James Cameron (director)

"Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. … Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk. NASA has this phrase that they like, "Failure is not an option." But failure has to be an option. In art and exploration, failure has to be an option. Because it is a leap of faith. And no important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. … In whatever you are doing, failure is an option. But fear is not."

"[About veganism] Youre going to be healthier, youre going to live longer, youre going to look better. Youre going to have fewer zits. Youre going to be slimmer. Youre going to radiate health. Youre going to have a better sex drive. Thats what shifting away from meat and dairy does. My whole family did this, and were doing spectacularly well from a health standpoint. I have not had a single sniffle, not a flu, not a cold, nothing thats taken me offline as much as an hour in three and a half years."

"Aliens brings Ripleys story of alien impregnations, molecular acid, and death to an upbeat close by taking away the fear and isolation that plagued her since the end of Alien. As the lid closes on Ripleys cryo-tube, we realise that shes found the companionship and peace she deserves. Similarly, Terminator 2 sees the nightmare future of Judgment Day averted. The T-800 may have sacrificed himself to protect the human race, but the films events have allowed Sarah to reconnect with her son and her own compassion. With stories as complete as these, its hardly surprising that the filmmakers charged with making Terminator 3 and Alien 3 have struggled to find new directions in which to take them. In both cases, those second sequels were the opposite of Aliens and T2: they simply felt like "more of the same." In Alien 3, poor Ripley finds herself in a worse situation than she was at the start of Aliens - her surrogate family is dead, shes stuck in an all-male prison with an alien running around, and theres something horrible stirring in her viscera. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines was, if anything, even more gloomy. Sarah Connor died between sequels; John Connors a lonely drifter, and Judgment Day hasnt been cancelled - merely postponed. The sense of hope - not to mention Camerons motto that "theres no fate but what we make for ourselves" - is replaced by the suggestion that annihilation by sentient machines is inescapable. Beyond Ripley and Sarahs stories in Aliens and T2, filmmakers could find only despair and nihilism."

"It turns out that Cameron, who is known as an action filmmaker, he admits, believes that his films have often been too violent, and the heavy amounts of gun violence that play into films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies he believes have no place in moral moviemaking in the current state of the world."

"In short, James Camerons sequels work because he comes up with new ways for his characters to evolve and progress, rather than merely react to a series of events set before them. The Ripley we see at the start of Aliens is different from the one who goes back into cryosleep at its end. Aliens and T2 may have dazzling action sequences, but its these story and character progressions that make them so dramatically satisfying."