James Cameron's Trademarks

"The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQEGoVslBpc

It has been reflected in his work, although he does not do it on purpose, each of his films, because most of them are action-oriented, there is always a repeated dialogue of a character shouting at another Go! Go! Go! Cameron mentions that it is totally accidental, but it can be a cause of his own personality, since he does not like to waste time and that things are effective and fast. This can be seen in Terminator, Terminator 2, Aliens, Titanic and Avatar.

Another of the biggest trademarks that can be noticed in most of Cameron's films is the transition of the camera from a screen where an event is reflected to the same event live and in direct. A good example occurs in Avatar, when Jake, Grace, Norm and Trudy are escaping and one of the surveillance cameras captures the moment, where Colonel Quaritch, who is the antagonist of the film, is also located. The transition of the same Colonel Quaritch watching the event at the moment in which the other characters get on the helicopter and leave, is a good test of how Cameron tries to create suspense and put the viewer in the same movie, causing at the same time a logical progression and helping the viewer also know who the antagonist is without saying it explicitly.

VFX has always been one of the most special topics for James Cameron and he has dedicated his whole life to them. That is why it is considered one of the greatest exponents of special effects, since there is no single work of it that does not contain special effects. This very clearly can be seen in Titanic with the giant ship sinking, in Terminator with the addition of a war between humans and androids, in Aliens with the first appearance of a tentacle made of floating water and Avatar with the appearance of a new species in a fictional place called Pandora that makes the viewer believe that it could really exist because of the goodness of special effects.

Bibliography

Perno, G.S. “Directors' Trademarks: James Cameron.” Cinelinx, 22 Jun. 2015

House, Dorian. “James Cameron.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 13 Sept. 2008.