Few Hollywood filmmakers have found the kind of success in their careers that James Cameron enjoys. From his early days of creating the low-budget sci-fi thriller Terminator, Cameron has grown by leaps and bounds, and his ambition has only increased to present new kinds of stories in front of audiences and push the boundaries of special effects in movies.

Despite being known as an action filmmaker, James Cameron’s filmography spans a wide range of movies, from the spy-comedy tone of True Lies to the epic romance of Titanic. It can be difficult to imagine where a filmmaker could get so many ideas of such diverse variety. In the case of Cameron, it seems he owes a lot of his best ideas to time spent in the land of dreams.

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Dreaming of a Metal Monster

     Orion Pictures

At the start of his career, Cameron was looking to make a name for himself in the film industry. He was earning his living working as an assistant on some B-movie projects while thinking of story subjects where he could truly prove his writing and directing skills. And then the answer came in the throes of a fevered dream.

“The Terminator came from a dream that I had while I was sick with a fever in a cheap pensione in Rome in 1981," Cameron told BFI. “It was the image of a chrome skeleton emerging from a fire. When I woke up, I began sketching on the hotel stationery.” Soon Cameron had the bare bones of the character and story plot of The Terminator movies, which would eventually become one of the greatest sci-fi film series of all time.

Dreaming of Scary Bugs

     20th Century Fox

After the breakout success of The Terminator, James Cameron was suddenly considered hot property in Hollywood. The filmmaker was actively being courted by studios for film projects. One such project was the sequel to another iconic sci-fi movie, Alien. When Cameron agreed to take on Aliens, he had one specific vision in mind for how the film would end.

In the climax of Aliens, lead character Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) tries to lead the way out of the Xenomorph hive, only to discover that she has unknowingly walked into the very center of a lair where the Xenomorph queen had laid a bunch of eggs. The sudden fear of discovering just how dangerous the situation had become was something that came to James Cameron during a nightmare.

“[The Aliens climax] comes from a dream in which I came into a room, the room was pitch-black [and] the only light was from the doorway,” Cameron states in his book Tech Noir (via SYFY Wire). “I walked into the center of the room and then realized that every square inch of the walls and ceiling were covered with wasps and if I moved, if I breathed, if I did anything, they would attack.”

Dreaming of Titanic

     Paramount Pictures

So far we have talked about the ideas that came to James Cameron’s subconscious in his sleep, which he later turned into movies. But one of the filmmaker’s cinematic inspirations was a waking dream that consumed him for a long time. One of the best know facts about Cameron is that he’s been an enthusiastic diver and deep sea explorer for a long time, and he felt a deep fascination with exploring the wreckage of the real-life RMS Titanic ship which had sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

“I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck,” Cameron told Playboy. “Not because I particularly wanted to make the movie.” Describing the sunken ship as the “Mount Everest of shipwrecks,” Cameron explained that he was looking for a way to make a diving expedition possible for his team, when he heard about a filmmaker who had conducted such an expedition and made a movie using the footage. Cameron decided that he’d “make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing.”

Dreaming of Pandora

     Lightstorm Entertainment

Water has long seen a source of fascination for James Cameron. He had already used that fascination to make Titanic. He had also used his nightmare of being killed by a tsunami as inspiration for making The Abyss, as the filmmaker told Metro (via Lady-First). But Cameron’s relationship with water and the alien worlds they hide was soon going to be kicked up several notches. It started with yet another dream Cameron had as a 19-year-old.

“I woke up after dreaming of this kind of bioluminescent forest with these trees that look kind of like fiber-optic lamps and this river that was glowing bioluminescent particles and kind of purple moss on the ground that lit up when you walked on it,” Cameron told GQ. “[And these kinds of lizards that] turned into these rotating fans, kind of like living Frisbees, and they come down and land on something.”

The world Cameron imagined back then eventually became the world of the alien planet Pandora that Cameron explores in 2012’s Avatar. Now the filmmaker has turned back to his love of water to create the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, which will explore underwater storytelling in a never-before-seen manner using cutting-edge technology that Cameron’s team invented specifically for the movie.