--- title: Origins: What Influences James Cameron | TIME description: As Avatar gets re-released in theaters, TIME sits down with James Cameron as a part of our origins video series to discuss the movies and TV shows that influenced him most so far as a director canonical: https://time.com/video/cLkQE5xO/ og:title: Origins: What Influences James Cameron og:description: As Avatar gets re-released in theaters, TIME sits down with James Cameron as a part of our origins video series to discuss the movies and TV shows that influenced him most so far as a director og:url: https://time.com/video/cLkQE5xO/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/cLkQE5xO/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Origins: What Influences James Cameron twitter:description: As Avatar gets re-released in theaters, TIME sits down with James Cameron as a part of our origins video series to discuss the movies and TV shows that influenced him most so far as a director twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/cLkQE5xO/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Origins: What Influences James Cameron > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Origins: What Influences James Cameron [Watch (HLS stream): Origins: What Influences James Cameron](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/cLkQE5xO.m3u8) (7:24)  _Published 2010-08-27. As Avatar gets re-released in theaters, TIME sits down with James Cameron as a part of our origins video series to discuss the movies and TV shows that influenced him most so far as a director_ --- Jul 27, 2023 2:25 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Origins: Sucker Punch Director Zack Snyder on his Film Influences](/video/F33RkXSE/) ### Origins: Sucker Punch Director Zack Snyder on his Film Influences [Origins: The Director of 'Up' on His Influences](/video/J1PLAO6X/) ### Origins: The Director of 'Up' on His Influences [10 Questions for James Cameron](/video/AQG6nnm0/) ### 10 Questions for James Cameron --- ## Transcript >> I save you. >> Yeah. Why save me? >> This is Rebecca Keegan for TIME. com. You're watching Origins, a video series in which we ask actors, directors, and other notables to talk about the movies and TV shows that influence their work. James Cameron, the director of Avatar, the highest grossing movie of all time, which is being re- released with an additional nine minutes of footage on August 27th. Cameron also directed Titanic, The Terminator movie, and The Abyss. >> I was lucky enough to see Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts and their initial releases in movie theaters and that was mind- blowing experience. You know, you have to put it in a historical context. You see the films now and that Stop Motion Animation is quaint, you know. >> Uh huh. >> Still very imaginative and so on and you can appreciate it. But at that time, there was no imagery like that until-- you know, Ray did it and seeing the skulls that's coming out of the ground in Jason and the Argonauts. To me, that looked as real. I'm sure as-- let's say the staff in Avatar would look to it to a 6 or an 8- year- old now. When I saw Mysterious Island, I didn't-- I tried to make a comic book of Mysterious Island, but I made up my own story. I remember there were giant turtles and there were a raft and they were going to a swamp. It had nothing to do with the movie, but it just triggered a creative response. I wanted to do that tide effect. I didn't wanna slavishly be a fan analyzing every frame. I wanted to do that type of thing and it would set me on. I remember where I was sitting when I saw the Star Trek-- the first Star Trek TV Spot and I saw the enterprise fly by and say, " I'm there. Come on, this is the most imaginative- looking spaceship I've ever seen ." >> Will you return the Enterprise to my control? >> Between Star Trek in 2001, I was designing spaceships for-- since that. Of course, I studied 2001, but then you know I wanted to do a space movie. I wanted to do space shot to figure out how to do it and, you know, I build models and shoot them against Black Velvet, you know, with an 8- mm camera and that's where the thing. It didn't only impress me; it triggered the need to express myself creatively in a similar van. You know, there's a very little dialogue. It was a giant-- It was a giant painting really. But when I'm watching at it, you know, 14 or 15 years old, but getting it somehow subliminally getting, you know, getting the-- when the Australopithecus throws the bone into the air and it turns into the spaceship and it's a cognitive connection of technology across of, you know, 4- million- year gap. The wheel started to turn about how movies were made and I started to realize that there was this guy called the director and there was a guy that operated the camera, and all the things you don't normally think about. I actually got nauseated watching it. There was such a powerful illusion of falling down the sky of infinite corridor of life. Nobody did ever, ever done anything like that. >> Uh huh. >> You know, it was absolutely mesmerizing me. I didn't know what the hell is going on, but I remember it going walking on the movie theater, sitting down on a curve I was dizzy from watching that-- watching the movie as a physiological reaction to a movie. Wait, if you wanna talk about the March in 2001 with the whole Opening Space Sequence, they said, " We're gonna do a space sequence and I wanted to be as cool as 2001 was in each day ." >> Uh huh. >> Meaning, real space, real weightlessness, you know, highly detailed shift is not Hollywood fantasy stuff, but it's something that feels very possible. Tommy was the scientist, not me. He was the one who wanted to get shot light years out in space to find the answers. >> Are we there yet?- Yeah, we're there sunshine. We're there. >> Well, what's the answer? >> She's going to sink captain. >> It's one of those sort of kismet, sort of destiny moments, right? I look around my shelves. I find the tape sitting there. I have never watched it. It's just sitting there. >> Uh huh. >> I pulled it out, popped it in. I sat and watched A Night to Remember and as I'm watching and I'm thinking this could make a pretty good movie and I keep-- You know, we just shot it now in color with a steady cam and nice lighting, it would make a pretty good movie, but how great would it be to book hand it with present day technology, finding the wreck exploration. We've been tried to mesh a story into it that was some sort of investigation that related back to, you know, whatever 80 years earlier. What maybe think of, you know, A Night to Remember at that moment? It was the germinal moment of thinking of the movie and I want to make the rumination invitation to a Titanic screen and it's not like I got a lot of invitations to Titanic screen. It's like one in my lifetime up until there. >> Uh huh. It's just timeless. It's just so wonderful and I don't think everybody had an appreciation of what-- until those men in Avatar, I wasn't thinking about the Wizard of Oz and its historical context of what it would have meant. In 1939, you'd be sitting in a movie theater watching and black and white movie, that suddenly turns into color. >> Uh huh. >> How people must have been-- They must have been blown away by that. They must be astonishing too, you know. It's just-- It's just such a great-- It's just a great film, you know. You wouldn't change a frame movie even though you see all the mistakes and you know how it was all done and, you know, you could see the Warrior Soul and The Lion's Tale. You know, it's all-- it's all part of the fun. >> Are you a good witch or a bad witch? >> Me? I'm not a witch at all. >> I mean, it's not the film that I ever particularly wanted to emulate really and I don't even really like musicals, you know. 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