Filmmakers love to use a documentary, specifically a concert film, as a palate cleanser. Martin Scorsese risked his job on New York, New York to direct The Last Waltz for The Band over Thanksgiving weekend in 1976. Jonathan Demme squeezed in Stop Making Sense following the difficult shoot of his first Hollywood film, Swing Shift. James Cameron joins the tradition by breaking up his decades of Avatar films with Billie Eilish\u2014Hit Me Hard And Soft: The Tour (Live In 3D), which displays Eilish\u2019s considerable talents, Cameron\u2019s groundbreaking 3D technology, and the director\u2019s hands-on approach to filmmaking.<\/p>\n
Shot over four performances at Co-op Live, the United Kingdom\u2019s largest arena, Hit Me Hard And Soft situates Eilish at the center of the experience, with between twenty and thirty 3D cameras all on her. She even has a handheld \u201cBillie Cam\u201d that brings the audience inches away from the Grammy-winner as she croons hits like \u201cLunch\u201d and \u201cWildfire.\u201d Cameron undoubtedly succeeds at bringing her performance to life, with the 3D intensifying the illusion of really being there. There are moments so immersive, you\u2019ll find yourself craning your neck around like the audience members on screen. It\u2019s the perfect advertisement for the technology, which Cameron has quarantined on Pandora since the initial 3D boom subsided in the mid-2010s. But it\u2019s also some sly promotion for the man behind the camera.<\/p>\n
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Cameron has no shame in selling himself, and at this point, his myth has spread beyond movie culture. Whether reading hardcover biographies, like The Futurist, or preteen ebooks, like James Cameron: Truck Driver To Director, Cameron\u2019s persona as a self-made success story is well-documented. Legend has it, he taught himself filmmaking by reading textbooks and grad papers in the cab of his truck. After seeing Star Wars in 1977, he left the convoy behind for show business, making his way through the Roger Corman system before breaking through with The Terminator. This period established Cameron as a tradesman rather than a member of the film school generation that preceded him. However, his ambition as a craftsman also required him to play carnival barker. Like Tom Cruise, he wants people to know that he did all this for real.<\/p>\n
In interviews, he\u2019s quick to announce his underwater accomplishments. When The A.V. Club interviewed him in 2023<\/a>, he was sure to mention his 2012 dive to the hadal zone, the deepest region of the ocean. When those billionaires attempted to pilot a doomed submersible to the Titanic, Cameron was one of the first people who news outlets<\/a> and the National Transportation Safety Board<\/a> contacted for comment. \u201cJim Cameron is the type of director who pushes you to the edge,\u201d Leo Burmester told Starlog<\/a> in a feature on The Abyss, \u201cbut he doesn\u2019t make you do anything he wouldn\u2019t do himself.\u201d<\/p>\n Cameron committed these bona fides to film through documentary work. After declaring himself \u201cking of the world\u201d at the Oscars, Cameron joined Titanic star Bill Paxton in a pair of submersibles to the real sunken ship for 2003\u2019s Ghosts Of The Abyss. Told from Paxton\u2019s perspective, the film restages the opening chunk of Titanic as a non-fiction documentary and takes Cameron\u2019s then-state-of-the-art underwater cameras and audiences through the wreck. He\u2019d head below, once again, for a follow-up documentary, 2005\u2019s Aliens Of The Deep, which serves as a prologue to Avatar just as Ghosts is an epilogue to Titanic. This time, Cameron uses his camera to explore the biology of deep-water creatures, taking NASA astronauts below the surface to see what can be gleaned about distant planets from the bottom of our own.<\/p>\n The sibling docs serve multiple purposes. They are educational films designed for IMAX theaters to show off the 3D technology Cameron would spend the rest of his career proselytizing. His underwater photography, even on a standard-definition DVD, is stellar, offering glimpses of the world Cameron would take 20 years to recreate in The Way Of Water. But both documentaries also show Cameron as a member of the crew, refusing to single him out as the Oscar-winning director of the most successful movies of all time. He\u2019s simply another deep-sea explorer escorting Bill Paxton and his Titanic co-star Lewis Abernathy to the Titanic, and taking astronauts below the surface. Through this, Cameron depicts directing as a full-contact sport, and himself as much an explorer as a technician and artist.<\/p>\n That idea is again on display in Hit Me Hard And Soft, in which Cameron presents himself as one half of a creative partnership, ready to make Eilish\u2019s vision a reality. The film alternates between chunks of concert footage and behind-the-scenes interviews with Eilish, during which Cameron casts himself in a supporting role. He deliberately includes himself in interview footage, cutting to shots of himself holding a massive 3D camera mere feet from his subject as he asks her about what it means to be a woman in music. This is in line with the film\u2019s tagline: \u201cShe changed music. He changed movies. Together, they\u2019ll reinvent the concert experience.\u201d His participation is clearly a selling point for the film.<\/p>\n But Eilish and Cameron were brought together because his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, is an activist friend of her mother, Maggie Baird, and that familiarity is evident on screen. Like in his other docs, he doesn\u2019t get much of an introduction. Instead, Eilish greets him in the film with a warm \u201cJimothy!\u201d It isn\u2019t until a few minutes later that Eilish points at Cameron in the near distance and identifies him, \u201cThat\u2019s James Cameron.\u201d This 75-year-old man\u2019s name must have inherent value to her Zoomer audience, because the words \u201cTitanic,\u201d \u201cAvatar,\u201d and \u201cTerminator\u201d are never uttered.<\/p>\n And that importance persists in the meat of the film itself. While Cameron does center Eilish\u2019s remarkable talents as a singer and performer\u2014capturing the visceral thrill of her running across the football-field-sized stage before thousands of screaming fans\u2014his presence is felt behind every shot (because he injects himself so thoroughly into the film), making him feel more like the sole director despite Eilish\u2019s contributions. In the film, though, he keeps up appearances. When discussing their collaboration early on, he tells her that the film will be credited \u201cDirected by Billie Eilish\u201d and \u201cwith James Cameron\u201d in teeny-tiny print just below. As the credits roll, Cameron\u2019s name is the first listed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Filmmakers love to use a documentary, specifically a concert film, as a palate cleanser. 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