James Cameron’s career as a filmmaker has been heavily influenced by several directors and films, including George Lucas’ Star Wars.

However, Cameron had a surprising reaction to the film when he first saw it in theaters.

Despite being inspired by the space epic, Cameron was actually “pissed off” upon first viewing.

Cameron was working as a truck driver at the time, with aspirations of creating his own film.

Star Wars, however, helped give the Oscar-winner the push he needed.

Cameron has frequently spoken about how Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey influenced him in his younger years.

The Don Chaffey movie Jason and the Argonauts also left an unforgettable impression on a young Cameron.

“I remember distinctly my grandfather taking me to the local cinema in Ontario, and being absolutely blown away by the film’s vivid colors, the brightness, the reality of the skeleton fight.

Of course, looking at it four decades later, it’s laughable,” Cameron once told DGA.

“But I came back to my third-grade class and began quickly sketching my own version of the movie.”

Perhaps the film that motivated Cameron the most was Star Wars.

Years later, Cameron would attempt to create his own series of sci-fi films with Avatar.

One of his goals with his new Avatar universe was for it to have the same cinematic reach as Star Wars.

“You’ve got to compete head-on with these other epic works of fantasy and fiction, the Tolkiens and the Star Wars and the Star Treks,” Cameron once told Chicago Tribune.

“People want a persistent alternate reality to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time.

They want to live somewhere else.

Like Pandora.”

Despite Avatar’s success, some questioned if the movie’s legacy matched that of Star Wars in scope.

Cameron addressed the comparison in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter not too long ago.

“There’s skepticism in the marketplace around, ‘Oh, did it ever make any real cultural impact?’ ‘Can anybody even remember the characters’ names?’ If people are less likely to remember Jake Sully than, say, Luke Skywalker, that’s partly because Avatar is only one movie into its mythology,” Cameron said.

Lucas would eventually hand over the keys of the Star Wars universe to Disney in a lucrative deal.

Disney created their own Star Wars trilogy afterward.

Although financially successful, the Star Was sequel trilogy directed by J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson caused some division among its fan-base.

Back in 2016, Cameron commented on what he thought about the first film in the new trilogy The Force Awakens.

He didn’t want to go into too much detail because of his respect for Abrams.

But he confided that he was waiting to see what new direction Star Wars was headed in before finalizing his judgment.

“I have to say that George’s group of six films had more innovative visual imagination, and this film was more of a retrenchment to things you had seen before and characters you had seen before, and it took a few baby steps forward with new characters.

So for me, the jury’s out.

I want to see where they go with it,” Cameron said according to Yahoo.