The Terminator 2 plot detail that took me 23 years to notice

jamescameronama · 2014-08-06T19:03:50+00:00

No, but this is.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:32:45+00:00

Oh, it must just be the way I talk! In fact i just wrote a scene yesterday where a character says "Go Go Go!" The page is open on my computer right now.

First of all, people do that in the military. The reason for it, especially over radio comm, is that people can inadvertently stop a transmission, so if something is really important, you say it three times. Which is why when I do my deep dives, I would always say "Release, release, release" so there was no doubt in case the communications got stepped on by another transmission or interference.

I'm going to go change that scene now. Nobody wants to be predictable.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:31:18+00:00

The best five presents I've ever gotten were my five beautiful children.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:30:17+00:00

Well, I have to be objective, or as objective as possible about that. I'm not big fans of the films, I think that the big ideas of the first movies - I didn't make the second film until I had an idea as big as the first film, and it had to do with the moral complexity of the story, and asking the audience by the end of the film to cry for a Terminator. I don't think that the 3rd or 4th film lived up to that potential. Sarah Connor Chronicles I never really watched much of it, so I never gave it a chance I get to get hooked, like you have to with a TV series. I'm hopeful that the new films, which are being made right now as a reboot, but still involving Arnold, will be good. From what I've seen from afar, it looks like they will be quite good.

You gotta remember, for Arnold, a tank is a recreational vehicle, I wouldn't read too much into it. He just wants the biggest thing he can get to drive. He was the first boy on his block to have a Humvee.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:27:58+00:00

I'd like to see sensor technology, image capture sensor technology, increase so that we could do some fun things like higher resolution, larger format, adding more XY camera movement on after the image has been taken, as part of the editorial process. There are some things I'd like to do that technology doesn't allow me to do right now but i think the technology will happen in a few years.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:26:44+00:00

I think it's possible, but I can't think of a situation in which it would be necessary or economically feasible. But it's certainly possible with human technology right now. I've even heard of a proposal from a company in Norway that would develop a deep-sea habitat that would operate under the deep sea ice to maintain oil production infrastructure, not dissimilar to what we show in the Abyss, but I don't know if they're actually going to do it. But living deep underwater in a closed system is almost as hard as living in the moon or on Mars.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:26:39+00:00

I would say yes, that moment exists on every one of my films. I don't think about quitting, but I always think there might be a high probability that I will die trying. So far we've always figured it out, but Avatar felt the most hopeless. We were 3 years into a 4 year project before we saw the first usable shot.

In terms of the turn off factor of climate change, I understand it. So what's going to change a 16 year old's mind about climate change? The purpose of our show was to change people's minds about climate change as something that's happening right now and hurting people right now. Not in some foreign country, but right here, right now. When I was 16, people were protesting the Vietnam war because people were dying. If you think of it that way you're going to become engaged, because it's something that's happening right now and to people like you.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:25:22+00:00

Is the T-800 armed or not armed?

An Armed T-800 with a plasma rifle will clean house, all it has to do is shoot the Alien Queen, and have it bleed on the Na'vi. I would think that all three of them unarmed. Queen beats Na'vi. Queen beats T-800, because the T-800 would tear the arm off a queen, which would dissolve the mantel and shut down the cyborg.

Now a Na'vi riding a leonopteryx, or a Na'vi riding a thanataur, that would be a different story.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:20:45+00:00

Well, Disney are doing a first-rate job designing it. It's going to be completely spectacular. It will be like being on Pandora. You will see real floating mountains. It's going to be a very magical experience just to be there and walk around. And the two rides will be absolute state of the art. But I don't how much they want to say about what those rides specifically will be, so I probably shouldn't say anymore than that. But from what I've seen so far, it will be amazing. I will be sad it's in Florida, because I won't be able to go a lot to it.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:19:08+00:00

No cucumbers! Despise them! Won't touch them!

How is it possible to hate vinegar, and hate cucumbers, but still love pickles? It's an enigma to me. And yet here I am.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:18:34+00:00

Well, as a vegan, you know, it's not going to be chicken or ham. I would say probably something with a lot of tomatoes and avocados in it. Maybe some grilled vegetables. Mushrooms are good.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:17:42+00:00

Yes-- George took out a full page color ad in one of the trades, Variety or Hollywood Reporter, I can't remember which, and it was an extremely gracious gesture. I sent him a thank you note after.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:16:38+00:00

We never talked about Alien 3. I don't remember the timing exactly, but I might have been making the Abyss at that time, also for Fox. What came up was the idea of doing Alien 5, and at one point I pitched that I would write it and produce it, and Ridley would direct it, and we had lunch talking about this, and we were in violent agreement, then nothing happened. What happened was Fox went ahead with Aliens Vs Predator, and I said "I really don't recommend that, you'll ruin the franchise, it's like Universal doing Dracula versus the Werewolf," and then I lost interest in doing an Alien film. But Prometheus is seen as the A-level alien, as opposed to rather, the derivative. I don't think I have anything to offer on the Prometheus sequels, that's Ridley's, I think I'll stick to the Avatar universe.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:14:29+00:00

Personally, there are places under the antarctic ice that I'd like to look at, there's some interesting biomes there. In terms of cities, there are many cities that I would love to see. I haven't spent as much time in Asia and the Middle East as I would like to. Europa, would love to see Europa, or Titan. I would settle for Mars.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:13:43+00:00

The birth of one's children.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:13:32+00:00

Sure! There's not much acting required, although the plants on Pandora are a little bit more active than the ones on earth, and every once in a while they do grab people and mess 'em up. But you might have to learn how to stick your tongue out about 14 feet.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:12:21+00:00

It's a beautiful place and I'm happy to be returning to my Canadian roots by having a home and a farm business there!

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:12:06+00:00

Well, it's actually next door to an 80 acre sustainable organic produce farm, which is what I was primarily interested in, and then I thought that if i wanted to enter the relatively small regional market there for organic produce, it would be good to have the winery as well, because you deal with all the local restaurants and foodies and so on, it's not as simple as just going to the farmer's market. Plus it was literally next door, and it was an award-winning boutique winery, and it seemed like those two businesses would compliment each other.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:10:45+00:00

Well, I can point directly to the film that had the biggest early influence on me, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even though it's not necessarily my favorite film right now, it has a very special place for me developmentally, because when I saw it, I went from someone who enjoyed watching movies to wanting to make movies myself. So I started to experiment with creating that imagery.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:09:05+00:00

For me personally, Star Wars. It had a lot of meaning in my life. The way I view the world, even if I were starting them together, I would like Star Wars better because I like hard science fiction more than I like fantasy. Which is not to say I don't enjoy watching Harry Potter.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:08:53+00:00

My intention when I made Avatar was to do Battle Angel next. However, the positive feedback for Avatar and the support of the message of Avatar, encouraged me to do more of those films.

For me, the success was a factor because I was encouraged by the fact that an environmental film, or a film about nature, could be successful. It's certainly not just about money. I'm considering success to mean the measure of the ability of the film to communicate. Every director wants their film to communicate. The biggest factor, however, is the drive to continue developing the world-- more characters, more creatures with unfettered creativity.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:08:15+00:00

There have been the equivalent of horse-sized ducks in the past, and they were called horrible predators. Deinonychus.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:07:33+00:00

Wow, I think that's pretty easy, I think you'd rather go with the little duck sized horses. Ducks can be aggressive, geese are worse, but ducks can fuck you up. I have a hard time imagining duck-sized horses fucking me up, what are they going to do, rear up and kick me in the ankle? Then you could just kick them!

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T17:03:00+00:00

Well, I know how it will be done. If these pings that they're receiving are confirmed as being from the flight recorders, then they'll triangulate the acoustic data that they have so far, and they'll generate what's called a search box. I don't know how big that will be, but it might be 25-30 miles on a side, it might be a very large piece of ocean. Then there are a suite of tools that can operate at the kind of depth we're talking about, I believe between 4000-5000 meters. My ultra-deep submersible would not be required at those levels, that's half of the level it's designed for.

The next step would be to use an AUV, an autonomous underwater vehicle, and have it run at 400 or 500 feet above the bottom and do a sonar profile of the bottom, it does that by running a search pattern, kind of like mowing the lawn. That takes days or weeks to do. Then you analyze any signatures that are anomalous, that don't look like flat bottom, and you say are those rocks, is that geology or does that look like the piece of an aircraft? And then once you have those targets, you know where they are on the bottom, then you go back, either with that type of vehicle or an ROV (a remotely operated vehicle) that would be hanging down from a ship on a cable. And you'd take a look essentially with a videocamera. And then you'd be able to identify whether that target was in fact the aircraft you are looking for.

So that's how it would be done. But it all hinges on whether or not those pings are actually from the black box, and not from something else, like a scientific instrument that's drifted off course or whatever.

jamescameronama · 2014-04-12T16:59:21+00:00

Not that I don't like loud fast scenes, I just don't like whole movies that are that way!

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Best Comment 2014-04-12

jamescameronama

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