Cameron: 'Action movies are chopped salad'

James Cameron has reportedly labeled modern action movies as "chopped salad".

The director, who recently responded to online criticism over his Avatar Day promotional stunt, has insisted that many action films cram too much clutter into one scene.

The 55-year-old told Total Film: "There are two things missing when I watch a lot of action these days. One is that I don't care about the characters, and there isn't a lucidity to what is happening - what is the goal, what are these people trying to accomplish?

"The other thing that gets ignored is the length of time it takes a virgin pair of eyeballs and visual cortex to take in an image, assimilate it, relate it to the images that have gone before. Lots of action films these days have many small cuts in a sequence. It's just chopped salad."

The Titanic filmmaker also revealed that he uses mirrors to re-watch each scene he films.

Cameron added: "I'm giving a trick away here, but I just flop the work print in the projector and watch the film in mirror image. You really see where your eyeballs have been conditioned to look in a place, but now it's happening over there."

Avatar opens in cinemas on December 17.