James Cameron (director)



James Francis Cameron, CC (born 16 August 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker whose most famous works include The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic and Avatar.

Quotes

 * Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. … Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk. NASA has this phrase that they like, "Failure is not an option." But failure has to be an option. In art and exploration, failure has to be an option. Because it is a leap of faith. And no important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. … In whatever you are doing, failure is an option. But fear is not.
 * Address to the 2010 TED conference (13 February 2010)


 * This may surprise you, because it surprised me when I found out, but the single biggest thing that an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals. Because of the huge, huge carbon footprint of animal agriculture. I was shocked to find out that animal agriculture directly or indirectly accounts for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to all transportation – every ship, car, truck, plane on the planet only accounts for 13%. Less than animal agriculture. So most people think that buying a Prius is the answer, and it’s certainly not wrong, but it’s not the biggest agent of climate change.
 * From an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit; as quoted in "Director James Cameron on Vegan Diet: Like I've Set the Clock Back 15 Years", in Ecorazzi (12 April 2014)


 * [About veganism] You're going to be healthier, you're going to live longer, you're going to look better. You're going to have fewer zits. You're going to be slimmer. You're going to radiate health. You're going to have a better sex drive. That's what shifting away from meat and dairy does. My whole family did this, and we're doing spectacularly well from a health standpoint. I have not had a single sniffle, not a flu, not a cold, nothing that's taken me offline as much as an hour in three and a half years.
 * Interview with John Gaudiosi in Men's Journal (15 September 2015)


 * I look back on some films that I’ve made, and I don’t know if I would want to make that film now. I don’t know if I would want to fetishize the gun, like I did on a couple of Terminator movies 30+ years ago, in our current world. What’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach.
 * As quoted by William Mullally in “James Cameron: I wouldn’t make Terminator today”, Esquire Middle East, (Dec. 29, 2022)

About

 * In short, James Cameron's sequels work because he comes up with new ways for his characters to evolve and progress, rather than merely react to a series of events set before them. The Ripley we see at the start of Aliens is different from the one who goes back into cryosleep at its end. Aliens and T2 may have dazzling action sequences, but it's these story and character progressions that make them so dramatically satisfying.
 * Ryan Lambie, "Aliens and Terminator 2: How James Cameron Crafts Perfect Sequels", Den of Geek, (Jul 18, 2018).


 * Aliens brings Ripley's story of alien impregnations, molecular acid, and death to an upbeat close by taking away the fear and isolation that plagued her since the end of Alien. As the lid closes on Ripley's cryo-tube, we realise that she's found the companionship and peace she deserves. Similarly, Terminator 2 sees the nightmare future of Judgment Day averted. The T-800 may have sacrificed himself to protect the human race, but the film's events have allowed Sarah to reconnect with her son and her own compassion. With stories as complete as these, it's hardly surprising that the filmmakers charged with making Terminator 3 and Alien 3 have struggled to find new directions in which to take them. In both cases, those second sequels were the opposite of Aliens and T2: they simply felt like "more of the same." In Alien 3, poor Ripley finds herself in a worse situation than she was at the start of Aliens - her surrogate family is dead, she's stuck in an all-male prison with an alien running around, and there's something horrible stirring in her viscera. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines was, if anything, even more gloomy. Sarah Connor died between sequels; John Connor's a lonely drifter, and Judgment Day hasn't been cancelled - merely postponed. The sense of hope - not to mention Cameron's motto that "there's no fate but what we make for ourselves" - is replaced by the suggestion that annihilation by sentient machines is inescapable. Beyond Ripley and Sarah's stories in Aliens and T2, filmmakers could find only despair and nihilism.
 * Ryan Lambie, "Aliens and Terminator 2: How James Cameron Crafts Perfect Sequels", Den of Geek, (Jul 18, 2018).


 * It turns out that Cameron, who is known as an action filmmaker, he admits, believes that his films have often been too violent, and the heavy amounts of gun violence that play into films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies he believes have no place in moral moviemaking in the current state of the world.
 * William Mullally, “James Cameron: I wouldn’t make Terminator today”, Esquire Middle East, (Dec. 29, 2022)