James Cameron Accidentally Sought Writing Advice From Himself For Avatar: The Way Of Water

James Cameron does not lack for inspiration or ingenuity. He's a brilliant man who dreams big and gets off on problem solving in just about every area of film production (as evidenced in the Disney+ documentary "Fire and Water: The Making of the Avatar Films"). And he is unrelenting in his drive to get precisely what he wants, no matter how much it costs.

When we think about Cameron facing down challenges, we conjure up the staggering sight of him erecting a massive water tank on a soundstage in which he can shoot motion-capture actors actually swimming. What we rarely do is consider his writing process, which is weird because that's the one aspect of creation that's most relatable for all of us. It all begins on the page. No screenplay, no movie.

Cameron, being a human being (we think), is as prone to writer's block as the rest of us. Indeed, he faced an interesting conundrum while banging out the script for "Avatar: The Way of Water." The film takes place 16 years after the events of the first movie. There was also a 13-year gap between the initial movie and its sequel. So Cameron had to find a way to bring viewers up to speed on all the doings on Pandora, which included introducing the children of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri te Tskaha Mo'at'ite (Zoe Saldaña). In other words, he had to drop a ton of exposition before he could dive into the sequel's narrative. This was a tall order, but fortunately Cameron had a storytelling expert in his corner: 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 exposition dilemma:

"So I'm struggling with the first act of ["Avatar: The Way of Water"], and I've got so much f***ing exposition that I've got to get down before I can get on with the story. A recap of the first movie, what happened in the intervening 15 years when they have a family, how the humans came back and obliterated everything and took control back, and then the story starts."

Cameron was determined to blast through this in six or seven pages, but he just couldn't crack it. This changed when he walked by a newsstand and spied an issue of "Written By," the official publication of the Writers Guild of America, sporting the headline "10 Great Techniques for Exposition." 

"I was like, 'Oh my god, I've gotta buy this,'" said Cameron. "So I buy it, I drive home, I get in my writing studio, and the full title of the article is 10 Great Tips for Exposition as Seen in 'The Terminator.'"

He didn't say how helpful that Cameron fella was, but he did ultimately manage to dispense with that 16-year stretch in surprisingly short order. It's not the most graceful feat of storytelling in his career (info dumps can't help but feel clunky), but once he got into the actual story of "Avatar: The Way of Water," he wound up spinning a sci-fi/action classic. Meanwhile, "Written By" was right on the money: When it comes to writing exposition, you cannot beat Cameron's original "The Terminator."