James Cameron shouldn't complain about the MCU. He should be thanking it.

"I’m hoping we’ll start getting Avenger fatigue here pretty soon."

Come on now, James Cameron. That's not how we say "thank you."

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The creator of blockbusters like The Terminator, Titanic, and Avatar struck a testy attitude toward the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the weekend. He was speaking to reporters to promote the miniseries AMC Visionaries: James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction (h/t IndieWire).

"Not that I don’t love the movies," he continued. "It’s just, come on guys, there are other stories to tell besides hyper-gonadal males without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process. It’s like, oy!"

It's not clear why Cameron said what he said. Maybe he's cranky after Black Panther kicked Titanic out of the top three on the all-time U.S. box office rankings. Maybe he's worried about future MCU releases dimming the prospects of Avatar sequels. But he's got this all wrong. Marvel totally saved his butt.

In 2009, Cameron's Avatar arrived full of promise. Here he had this whole world mapped out, with all sorts of stated plans for tie-ins, spin-offs, and sequels spanning every medium imaginable. Movies, books, video games... the works.

Then, nothing. Avatar was a monster hit both with critics and at the box office, sure. But all that talk of turning it into some kind of media-spanning juggernaut never materialized. Sequels were promised and delayed, then delayed some more, then some more after that. 

Avatar, it seemed, was only going to live on in the wishlists of hopeful movie buffs. Just another Hollywood juggernaut doomed to development hell.

One year earlier, Iron Man had hit theaters. It was fine. No one knew at that point what the MCU was going to become. Marvel had all these aspirations for building a sprawling universe, but Iron Man — much like Avatar! — was built to stand on its own two feet.

Then, something important happened: Marvel followed through. Disney acquired the comics publisher-turned-multimedia powerhouse in August 2009, only a handful of months after filming had begun on Iron Man 2. With Iron Man's proven success, a sequel incoming, and Disney money funding the whole endeavor, the road ahead for a Marvel Cinematic Universe began to take shape.

In the years that followed, Disney-via-Marvel released winning blockbuster after winning blockbuster. Two Marvel films are all-time top 10 box office performers in the United States. Three are in the global top 10. 

Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and James Cameron perfected the blockbuster, but Marvel perfected the blockbuster universe in ways that predecessors never could. Spielberg struggled with Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones. Cameron tried and failed with Terminator. 

Even George Lucas and his Star Wars saga sputtered after its initial trilogy. It took a Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm and an embrace of the MCU philosophy before Star Wars got a real second chance.

Now, as Cameron prepares not one Avatar sequel but four of them, you have to wonder why he'd beef with Marvel's success. The next phase of Avatar is literally cut from the cloth of the MCU. 

He reportedly spent four years on the scripts, mapping out a grand design for the series. Now, in the same chat that brought us "Avengers fatigue," he's describing Avatar as a "generational family saga."  He's getting ready to take audiences on a long journey, one that will probably span — box office willing — at least half a decade, if not more.

Let's not harbor any illusions as to why that's possible. The MCU set the stage for these sprawling multi-film productions. Its success convinced Hollywood at large that the risk of investing a billion dollars or more into a series of interconnected films isn't as scary as it might have seemed in the past.

Avatars 2 through 5 likely wouldn't exist without the MCU. Cameron can wish for "Avengers fatigue" all he wants. But what he really should be saying is "thank you."

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