James Francis Cameron CC (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker and ocean explorer famous for the Terminator franchise, Aliens, and the blockbusters Titanic (1997) and Avatar, eh? He also has a reputation for being a tyrant on the set of his films, earning him the nickname "Iron Jim", but one certainly can't argue with the results considering how spectacular and well-made they often turn out to be. He's also known for being much kinder when not filming.
His first exposure to filmmaking came while he attended the California State University in Fullerton, from where he'd frequently visit the film archive of UCLA while studying physics. After dropping out, he took a variety of jobs and wrote in his spare time while learning about filmmaking from reading books and theses at the USC library. Inspired by a viewing of Star Wars in 1977, he decided to enter the film industry. He began as a miniature model maker with Roger Corman's studio and later ended up as special effects director on John Carpenter's Escape from New York. He was hired to do special effects for Piranha Part Two: The Spawning in 1981 but ended up in the director's seat after the first director abandoned the project. After arriving at the studio, he discovered that the movie was under-financed and that a majority of the crew were Italians who couldn't speak English.
During the predictably torturous filming of Piranha Part Two, Cameron had a nightmare about a chrome-plated torso crawling out of a fire. Based on this, he wrote the script for The Terminator, lifting story material from Harlan Ellison's The Outer Limits (1963) stories "Demon with a Glass Hand" and "Soldier".note When no production company wanted to let him direct, Cameron and his then-wife Gale Anne Hurd (a producer who also got her start with Corman) persuaded Orion Pictures to distribute the film, with financial backing by Hemdale Film Corporation. A relatively low-budget film at $6.5 million, The Terminator became a success, grossing a total of $78 million worldwide while gathering positive reviews and providing a Breakthrough Hit for the creator and a breakout role for Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular murderous cyborg. Meanwhile, Cameron was involved in writing a draft for Rambo: First Blood Part II, which was heavily modified for the film.
Cameron next worked on a sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien, a film he was a big fan of. While filming in England, he repeatedly clashed with the crew, especially over their practice of taking regular breaks that slowed down production and their taunting of his wife's role as producer. This dispute caused initial cinematographer Dick Bush to be fired after about a month over Creative Differences, culminating in a crew walkout; Cameron's wife managed to persuade the crew to return to work. These repeated disruptions forced the crew to work at a breakneck pace to finish the film before its release date, and composer James Horner was forced to write the score without seeing the completed film and record it in an outdated studio in about four days. Due to the lack of time, Horner was forced to reuse some motifs from previous scores, and Cameron had to hack it in editing to match the film without any input because Horner was busy elsewhere.
In spite of the troubled production and Executive Meddling which resulted in the removal of some footage for the theatrical edition *, Aliens went on to become another huge success, receiving universal critical acclaim (being constantly referred to as an Even Better Sequel) and a total profit of $131 million worldwide. Aliens also holds the distinction of being the first science fiction movie to gather seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress for Sigourney Weaver, and even picking up Oscars for Best Visual Effects and Sound Effects Editing, in a period when science fiction movies were largely ignored and not taken seriously by the Academy.
His next project was The Abyss, the story of an oil-rig crew that discovers otherwordly creatures. It was considered to be one of the most expensive films of its time and required cutting-edge effects technology and underwater filming. Despite the production running overbudget, it recouped its investment. This time, the critical reaction was lukewarm compared to his previous highly acclaimed films. This was largely attributed to more Executive Meddling and the removal of various scenes that made the film's plot difficult to follow, but Cameron has since revealed that he cut those scenes himself over the objections of the 20th Century Fox chiefs because he felt the special effects weren't up to par. Cameron subsequently re-inserted the deleted scenes in the 1993 special edition release of the movie after he felt that technology progressed sufficiently for them to be properly realised, a move that made the film more coherent and has generally improved audiences' and critics' opinion of it in retrospect.
After The Abyss, a long dispute over the rights to The Terminator was solved when they were bought by Carolco. Production began on a sequel, called Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The sequel was even more expensive than The Abyss, with a budget of $100 million and innovative use of CGI and special effects to create the liquid metal T-1000 model. It was universally acclaimed and broke box office records, earning a total of $519 million worldwide and four Academy Awards (Best Visual Effects and Sound Effects Editing again, plus Best Makeup and Sound).
After Terminator 2, Cameron started pursuing projects in different genres compared to the science fiction/action films he did previously. His first such project was True Lies, a remake of the French comedy La Totale which had been suggested by Schwarzenegger. Much like The Abyss, the film was a blockbuster success but once again drew a lukewarm critical reaction. During this time he also came up with the story and co-wrote the script for a then near future Cyberpunk thriller called Strange Days, which his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow directed. This film was very well received critically (Roger Ebert even gave it four out of four stars), but was a box office bomb.
The director's next major project was a movie based on the sinking of the Titanic, a subject he had been interested in for a long time. Thanks to his obsessive attention to detail, the production ran massively overbudget and overschedule. Eventually released in December 1997, Titanic became the film with the largest box office gross in history, and the first film ever to bring in more than $1 billion in ticket gross. The movie also won Cameron his first Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture, along with multiple other Oscars. However, this movie is a polarizing entry in Cameron's body of work.. The film became practically a punchline for its melodramatic sentimentalism and excessive focus on the romantic aspect of the story, only useful as a target for parodies and jokes, but it remains one of the most iconic films of all time and responsible for getting a new generation of people fascinated in the story of the actual ship.
Cameron did not make a movie for twelve years after Titanic. Instead, he created the TV series Dark Angel, filmed various undersea documentaries, and produced the 2002 adaptation of Solaris. He returned to film in 2009 with the science fiction epic Avatar, which surpassed Titanic by becoming the first film to earn over $2 billion at the box office and helped to repopularize 3D as a part of the theatrical experience (though most all of the films who attempted to Follow the Leader struggled to live up to Avatar's success, in part because few other filmmakers have the clout and exacting attention to detail to do it properly). He has since been working on a number of sequels for Avatar, the first of which was nearly as big a box office success as the first.
Cameron's films have certain common traits, such as a Production Posse consisting of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, and Stan Winstonnote ; the threat of nuclear war; the interaction between humanity and technology; shiny glowy aliens; strong female characters; deep sea diving; and titles starting with either A or T. He is also infamous for his temper and dictatorial filming style (the crew on some of his movies wore t-shirts reading "You can't scare me, I work for Jim Cameron"), along with his tendency to go way over-budget and over-schedule during production though, by all accounts, he's mellowed a bit with age.
Cameron is one of the most financially successful film directors of all time.
- As mentioned, Titanic was the first film in history to gross over US$1 billion at the box office. Since then, 50 others have crossed this line, but Titanic and Avatar are still the only original films to accomplish this; all the others are sequels or parts of pre-existing franchises.
- Avatar is the highest grossing film of all timenote . With its release, he became the first director in history to have two films that each made a billion dollars. Since then, he has been joined in this exclusive club by Christopher Nolannote , Peter Jackson note , Michael Baynote , Joss Whedonnote , James Wan note , and The Russo Brothersnote . Cameron and Wan are the only directors to achieve this feat with two films that are unrelated to each other.
- Including Titanic's Updated Re-release, he is the first director to release two films that each made $2 billion. He remained the only such director in history until The Russo Brothers released Avengers: Endgame.
- With Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron is the first, and currently only, director two have released three films that have grossed $2 billion. He is also the director of three of the five highest grossing films of all time.
One might wonder why Cameron's filmography became so spaced out after Titanic. While part of the answer lies in how intensive and expensive filming the Avatar series is, the real answer might be that one of the most successful filmmakers of all time uses his films to fund his real passion: deep-sea diving. Cameron is no mere hobbyist: he is considered one of the premiere experts in the field and is the first (and to date only) person in human history to visit the deepest point in the Earth's oceans at Marianas Trench alone, in a submersible that he helped design. If you're ever wondering where James Cameron is at any given point, there's a pretty high likelihood he's either filming Avatar or miles deep in the ocean. He's gone to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic over 30 times, made several documentaries on the ocean depths, and was among the experts who were interviewed when the OceanGate Titan tragedy happened in June 2023 — a disaster which, as he noted, was caused by hubris and a disregard for safety similar to that which led to the Titanic going full steam ahead into an iceberg field. A friend of his, leading French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, was one of the victims.
Fun Fact: Cameron is also indirectly tied to the Predator franchise. When the production crew's first attempt to create the creature effect failed spectacularly, they asked Stan Winston to design the alien. The two were flying to Japan, and Cameron looked over Winston's shoulder as he was doing some preliminary design sketches and said, "You know, Stan, I've always wanted to see something with mandibles." Winston then incorporated the mandibles into the Predator.
Filmography:
- Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981)
- Terminator:
- The Terminator (1984)
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
- Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) (producer, co-writer)
- Aliens (1986)
- The Abyss (1989)
- True Lies (1994)
- Strange Days (1995) (producer, co-writer)
- Titanic (1997)
- Ghosts of the Abyss (2003): documentary featuring Cameron and his team diving to the wreck of the RMS Titanic
- Avatar
- Avatar (2009)
- Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
- Avatar 3 (2025)
- Avatar 4 (2029)
- Avatar 5 (2031)
- Alita: Battle Angel (2019) (producer, co-writer)
Tropes About Him or that He Often Uses:
- Action Girl: Appear in pretty much every Cameron movie, including arguably the two most iconic live-action movie examples of the trope in Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor. Though they don't always use violence, Cameron's female leads always are (or ultimately become) very strong and proactive. To quote Moviebob:(Cameron) made his name in the 1980s making high-budget action films that were really about mommy issues.
- Auteur License: He got his with The Terminator. It has yet to be revoked, seeing as how he makes rather a habit of revolutionizing filmmaking and grinding box-office records into the dust with every new film he makes.
- Probably the only director considered to have a lifetime license, since two of his movies, Avatar and Titanic, became the Top-Grossing Movies Of All Time when they were released.
- Author Appeal:
- Deep-sea diving, his primary off-screen passion since the late '80s, shows up in many of his films (most prominently The Abyss, Titanic, and Avatar: The Way of Water. His interest in technology more generally, rooted in his early interest in being an engineer, appears in almost every film he had creative control in.
- Almost all of his films also feature strong female protagonists or deuteragonists.
- Color Wash: Cameron tends to use a strong blue tint when scenes are supposed to be set at night. It allows the scene to be strongly lit so that the audience can see everything, but give the indication of darkness.
- Continuity Nod: The gas station scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day recycles a brand that had previously been referenced in The Abyss.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Many of his films feature one of these as the villain: Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar. Subverted in Terminator 2 when the man who is supposed to create Skynet does a Heel–Face Turn when he's told what his creation will do and helps the heroes destroy his work. Played straight with the Cyberdine executives who stole the Terminator's remains between films, indirectly leading to Sarah being committed.
- Creator Couple: He met both his second note and fourth note wives during his work on the Terminator series, and his fifthnote in Titanic.
- Development Hell:
- Cameron came up with the idea for Avatar in the '90s, but the technology was not yet availble so he put it on hold. The film was featured in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader under movies that likely would never happen. The sequels he had had planned fall under this as well.
- His Alita: Battle Angel adaptation languished in development hell until production finally began in 2016 and released in 2019, over a decade behind schedule and with directing duties left to Robert Rodriguez.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: He puts his characters through turmoil, but they tend to see the end of it and come out on top - though sometimes, this is at a cost.
- Enforced Method Acting: Even when it gets him punched in the face. By an extremely angry Ed Harris, no less, a man who can occasionally qualify as terrifying just by glaring.
- Epic Movie: Titanic and Avatar.
- Hidden Depths:
- It is often said that, other than acting, there is no aspect of filmmaking that Cameron could not do himself, and that the only reason he hires people at all is because he can't be in multiple locations at the same time. Perhaps his most notable second string is art; he designed the superb matte paintings for Escape from New York, the spaceships (yes, even the boob one) in Battle Beyond the Stars, the maggot monster in Galaxy of Terror and, most famously, the Alien Queen in Aliens, for which he also designed the now-iconic "W-Y" logo for Weyland-Yutani Corp. Winston admitted that he simply saw Cameron's designs as a blueprint for the Terminator endoskeleton.
- Those who only know him for his films are often shocked to discover the extent of his deep-sea exploration. Far more than a wealthy man who can pay people to take him underwater, Cameron has applied all of the same attention to tehnical detail seen in his films to planning and designing his dives, allowing him to break multiple diving records. He is now widely seen as a global expert in the field, and several people (including his own wife) have speculated that he would commit himself full-time to diving were it not for how much money he makes from his films (which he then pours back into his diving).
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: The Abyss (with a lovely reel of human-orchestrated monstrosities nearly prompting the aliens to wipe out the Earth), Terminator 2 (“It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves”), and Aliens, which features corrupt corporate leaders, and Avatar, in which Earth is reduced to a barren wasteland. He just [[Misanthrope Supreme doesn't like people all that much]].
- In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: Invoked and cranked up to eleven with one of the trailers for Avatar, which listed every movie he's directed with the exceptions of Piranha II (which he does not like) and The Abyss (which wasn't as successful or highly-regarded as the other movies that he directed).
- Jekyll & Hyde: Allegedly has an evil alter ego named "Mij" who terrorizes his cast and crew, in sharp contrast to the normal "Jim" who is known as much friendlier and kinder.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Most of the male love interests of Cameron's female leads gladly throw themselves into the fire for the woman they love.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: The Abyss can fall victim to this because it kind of interrupts the reputation-establishing triptych of Terminator-Aliens-T2. True Lies sometimes gets this, what with being sandwiched between T2 and Titanic.
- Pigeonholed Director: All but two of his films are science fiction.
- Prima Donna Director: His perfectionism and Bad Boss tendencies are infamous, and his crew tended to respond with
Fun T Shirts like "You can't scare me. I work for James Cameron" and "Jim's a hands-on director. I have the bruises to prove it". Though he's said to have mellowed out considerably in recent years. - Real Men Eat Meat: Averted. He's a vegan since 2012 who has made a career of directing action films.
- Serial Spouse: He's been married to five different women, though it seems the fifth time was the charm, as he and Suzy Amis have been together since 2000.
- Technology Porn: Every movie of his features this. Except for Piranha 2.
- Theme Naming: All of his films have titles starting with A or T, except for Piranha 2 and the documentary Ghosts of the Abyss.
- Took a Level in Kindness: By all accounts, he mellowed out considerably in the years between Titanic (1997) and Avatar and is a lot less temperamental and even admitted in 2021 that he wishes he'd been more open and less autocratic to those he worked with in past films, citing Ron Howard's positive and encouraging working relationship with his crew as something he hopes to emulate in future projects.
- Troubled Production: Most of them up through Titanic, usually for the standard reasons like budget issues or Executive Meddling, but weirder setbacks have happened as well. For example, two actors almost drowned during the filming of The Abyss, and a large portion of the cast and crew for Titanic was hospitalized after an incident involving PCP-spiked chowder of unknown origin.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Overall, even the Terminator films he has directed, are surprisingly more on the idealistic end of the scale with a sense of magic and wonder portrayed in his films.
