James Cameron – Childhood drawings and dreams inspired Hollywood movies

Mosques Cameron, the mastermind behind “The Terminator,” “Aliens” and “Titanic,” opens an exhibition in Paris on Thursday showcasing his lesser-known skills with pencil and paper. “The Art of James Cameron” is on view at the Cinematheque Francaise until January. . The 69-year-old director met AFP there to discuss the origins of his childhood films, his thoughts on artificial intelligence, and some teasers for the third “Avatar” film, scheduled for release in 2025.

How important was drawing as a child?

Drawing was everything. This is how I treated the world. I was reading, watching movies, absorbing all the stories, and I had to tell my own story. I remember very clearly (when I was eight or nine years old) going to see the movie “The Mysterious Island.” I was fascinated by these large creatures and the giant crab, but I did not go back and paint “The Mysterious Island.” I drew my own version with different animals.

I remember being very serious in high school about disciplining myself to draw in all kinds of different styles. I created my own storyboards. I thought maybe I would write a novel and illustrate it. They didn’t have graphic novels yet, but I was thinking about panels…so I was really thinking about stills. The transition into filmmaking was really very easy.

How did these early drawings inspire your films?

(My first “Avatar” drawing) was done when I was 19, which was 50 years ago. This drawing got me thinking about a bioluminescent world and I wrote a story about that in the late 1970s. In the early ’90s, when I started a visual effects company and we were trying to make computer-generated characters and creatures, I needed a script about another planet, so I went back and found that artwork, which became “Avatar” — in 1995.

The image of “The Terminator” came to me in a dream. I was sick, suffering from a high fever, and in this fever dream, I saw a chrome skeleton emerging from a burning fire. I painted it right away. I said: How did he enter Hell? What did he look like before? I knew instinctively that he looked human in front of the fire.

As a child I dreamed of passing through water tunnels at high speed, like a circulatory system, that ended in an abyss. I had a nightmare about being in a room whose walls were covered in wasps that were going to kill me, and that became the scene in the movie “Aliens” where I ran into the egg room.

Are children today losing these skills because of technology?

I don’t think we can go back, but I think it’s important for people to disconnect from time to time. It’s important to spend time in nature, spend time with yourself, just quiet the mind. People are very creative, but if you are constantly exposed to other people’s creations with movies and games, with a constant flow of media, it tends to stunt your creativity. Drawing has become a lost art. Even the artists who work with me now don’t usually put pencil to paper. They consider me a dinosaur because I come and draw something. But I have to feel it in the lines and textures.

Are you worried about artificial intelligence?

The problem is that there are multiple flavors of AI, some of which haven’t been found yet. Artificial general intelligence is a giant question mark. I think we should definitely rein in that. In terms of generative AI… this is really interesting because the data they collect is all the images ever created by humans. We put our subconscious mind out into the world, and it comes back to us through these images. That’s why it’s so compelling, because it’s actually very representative of us. We will learn something about consciousness and about art.

But there is no original. There is no paint on the canvas. You can use AGI to create music, but you can’t take it with you on the road. I think the human artist becomes more important. The music should revolve around the actual moment of the performance.

Can you give us an update on “Avatar 3”?

In the third film, we are in transition between fighting for the survival of Earth and Pandora. We’re exploring other cultures on this planet, and we’re establishing the bad guy story. There’s a bunch of new things happening to Sully’s family… and we’re adding an important new character who then becomes a major part of the story. You have to remember that this is a story that goes from one to five, and we’re right in the middle. But I can promise you this: Whatever you think it’s going to be, it’s not. – France Press agency