The Case For James Cameron, Screenwriter
Last month at Comic-Con, I overheard a journalist asking Jon Favreau whether the script for Iron Man 2 was even close to complete when they started shooting. "No," Favreau readily admitted. "But they never are on movies like this."
While that's true of most action tentpoles, which are hurriedly written and rewritten until the very end of shooting, I can think of at least one mega-director who wouldn't dream of going into production without a finished script: James Cameron. Aside from his directorial debut, Cameron's written every one of the film's he's directed (and even some he hasn't, like Strange Days). In the wake of Titanic, and as we kick off Avatar Day, I've seen people toss around the idea that Cameron's scripting is his biggest weakness. I'd argue quite the opposite: Cameron is one of the smartest screenwriters we've got.
Let's be honest: The notion that Cameron is a terrible writer is, to speak in terms of his career, a recent one. Prior to Titanic, Cameron had written and directed three of the best action films ever made -- the first two Terminator films and Aliens -- as well as two above-average tentpoles in The Abyss and True Lies.
If anything, the sub-par scripting of the last two Terminators should have cast into greater relief what a marvel Cameron accomplished when he was writing the franchise. The first Terminator is an absolute genre classic, a dark, down-and-dirty thriller suffused with romantic dread that's been stripped to its barest essentials. The second is no mere rehash: it's a successful attempt to take tropes that worked for a no-budget chase movie and adapt them for one of the biggest films that's ever been attempted. The fact that each film stands on its own as a sturdy example of its type is a testament to Cameron's storytelling acumen. McG's recent Terminator sequel had its plot utterly reconceived well into shooting, something that would have been unthinkable on either of Cameron's films. To rewrite and restitch a film's story on the fly is to end up with Frankenstein's monster, not Cameron's elegant, sturdily-built Terminator.
For me, Aliens is his finest work -- today, who would ever think about making a megabudget sci-fi film about being a mom? Sigourney Weaver's performance in that movie isn't iconic simply because she knows her way around a flamethrower, it's because Weaver and Cameron tapped into something emotionally primal and made their story about a woman who'd do anything to defend her surrogate child, then faces an alien mother who's just as vicious when her progeny is threatened. (When Ripley screams at the alien queen, "Get away from her, you bitch!" it's essentially throwing down the gauntlet for an epic battle of "My mom can beat up your mom.") In a world where every lazy tentpole is content to rewrite Joseph Campbell's hero journey via Star Wars, how refreshing to find a director who's interested in other themes to tap.
Along those lines, I'd argue that Cameron is an unusually feminist writer. For all of his female leads, not a one could be merely reduced to the "love interest," and we have him to thank for two of cinema's biggest female badasses, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor. The latter is a prime example of Cameron's striking interest in charting a woman's maturation in his films: Connor starts the Terminator franchise as a timid waitress in need of protection, but by the end of Terminator 2, she's as strong as any predator sent her way. (Cameron put Rose through similar paces in Titanic, turning her from a sheltered debutante into an axe-wielding rescuer in half the film's running time.)
Through that lens, Cameron's script for True Lies is his most complicated thematically; made during a rare span of years when the five-times-married director was single, it was derided by some critics as misogynistic. Still, it's unusually revealing: While Cameron has always put his heroines through the wringer in order to transform them into warriors, his influence had never before been so baldly channeled through an onscreen proxy. In True Lies, it wasn't fate that hammered Jamie Lee Curtis into shape, it was her punitive husband Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose barked interrogations and strip routine solicitations visibly shook her yet eventually molded her into an action heroine. Perhaps Cameron's guiding hand is more palatable when it's offscreen -- the director famously made life hell for Kate Winslet in Titanic, but at least we didn't have to watch DiCaprio berating her to shape up. Still, at least it was an action movie with something on its mind.
So when did Cameron develop a reputation as a screenwriter who doesn't know what he's doing? Around the time he released Titanic, which ironically features one of his best executed plots. It's no coincidence that upper-class Rose falls for a boy from steerage and that he pulls her from the upper reaches of the boat into its lower depths -- Cameron has elegantly used his love story to introduce us to the Titanic's geography so that when the boat starts flooding, it's immediately clear just how threatening the water level has become. One of Cameron's greatest strengths as an action director is the ability to convey spatial distance; in Titanic, he managed it before he'd shot even a frame.
Why has his script for Titanic given Cameron a bum rap, then? Part of it is just the result of an inevitable backlash against anything that's become too popular, and partly it's because the screenplay does include some clunky dialogue. (I maintain that if they'd cut that truly egregious line where Billy Zane dismisses the Picasso painting, people's impressions of the script would have increased tenfold.) Still, to say that Cameron can't write dialogue at all is absurd when he's scripted some of the most iconic lines in cinema history. Can any of our most recent action blockbusters boast the same?
I've seen people mock the Avatar trailer for its absence of any dialogue -- if you think the footage is troubling now, they say, just wait until we have to hear what Cameron wrote. I am waiting, but I've got faith. Some fans hope that Avatar can show them visuals that they've never seen before, something groundbreaking and game-changing. Me? I just want the guy to tell a good story.
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Comments
What a terrific post. I totally agree.
I agree with most of what you say, and would like to reinforce your point that when people say Cameron's scripts are clunky, it is only because they think that script is all about dialogue. Evidently, it is about structure and his stories are brilliantly structured (even if that structure is rigidly classical).
Well, you make a brilliant point about the development from T1 to T2, and just look at how he dovetailed the script to embrace the technology that was suddenly at his disposal.
But while he is definitely feminist in his sensibilities, I think his characters (male and female) are a tad shallow. Feminist directors are not necessarily those who show women as strong and self-reliant, but rather show them to be well developed, fully rounded, emotionally articulate and intellectually capable. That means that they can be both weak AND strong and we admire the character for being both... and not hate for being either.
Sure his structure is good, but it all comes down to dialogue.
Clunky dialogue and wooden acting are as illusion-shattering as matte lines and bad CG. It's ironic that Cameron is so skilled and fastidious when it comes to the technical aspects of transporting an audience, but so slipshod and inept when he gets to the people part.
Which is why it comes as no surprise that his greatest creative successes are films in which the main characters literally ARE robots.
So basically Cameron is (or was, a couple of times) great with concept and structural execution. But still, yeah, dialogue is kinda important. Maybe he just needs to work with someone with a quicker spoken wit and less tinnier ear prior to yelling Action!.
But I've got to disagree with you on the feminist part. Yes, he wrote a couple of strong female leads. Maybe he did it for the same reason John Sayles does (strategically, because the few great actresses are easier to get than the few great actors). Or maybe he did it because woman-in-jeopardy is such easy-to-reach dramatic fruit. Regardless, I really, really can't stomach the pervasive humiliating misogyny of True Lies.
("less tinny", even)
My fear with Cameron's writing is that after Titanic, he's become obsessed with doing something "meaningful" and "important" that "makes a statement," and that he may have forgotten how to tell a story.
Years ago I wrote a piece for a website where I, as a Cameron fan, begged Cameron to do something small scale, and light-hearted, something that would never, ever, be considered for an Oscar, no matter how good it is. That's to break the Oscar jinx, most commonly found with actors. You know what I'm talking about, an actor wins an Oscar, and then their next project is a desperate attempt to win another Oscar. So you get them turning down the sort of projects that actually won them the Oscar, and playing someone with a disease, or a handicap, or something else that screams: "Look at me and gimme another award!"
Most of these projects fail, and many can even damage an actor's career. It can happen to a writer/director too, especially if they let a project stew for years and years until they think its award worthy.
Something that might seem stupid, but that I like in both Aliens and T2, is Cameron's ability to craft tense scenes of characters simply trying to explain what's going on to people who refuse to believe them. It's actually in Terminator as well (with Kyle Reese in the police station). Basically, I have nothing but respect for the guy, but there's something to be said for falling off.
Again, he changed the game, but how many times can he be expected to do so?
I admire and admonish James Cameron and George Lucas for the same things.
Both are men who have a brilliant sense of story.
Both are men who fumble horribly when writing dialogue, or directing subtlety.
Both have moved the film industry forward eons.
Under the greatest pressure in their careers and faced with studios who wanted to shut down their films, they created two of the greatest iconic films of all time (Titanic and Star Wars).
While both have directed great feminine heroines, neither seems to be good at giving them a range of emotions.
-And in both cases, both men were at their most brilliant when they directed robots.
PS- Can't wait for avatar.
*Bows down to the truth of Kyle Buchanan*
This is all true. Personally, I really hate that Titanic is the world's biggest money-maker ever, I can think of several dozen films that deserve the title more, but I also know ... the film is still really good. And I can't honestly think of a James Cameron film I didn't like on some level.
I love Terminator and T2, I love Aliens, and probably my favorite 1980's era "nuclear war scare" flick is The Abyss ... Ed Harris is just so damn good in that film.
I'm sure I'll love Avatar because I'm already excited to see it just from the Teaser trailer ... no matter how much it still looks like Delgo 3000.
I disagree about Cameron being "slipshod" with actors or screenwriting.
We all have to keep in mind, films like T1, T2, Aliens, and Avatar, are all pretty much "GENRE" films... these are action/sci fi movies we are talking about.
In these films, people have to talk tough. They have to have some bravado. Some comic relief characters. These are what the genre calls for.
Folks who says "Cameron doesnt write good screenplays" likely have not read any of his scripts...
They're on any number of websites, scifiscripts.com is one, imsdb.com another...
Someone just needs to read scene one from The Terminator script, and then make an assessment based on the needs of the genre...did he write a good screenplay?
IMO, Cameron does write some memorable scripts-
"I'll be back"
"Hasta La Vista, baby"
"I'm the king of the world!"
"Game over man! Game over!"
"Get away from her, you B##ch"
I can bet many people can tell me which movies those are from...and these films are from the 80's and 90's
Name me one line from a Michael Bay film that would possibly be recognized if quoted...one...?
Avatar should be, in my opinion, a heck of a lot better than the GI Joe/Transformers summer we just went through-
But do you really think the dialogue is bad in, say, Aliens?
I haven't revisited Titanic in several years, but even when I was under its visual spell I remember thinking that the screenplay was fairly weak. It's way too long, bloated with characters and storylines that don't really pay off, and nothing terribly exciting happens until the iceberg hits, which is around 9 hours into the movie. (Also, not that the Academy knows anything, but it's worth noting that even though Titanic practically swept the Oscars, it wasn't even nominated for its screenplay.)
But I don't think that's necessarily emblematic of Cameron's screenwriting ability in general. His scripts for T2 and Aliens are considered the gold standard among pros, and you're right about his ability to write female action heroes -- nobody does it better, not even Joss Whedon (and I'm fairly sure Joss himself would back me up on that).
This is incredible and very insightful.
Word!
Agree totally, Kyle, and it's for this reason I'm holding out hope that Avatar can match the hype.
And in addition to KAPP's list above, I'd add:
"I remember the first time I got shot out a cannon" - Tom Arnold to Eliza Dushku in True Lies. Gets me every time.
That's the other thing: there's a sly humor in Cameron's work that's far smarter that McBay's jive-talking/leg-humping/ball-swinging robotards.
One response to Darkknightshyamalan's point about the lack of an Oscar nod for Titanic's screenplay. It was nominated by the Writers Guild of America, which would seem to be a pretty strong indicator that the screenplay was well-regarded.
This was a great post. And kudos for getting me to think of Titanic as more than a cliched love story.
Quite looking forward to Avatar.
It's funny when I think how McG said that he was a devotee to the School of Cameron and that he knew that even right up to the Terminator salvation end with its rewites and it's final verdict from the studio and fans, he was still in the learning process. I honestly feel that if he was like the underachieveing bastard child of James Cameron, than Micheal Bay must be the over achieveing older sibling with some minor deliusions of grandeur and a drug problem. McG, I feel would have made a better movie than the one just before and a decent addition the the Terminator mythos, if he had just done a few more rewrites before shooting ever started and perhaps sneak a copy past Cameron for a verdict. Cameron is the greatest Genre Director ever and only he could really get away with making the movies he could with the finance and integrity he got because of the hard headed confidence in every facecet of how he gets his movies made. All the evidence of this is in his scripting and execusion. If you disect his movies, he doesn't need to over-stylise shots or bedazzle the viewer with a kalidescope of unintelligeble colors/ images. It's all narrative and it plays out to the T. Compare him to Micheal Bay and others and there really is no comparison. Similar creatures, but different planets.
Avatar will be good, there is no doubt. There doesn't need to be audio in this first trailer because cameron knows that above all else, he can tell a damn fine story and love it or hate him, you will still go and watch it and feel something because the man oozes confidence out of every pore and everyone of us will go to see what he has made, just as before, You can bet your 10 Bucks.
Totally, totally, totally agree.
While dialogue is important, I would argue that Cameron's dialogue is not nearly as bad as he's often dinged for, and that too much naturalistic dialogue can be the death of a film.
I'm a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, but "Death Proof" is a classic example of realistic, nuanced, and utterly boring and pointless dialogue. Dialogue does NOT equal character. It is merely an expression of character when the time is right.
Screenplays are structure AND dialogue. Cameron is terrific with structure, awful with dialogue. Titanic's structure is, as has been mentioned here, brilliant - and its dialogue is, as has also been mentioned here, bone-jarringly inept. It is perfectly effective dialogue as a sketch of a scene - which is to say, if you're willing to forgo believability, it's functional, but if you ask of screenwriters that they take the characters seriously and try to put words into their mouths THAT YOU BELIEVE THEY MIGHT ACTUALLY SAY - that's his big weakness.
I say that, by the way, with no relish. I think the first Terminator is a model of lean, effective action filmmaking - in fact, I don't think there's a better action film in the '80s. I don't begrudge Cameron the success he had with T2 (though I think it's a markedly inferior film to the original and highly overrated, but I think that's the limitation of casting such a young actor as your lead). I liked True Lies quite a bit, and the problems with it were more to do with its dollar-each-way approach to Jamie Lee Curtis' character. (Accusing it of simple misogyny is wide of the mark; the film is clearly most 'troubled' in the interrogation/one-way-window scenes, and the audience's sympathy is all with Jamie Lee then. It's just confused.)
But an earlier poster's comparison with Lucas is an apt one; as Harrison Ford reportedly said to Lucas once, "Geroge, you can write this shit, but you sure can't say it". Part of the reason Aliens (another great actioner) squeaks by on the dialogue front is Bill Paxton's inspired decision to hang himself out to dry in the service of the movie. And actually, it's funny that when people talk of Cameron's brilliant sense of structure, they tend not to bring up The Abyss...
But in Titanic Cameron has terrific chemistry from DiCaprio and Winslet and a stellar cast of supporting players, and still has to lean VERY heavily on the early-20th setting to get some lines in that would have been hooted from the screen in the '30s. I guess a modern audience is so used to being insulted that they automatically bow their heads and think to themselves "ah, he's introducing THIS type of scene. I know how I'm meant to feel when they run THIS series of cues" - which is a long way from actually participating in (or making an emotional connection with) the interior lives of the characters, but there you go.
By the way, what did Michael Biehn do to excommunicate himself from decent leading roles through the '80s and '90s? He came across as a genuine talent in the first Terminator, and then he only really pops up in Cameron films thereafter.
By the way:
"by the end of Terminator 2, she’s as strong as any predator sent her way."
Wtf? At the START of Terminator 2 (and for that matter, at the end of the first film), Sarah Connor is as strong as any predator sent her way. By the end of the second film, she's been thoroughly drained of power - the physical power is realised and applauded in Arnie, the moral power with Miles Dyson. Ain't nothin' for Sarah to do but be crazy, then be protected - a sad comedown from her empowering first-film arc. ("At first she was in the mental institution and muscly and strong and weird and intense, but she learnt to be compassionate and weak and forgiving like a proper woman as the film went. Yay, Sarah! Forget what you wanted - be a proper mother to your son!")
And it still bugs me that at the end of T2, they kill the last Terminator and melt the chip, thus making it impossible that Skynet will ever get control of the world. So why are they still in a metal foundry bruised and battered? (Please note: if Christopher Lloyd suddenly materialises in front of me and starts drawing graphs of alternate timelines, I may well have to call Cameron in to do a rewrite of my life...)
IMO, Sarah Connor in T2 *is* the predator. She is, in essence, another terminator, and realizes as much as she's about to pull the trigger on Miles Dyson. At that point, she's come so far that she's forgotten all that humanity stuff, but is redeemed by John. Learning to be weak? I disagree, she's learning not to be a machine, in parallel with the whole Arnie as quasi-father figure (or Uncle Bob, as it were) wondering why people cry.
I miss the Cold War.
I totally disagree with the notion that Cameron writes bad dialouge. As Kyle pointed out, Aliens has great dialouge by anyone's criteria. I personally think Terminater, T2, The Abyss, True Lies and Titanic all have good dialouge as well. (Cameron's ability to write conversational exposition is breathtaking.) AND you gotta consider the stuff he wrote but didn't direct, like Strange Days, Point Break, even Rambo (admittedly, much more in Cameron's first draft, before Stallone's tin-eared rewrite, but a bunch of good lines remain in the finished film). Yeah, he's written some clunkers but who hasn't? Even Shakespeare wrote some bad lines. I second that people should take a look at and read his scripts before blithely dismissing him.
I've always felt him to be one of our greatest working screenwriters. Forgetting, even, for a moment, the final films, his scripts work so well simply AS SCREENPLAYS, just on their own, as reading experiences--that qualifies his screenwriting talent right there. I'd argue NOBODY writes action on the page as well as James Cameron does.
I have long waited for an article such as this. I am completely and unashamedly a Cameron supporter. I totally agree with the notion as put forward by this that Cameron is a feminist writer. I have always marvelled at the huge canvases that he plays with and yet, you can always bring the work down to a very intimate idea: a surrogate mother fighting for the life of a child, a marriage that has become routine for the wife, a pregnant woman fighting for her very right to live and married couple breaking apart find their way back together again.
Yes, there is clunky dialogue, but isn't there always? Come on - even the best writers produce work that is groaned at. No one is immune. Personally, "TITANIC" didn't nothing for me, but the audience learned and felt the weight of the disaster through Rose and at the end, the sweeping pan of the photos of her achievements showed just what Jack's death really meant to her.
I do feel that it is a shame that the writer didn't choose to speak about "THE ABYSS" as I always feel that it is his out-and-out love story. For me, James Cameron is a man who truly appreciates the strength of women and celebrates that strength (can anyone reading genuinely see the likes of a Megan Fox in a Cameron film?) in a manner whereby he actually gets on with it instead of feeling the need to shout about it.
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