Last Friday Vanity Fair ran an interview with James Cameron. The interview covers a lot of ground, getting Cameron to comment on a variety of projects, from Avatar, to The Last Train from Hiroshima, to Dark Angel, to the up-coming post-conversion 3D re-release Titanic, but it is mostly things we have heard him say before. The one outside-the-box highlight came when the Piranha franchise was brought up. When asked if Piranha 3D caused him any nostalgia regarding Piranha II, he said “Zero,” which is fair, considering that he was fired and replaced on the film midway through. But then he decided to add:

“I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D. It is a renaissance—right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year—Tron: Legacy—is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.“

Cheapens the medium? Huh?

So Disney is blowing canyons of money on Tron. So Scorsese is gonna do a 3D film. What does that have to do with anything? Why can’t we have films like Piranha 3D too? I don’t like the implication that fun horror films aren’t “important” enough to join the 3D club. F that. Alice in Wonderland (which Cameron considers one of the good ones) will be mostly forgotten in ten years. I’ll still be talking about the hilarious under-water-lesbian-opera scene from Piranha 3D.

And you leave Friday the 13 Part 3 alone, sir.