James Cameron is a man known for spectacle. The sinking of a real model of Titanic, a planet filled with blue aliens and enormous spaceships, to a decimated space colony filled with carnivorous acid-blooded extraterrestrials. So when the man says something ‘blew him away’, there’s got to be something to what he’s using.
In a recent Vanity Fair article Cameron told the interviewer, fairly emphatically, that while he doesn’t ‘bow down to the god of Apple’, he was ‘really, really blown away’. He’s not the only prominent director to be impressed with Apple’s first foray into mixed reality either.
A directors dream
Jon Favreau, creator of Disney Plus’s The Mandalorian also seems enthusiastic about the Apple Vision Pro. In the same Vanity Fair piece, the Chef director says he’s “excited by the kind of story (he) can tell”. Favreau has had a big hand in some of the launch content for the Vision Pro, creating some of the Disney Plus spatial video features — if you see a dinosaur tearing through your screen and heading directly for your carotid, then you’re watching some content from Favreau.
With Apple TV+ and Apple Original Films now such an important part of the Apple company plan, the fact that two of today’s most important directors are on board is going to make Apple more comfortable in the project. After all, while some of Apple’s biggest 2023 oscar nominated blockbusters, Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon, will be available to watch on the headset when they’re released on Apple’s streaming platform, Apple is still going to want some dedicated content made just for headset to really get things going.
That doesn’t mean everyone in the movie industry is into it. Netflix isn’t coming to Vision Pro because The services co-ceo, Greg Peters, thinks it’s “so subscale” that it’s “not relevant”.
Either way, you’ll be able to get your hands on one of the headsets later today when the headset is released to the public — and then you too can see if you’re blown away by Apple’s latest. You might also get eaten by a prehistoric predator.
