James Cameron didn’t think ‘The Force Awakens’ was as good as the previous six ‘Star Wars’ movies.
The 61-year-old Canadian filmmaker – who has had huge success in the sci-fi genre with ‘Aliens’, ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ and ‘Avatar’ – is friends with ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas, who sold his company Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012 so they could re-start the franchise with the seventh movie.
Cameron and Lucas discussed director J.J Abrams’ 2015 sequel at length and the ‘Titanic’ filmmaker came to the conclusion that Lucas’ movies "had more innovative visual imagination" and ‘The Force Awakens’ is a "retrenchment" to things seen before.
In an interview with reporter Hannah Litchfield, which has been unearthed on YouTube, Cameron said: "George Lucas is a friend of mine and George and I had a good conversation about it (‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’). I don’t want to say too much about the film as I have a lot of respect for J.J. Abrams. I want to see where they’re taking it next, see what they’re doing with it. But I gotta say I think that George’s six films, had more innovative visual imagination. And this film was more of a retrenchment to things you had seen before, and characters you had seen before. It took a few baby steps forward with new characters. But for me the jury is out, I want to see where they go with it."
Cameron’s critical comments could be put down to the fact that he has claimed Disney and Abrams didn’t want him to be involved in the new ‘Star Wars’ films even though he was keen to be involved in the franchise.
He said: "They weren’t that keen to have me involved anyway, but if I get in there, I’m just going to cause trouble, because they’re not going to do what I want them to do. And I don’t have the control to do that any more, and all I would do is muck everything up. And so I said, ‘OK, I will go my way, and I’ll let them go their way.’ "
Many fans have pointed out plot and visual similarities between ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ rehashes a lot of ‘Episode IV: A New Hope’ – but this is something which Abrams admitted was done on purpose to attract new and old fans to the franchise.
He previously said: "(‘The Force Awakens’) was a bridge and a kind of reminder; the audience needed to be reminded what ‘Star Wars’ is, but it needed to be established with something familiar, with a sense of where we are going to new lands, which is very much what ‘Episode VIII’ and ‘Episode IX’ do."
James Cameron criticises Star Wars: The Force Awakens
