James Cameron disses Christopher Nolan's approach in 'Oppenheimer'

James Cameron has a new film in the works, set to tackle the horrors of nuclear warfare head-on.

The filmmaker, 70, spilled the details of his planned adaptation of Charles Pellegrino’s upcoming book Ghosts of Hiroshima in a recent interview.

“I just think it’s so important right now for people to remember what these weapons do. This is the only case where they’ve been used against a human target,” he told Deadline.

“I want to make a film that just reminds people what these weapons do to people, and how absolutely unacceptable it is to even contemplate using them.”

He continued about his vision, “I want to do for what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what Steven Spielberg did with the Holocaust and D-Day with Saving Private Ryan."

“He showed it the way it happened," he added of the 1998 film, which won Best Picture.

Cameron intends to treat the upcoming film as a passion project than a budget-busting blockbuster like his other films Titanic and Avatar.

“I don’t think it’ll be one that’ll be quick to make, but I don’t see it as a massively budgeted film,” he said, adding that “this may be a movie that I make that makes the least of any movie I’ve ever made, because I’m not going to be sparing, I’m not going to be circumspect.”

The director also drew comparisons with Christopher Nolan's 2023 hit Oppenheimer, pointing out Nolan's failure to highlight the brutal realities of the Hiroshima victims hit by the atomic bomb in 1945.

“Yeah…it’s interesting what he stayed away from,” Cameron said of Nolan, 54, when asked if he was surprised Oppenheimer won seven Oscars and grossed nearly $1 billion. “Look, I love the filmmaking, but I did feel that it was a bit of a moral cop out.”

“[Nolan’s] got one brief scene in the film where we see — and I don’t like to criticise another filmmaker’s film — but there’s only one brief moment where he sees some charred bodies in the audience and then the film goes on to show how it deeply moved him,” Cameron noted.

“But I felt that it dodged the subject. I don’t know whether the studio or Chris felt that that was a third rail that they didn’t want to touch, but I want to go straight at the third rail. I’m just stupid that way.”

Cameron also reacted to Nolan's 2023 Variety interview where he had addressed his decision not to highlight the bomb’s victims in his lengthy film.

“Okay, I’ll put up my hand. I’ll do it, Chris. No problem. You come to my premiere and say nice things,” Cameron joked.

The bombs destroyed parts of Japan and killed more than 140,000 people, while more died over time as survivors succumbed to the lasting effects of exposure.