Cameron Says Marvel and DC Characters Lack Depth and "Act Like They're in College"

By Patrick Cavanaugh - October 25, 2022 02:07 pm EDT

James Cameron has delivered audiences some of the most financially successful films in history, but when it comes to big blockbusters like those produced for the Marvel Cinematic Universe or DC Extended Universe, the filmmaker thinks the characters lack complexity and act like "they're in college." The filmmaker specifically chided those two franchises when it came to discussing his Avatar series and how, with the upcoming Avatar: The Way of Water, the characters from the original film have undergone some major changes, while he feels that the characters in similarly large-scale adventures aren't explored in as much depth.

"When I look at these big, spectacular films -- I'm looking at you, Marvel and DC -- it doesn't matter how old the characters are, they all act like they're in college. They have relationships, but they really don't," Cameron detailed to The New York Times. "They never hang up their spurs because of their kids. The things that really ground us and give us power, love, and a purpose? Those characters don't experience it, and I think that's not the way to make movies."

With how much time has passed in his storyline, Cameron detailed just how much his characters have changed.

"Zoe [Saldana] and Sam [Worthington] now play parents, 15 years later," the filmmaker detailed. "In the first movie, Sam's character leaps off his flying creature and essentially changes the course of history as a result of this crazy, almost suicidal leap of faith. And Zoe's character leaps off a limb and assumes there's going to be some nice big leaves down there that can cushion her fall. But when you're a parent, you don't think that way. So for me, as a parent of five kids, I'm saying, 'What happens when those characters mature and realize that they have a responsibility outside their own survival?'"

While Cameron surely isn't the first filmmaker to criticize the lack of complexity with these figures, given the animosity regularly hurled towards figures like Martin Scorsese who express they aren't very interested in the genre, this will likely open up Cameron to some animosity among fans. However, as proven by his pitch for a Spider-Man movie, Cameron's interest in superheroes is a bit different from what other filmmakers have delivered.

"I wanted to make something that had a kind of gritty reality to it," Cameron shared with Screen Crush in 2021 about his abandoned project. "Superheroes in general always came off as kind of fanciful to me, and I wanted to do something that would have been more in the vein of Terminator and Aliens, that you buy into the reality right away. So you're in a real world, you're not in some mythical Gotham City. Or Superman and the Daily Planet and all that sort of thing, where it always felt very kind of metaphorical and fairytale-like. I wanted it to be: It's New York. It's now. A guy gets bitten by a spider. He turns into this kid with these powers and he has this fantasy of being Spider-Man, and he makes this suit and it's terrible, and then he has to improve the suit, and his big problem is the damn suit. Things like that. I wanted to ground it in reality and ground it in universal human experience. I think it would have been a fun film to make."