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Director James Cameron, best known for helming three of the four biggest movies in history — Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water and Titanic — is also an experienced deep sea explorer who has been going on underwater adventures from the 1980s. Over the years, Cameron has made 33 trips to the Titanic wreckage, which lies over 13,000 feet below the surface of the North Atlantic. While Cameron hasn’t yet commented on the submersible that went missing on Sunday while on a exploration trip to the wreckage site, his past comments about the perils of deep sea exploration have resurfaced.
In a 2012 interview with The New York Times, Cameron described the deep sea as “one of the most unforgiving places on the earth,” and said that it’s not like you can call for rescue from the bottom of the ocean. In another interview with the NYT, Cameron said that he was driven by a desire to see things that “human beings have never seen before.” In his time, Cameron has also travelled to the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic trench on Earth. Cameron has also directed and been featured in documentaries about his underwater travels — Expedition Bismarck, Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep.
The submersible in question, owned and operated by a private firm known as OceanGate, was carrying five people, including the firm’s CEO. It stopped sending scheduled 15-minute pings to a ship on the surface less than two hours into its dive. Rescue missions are underway.
In a 2009 interview with Playboy, Cameron confessed that he decided to direct Titanic because he wanted an excuse to visit the wreckage. “I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie,” he said. “The Titanic was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver I wanted to do it right. When I learned some other guys had dived to the Titanic to make an IMAX movie, I said, ‘I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing. I loved that first taste, and I wanted more’.”
In 2012, Cameron told NPR that an explorer’s job is “to go and be at the remote edge of human experience and then come back and tell that story.” He travelled to the Mariana Trench in a submersible vehicle that he helped design. Questions have been raised about the lack of safety systems in place on the OceanGate submersible. In a 2010 interview with the NYT, Cameron said that he has “owned and operated (his) own submarines and pretty much (knows) everybody in the deep-ocean world outside of the oil business.”
In a National Geographic video, Cameron described the feeling of touching the ocean floor, but also expressed mild irritation at being contacted by his wife while he was having a spiritual moment there. “Here I am in the most remote place on planet Earth that’s taken all this time and energy and technology to reach and I feel like the most solitary human being on the planet, completely cut off from humanity, no chance of rescue in a place no human eyes have ever seen,” Cameron said. “And my wife calls me. Which of course was very sweet.”
Titanic was released in 1997. The first Avatar film was released in 2009. Avatar 2, which features several scenes shot underwater, was released last year.
Click for more updates and latest Hollywood News along with Bollywood and Entertainment updates. Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the World at The Indian Express.
