No director has had more success at the box office over the course of their career than James Cameron. Cameron has directed three of the highest-grossing movies of all time : Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water. Across those movies and the rest in Cameron’s career, though, people have always pointed out that Cameron’s dialogue can feel a little bit sentimental.
In a recent interview with Empire Magazine for the 40th anniversary of The Terminator, Cameron said that he doesn’t see that original movie as any sort of “holy grail.”
“I look at it now, and there are parts of it that are pretty cringe-worthy, and parts of it that are like, ‘Yeah, we did pretty well for the resources we had available,'” he said.
Cameron specifically called out the way he writes dialogue, though, saying that he doesn’t bristle at any of the writing.
“I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue, but I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write,” Cameron added. “You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”
