Fast Company’s Diane Mehta and I talk in-depth about the The Futurist, the tech advances in Avatar, dubious Hollywood economics, and James Cameron’s colorful speech patterns in this Q&A.

The site also has a piece up that’s likely to inspire riots in geek circles, on the 12 Best and Worst Digital Characters. The usual suspects are there — Gollum (Best), Jar Jar (Worst). But how do they omit the grandaddy of them all: The T-1000? When I interviewed Peter Jackson for The Futurist, he described watching T2 as a young horror filmmaker in New Zealand, when he was a decade away from releasing the first Lord of the Rings movie. “My God, I had no idea a computer could even do this,” Jackson told me he felt at the time. “It was CGI, but it looked incredibly realistic. It was the genesis of the whole CGI movement.” Yes, the George Washington of CG characters should definitely be on the list.