TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Science Fiction, Sci-Fi Action, Action, Romantic Epic, Action Thriller, Epic
Key Collaborators: Bill Paxton (Character Actor), Conrad Buff (Editor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Leading Actor), Sigourney Weaver (Leading Actress), Michael Biehn (Leading Actor), Jon Landau (Producer), Gale Ann Hurd (Producer), Russell Carpenter (Cinematographer), Richard A. Harris (Editor), Mark Goldblatt (Editor), John Refoua (Editor), James Horner (Composer)

"Because of the enormous financial success of his films, Cameron is one of the most influential figures in filmmaking, while his production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, allows him almost total autonomy in choosing film projects... Although Titanic was successful at the box office and at the awards, it has been criticized for the weakness of the romantic plot at its center, and for its failures as a human drama. In a Cameron film, however, none of this really matters: the director’s real strengths lie in his technical brilliance and his willingness to take risks." - Chris Routledge (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

"As a key figure in the contemporary cinema of spectacle, James Cameron has emerged as an important technical innovator with a shrewd sense of commercial judgment. Effectively fusing the science fiction and action genres, the bulk of his work displays an apparent mistrust of technological advancement which is curiously at odds with his extensive deployment of state-of-the-art cinematic technology." - Neil Jackson (Contemporary North American Film Directors, 2002)

"James Cameron makes big films. Skilful editing, pounding action and dazzling effects, often on huge budgets, are trademarks of his work, in which he seems determined to outdo himself with each succeeding film... Cameron has shown he has few peers in making exciting entertainments the public will flock to see." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"An audacious visionary who developed new film technologies midstream in order to turn his creative visions into reality, director James Cameron was credited with single-handedly resurrecting a once-dead science fiction genre, thanks to the timeless success of The Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986). " - Shawn Dwyer (Turner Classic Movies)

"Sadly, as he aims, ambitiously but all-too-conspicuously, for the mythic, he equates more with better: good business sense in the era of the 'event movie', maybe, but grandiose, simplistic and artistically limiting." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"Specialist in muscular, special-effects-heavy movies, and signatory to one of the most expensive "sweetheart" deals in Hollywood history (a five-picture pact with Fox inked in 1992)." - Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia, 1995

"A hugely successful Hollywood director, James Cameron virtually dropped out of movie-making at the height of his career to pursue his passion for deep-sea exploration... A graduate of the Roger Corman school, James Cameron made one of the least auspicious directorial debuts ever with Piranha Part II (1981)." - Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)

"On the one hand, Cameron is responsible for some of the most innovative techniques and indelible images in contemporary cinema... On the other hand, Cameron is often legitimately seen as a megalomaniac lurching around a large pit of money, and his films can be not just expensive but offensive... His heroines are stronger than his heroes, but their strength is used to uphold patriarchy. His assertion that facts are facts is undermined by his repeated use of images that supersede what they represent. And in what may be his most interesting contradiction as a director, his films constantly criticize government and especially big business, and yet this latter is precisely what James Cameron is and does." - Alexandra Keller (Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers, 2002)