James Cameron sought advice from himself when writing Avatar: The Way of Water

James Cameron lacks neither inspiration nor ingenuity. He’s a brilliant man who dreams big and strives to solve problems in almost every area of ​​film production (as evidenced by the Disney+ documentary “Fire and Water: the making of the Avatar films”). And he is relentless in his drive to get precisely what he wants, no matter the cost.

When we think of Cameron facing challenges, we conjure up the stunning spectacle of him erecting a massive water tank on a soundstage in which he can film motion-capture actors actually swimming. What we rarely do is consider one’s writing process, which is strange because it’s the aspect of creation that concerns us most. It all starts on the page. No script, no film.

Cameron, being a human being (we think), is as prone to writer’s block as the rest of us. Indeed, he was confronted with an interesting conundrum while developing the scenario for “Avatar: The Way of Water”. The film takes place 16 years after the events of the first film. There was also a 13-year gap between the initial film and its sequel. So Cameron had to find a way to update viewers on all the goings-on at Pandora, including the introduction of Jake Sully’s (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri te Tskaha Mo’at’ite’s (Zoe Saldaña) children. In other words, he had to drop a ton of exposition before he could delve into the sequel’s narrative. It was a tall order, but luckily Cameron had a storytelling expert on his side: himself.

During an appearance On the “Just Foolin’ About with Michael Biehn” podcast, Cameron told his friend and frequent collaborator the story of how he solved his exposure dilemma:

“So I’m having trouble with the first act of [“Avatar: The Way of Water”]and I have so many fucking lectures that I have to go before I can continue the story. A recap of the first movie, what happened over the next 15 years when they started a family, how humans came back and erased everything and took back control, and then the story begins. »

Cameron was determined to explain this in six or seven pages, but he just couldn’t solve it. That changed when he walked past a newsstand and spotted an issue of “Written By,” the official publication of the Writers Guild of America, emblazoned with the headline “10 Great Exposition Techniques.”

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I have to buy this,’” Cameron said. “So I buy it, I drive home, I walk into my writing studio and the full title of the article is 10 Great Tips for Exposure Seen in ‘The Terminator’.”

He didn’t say how much Cameron helped him, but he was ultimately able to move on from that 16-year period in a surprisingly short time. It’s not the most graceful feat of storytelling of his career (the information dumps can’t help but seem clunky), but once he launches into the real story of “Avatar: The Way of Water”, he ended up making a sci-fi/action classic. Meanwhile, “Written By” was right on the money: When it comes to writing exposition, you can’t beat Cameron’s original “The Terminator.”