What do you think of when you think of James Cameron? It could be his cheesy “I’m the king of the world!” Oscar speech, the (brief) popularization of 3D, the cornball dialogue, the badass ladies, the romantic men, or the quantum leaps in visual effects with nearly every film.
There are also the dozens of iconic images, all seared into pop-culture consciousness: the robotic tank in “The Terminator” crushing skulls beneath its treads, the Titanic with its bow sunk into the ocean still lit like a city, and, for the “Avatar” heads, a nine-foot-tall alien pulling her bowstring to tension. Or maybe, thanks to its constant virality, when you think of Cameron, you just hear the jubilant anthem “James Cameron, the bravest pioneer” from “South Park.” But for me, it’s always Arnold Schwarzenegger draped in leather, loading his pump-action shotgun with one hand on the back of a motorcycle in “Terminator 2.” When I was 12, I couldn’t imagine anything more awesome, and it’s as true now as it was then.
It’s for all those reasons (and a few others) that Cameron, deep-sea diver and part-time filmmaker, has won a global audience. The agreement seems to be that if Cameron films it, audiences will come. With productions as massive as some cities, if he’s not creating colossal sets (he famously built most of the Titanic to scale for “Titanic“), he’s creating vast and endless worlds, none more so than the stunning phantasmagoria of Pandora. Unlike other elder statesmen of Hollywood like Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg, Cameron has still reigned supreme at the box office. With “Avatar: Fire and Ash” out this week, we’ll see if he can pull off that hat trick again.
Cameron rankings are tricky. Beyond the usual questions of quality or what’s “the best,“ a lot depends on taste. What do you prefer, horror or action, epics or romance? Alien love or planetary love? That is to say, these are mostly all terrific movies. Here’s Next Best Picture’s ranked list of Cameron’s work…
9. True Lies (1994)
The meanest and silliest of Cameron’s filmography, on paper “True Lies” should rule.n American James Bond explores the tensions of marriage, horse jumps off a rooftop, there’s a badass bathroom brawl years before “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” and a helicopter dives over the seven mile bridge in the Florida Keys to aid a daring escape. Sadly in practice, this is Cameron’s most confused and least confident movie, neither played straight enough to be dangerous or farcical enough to be a spoof, and the second act is uncharacteristically cruel; Jamie Lee Curtis is forced into scene after scene at her expense, pressured into a strip-tease meant to boost her ego only to become a buffoon soon after. The opening set-piece is killer, Tom Arnold can deliver a punchline, and the final reel is some of the best spy action of the 90s (which Kubrick reportedly loved), but it’s the most Cameron’s work has ever felt dated.
8. Avatar: Fire And Ash (2025) 
The third (and hopefully not last), “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is the darkest, weirdest, and dreamiest thus far, wrapping up this phase of the Sully saga with super-scary squids, a new race of kamikaze fire-worshipping Na’Vi, and a family on the brink of internal collapse. Quaritch is still on the hunt for Jake’s kuru, but it’s the Ash people’s leader, the fierce but sensual Varang (Oona Chaplin), that steals the show, punishing our heroes more than they ever have been. The weakest of the three films, there’s the occasional feeling of narrative jumble as Cameron tries to pack as much into one movie as possible, and comparisons to “Return of the Jedi” make sense as the plot repeats too many beats from previous entries. But that analogy doesn’t capture the fevered anguish or pulp-surrealism at “Avatar: Fire and Ash’s” smoldering core, becoming a nearly Biblical rumination on tested faith, loss and togetherness. Relentless, emotional and transcendent, if this is where the franchise must end, it’s on a reasonably satisfying note.
7. The Abyss (1989)
Or Cameron’s Close Encounters of the Aquatic Kind, it’s the kind of sci-fi thriller only he would –– or frankly could –– make. Cameron’s first water movie was filmed under infamously perilous conditions, with a sprawling set built at the bottom of a huge flooded tank. The story blends extraterrestrial first contact with Cold War allegory, letting his usual themes bubble up, warning about nuclear holocaust, the dangers of escalatory military power, and why you should never chuck your wedding ring into a toilet at the bottom of the ocean. That last point hints at why “The Abyss” is also Cameron’s most intimate feature, where a divorced couple, one a driller (Ed Harris) and one a scientist (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), basically conduct high-stress marriage therapy at 2,000 meters deep. It’s an extended metaphor for communication that mirrors the alien plot, and the scene with Bud and Lindsey trapped in a flooding submarine is among the most emotional in his entire filmography.
6. Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022)
Moody space whales, rebellious sons and military fathers make up the much-anticipated sequel, which demonstrated once and for all the sustained cultural relevance of “Avatar.” The messy first half had to recap the first film while setting up a quadrilogy of new movies, establishing as many characters and connections as there are vines in the jungle. Just look at the forest-punk Lo’ak, who has different relationships with Kiri, Netayam, Spider, as well as his parents Neytiri and Jake (as we see, it’s complicated), who then all have unique relationships with each other. It’s a lot of movie, a fact helped by a zen middle hour diving in the sea. “The Way of Water” eventually spouts into one of the most exciting hours of unhinged action this century, playing like a Cameron greatest hits collection across air, land and sea, with “let’s get it done” becoming a memorable Cameron catch-phrase.
5. Aliens (1986)
Whether or not he really wrote “Alien$” on a chalkboard to convince Fox to greenlight the project, Cameron’s always understood the art of the sequel. Like a space marine stripping a field weapon only to modify it into something more deadly, he kept the xeno-skeleton of Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” deployed a Vietnam allegory of run-amok colonialism, and set two warring matriarchs off to battle. But even as he expanded the battlefield, Cameron kept the stakes human, focusing on Ripley’s chest-bursting PTSD and giving her a means to cope: protecting a child with a flame-thrower. It’s been called the “definitive sci-fi action movie” to Alien’s sci-fi horror, but that doesn’t capture the inescapable feeling of dread throughout. Ripley’s showdown against the Alien queen, where she pilots a powerloader mecha against an alien Kaiju, is still a perfect climax.
4. The Terminator (1984)
Cameron’s tech-horror just moves. “The Terminator” is the first movie on which he had a real director’s credit (he was previously fired from Roger Corman’s “Piranha 2”), and it instantly announced Cameron as a major creative force. Cameron withholds ‘what’s going on” for a snowballing 42 minutes, so even as we track Kyle Reese ducking from cops and tracking Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800, our point of view is always closely tied to Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). It’s a masterpiece of on-the-fly world-building and narrative economy, making Connor’s arc from waitress to revolutionary among the most thrilling in sci-fi film. There’s a lo-fi grizzle to “The Terminator” that gives the high-concept premise a sweaty tactility, but too often we forget that even in his debut, Cameron’s aching heart was on display. Kyle Reese confessing “I came across time for you Sarah. I love you. I always have.” is as swooning as any line from “Titanic.”
3. Avatar (2009)
Romantic in every sense of the word, no adventure has ever felt more like an opiate. All the criticisms of “Avatar” are true, and yet, Cameron’s dream-download of an epic flies above them. With its incandescent jungles and floating mountains, Pandora is the perfect backdrop for another of his love stories, this time between a human (Sam Worthington) and a beautiful blue cat-woman (Zoe Saldaña), whose romance split open the anti-colonialist plot. Early hype said “Avatar” was going to change movies forever, a statement only proven half-true (it revolutionized VFX, but failed to turn 3D into a lasting paradigm shift), but its open-hearted sincerity was a stirring salve then and now. Still the highest grossing movie of all time, “Avatar” became the closest thing to a new “Star Wars” in decades, a space opera made from one very odd man’s cracked imagination, about a soldier abandoning his humanity in order to rediscover what makes him human.
2. Titanic (1997)
It speaks to the everlasting appeal of “Titanic” that when I recently saw it on a 35mm print, it was an involuntary collective experience: we laughed together, we cheered together, and we ugly-sobbed together. The endearingly awkward teen-y dialogue knows exactly what it’s doing, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are radiant, and their chemistry lets you feel like you’re falling in love. It will always be one of the greatest spectacles put to celluloid, towering images for equally big emotions. As though he set society itself out to sea, Cameron’s grand tragic romance is his fall of Rome, his upstairs-downstairs class satire, and an apocalyptic blockbuster all in one. Every bit as mythic as “Avatar,” more romantic than “The Abyss” and as thrilling as “Terminator 2,” it’s the ultimate Cameron film.
1. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
The threat of nuclear fire hangs over every propulsive second of “Terminator 2,” not only one of the best sequels ever made but maybe the most morally probing. The marketing ruined Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role-reversal from an unrelenting killing machine to a loving cyberdad with a grenade launcher, while still concealing the film’s true twist; it’s Sarah Connor, now ripped and nearly mad, that becomes the sequel’s true terminator. Cameron uses the classic sci-fi thought experiment –– is it morally justified to kill baby Hitler? –– as the civic center to helicopter dive-bombs, mini-gun assaults, and imaginative liquid metal kills. Linda Hamilton’s haunted performance should have received (at least) an Oscar nomination, playing a militarized mother who contemplates killing an innocent man. “Titanic” may be grander, but “T2” circles perfection. One of the best blockbusters Hollywood ever produced, no wonder Paul Thomas Anderson calls it a “pretty awesome movie.”
What do you think of our list? What’s your favorite film directed by James Cameron? Have you seen “Avatar: Fire and Ash” yet? If so, what did you think? Please let us know in the comments section below or on Next Best Picture’s X account.
