Movies The movies of James Cameron, ranked EW ranks James Cameron's filmography, from his low-budget beginnings and documentaries to blockbuster triumphs like Titanic and Avatar. By Chris Snellgrove Updated on September 22, 2023 09:43AM EDT Before the release of 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water, we hadn't had a feature film from James Cameron since his 2009 mega-hit Avatar. And if he had simply retired then, he would still rightly be regarded as one of the most successful and influential filmmakers in Hollywood history. However, his heart continues to go on, with the Avatar sequel marking yet another box-office smash — and more are on the way. EW now revisits Cameron's oeuvre to deliver a ranked list of his films, from worst to best. So, just where do killer robots rank against blue-skinned aliens? How well do secret agents fare against an aching romance between young lovers on a sinking ship? Keep reading to find out. 01 of 12 12. Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) Everett Collection There are a great many reasons why Piranha II: The Spawning is at the bottom of our list. For example, on top of the movie's very poor quality, EW's critic pointed out that this is a movie "from which Cameron was fired before completion." This poses a unique challenge of determining which of the multitudinous mistakes of this movie were due to James Cameron. There is not much plot in this particular film. It's all about a special killer piranha that can fly (which is why the international release of this picture has the much cooler name Piranha II: Flying Killers). And it's up to a reluctant police officer played by Lance Henriksen to foil these fatal fishy plans and save the town, including his own wife and son. Ultimately, though, Piranha II is a movie that doesn't know what it wants to do or be. It tries to be playfully erotic, but the nudity and light sprinkling of sex are simply crass and, at times, baffling. It tries to be a horror movie, but while the gory effects are nice, the flying fish are a little too goofy in a movie that eschews camp in an attempt to be serious action. And speaking of action, it's fun to see Henriksen with such strutting swagger as the lead, but his great performance doesn't provide enough rising tide to lift this sunken movie from the bottom of our list. 02 of 12 11. Xenogenesis (1978) Xenogen Production Technically James Cameron's first movie, the short film Xenogenesis has an important place in cinematic history. However, it's more intriguing as a preview of the director's future work than it is a movie unto itself. The plot here is paper thin: A specially-engineered man, Raj, and a plucky young woman, Laurie, are trying to find a new home for humanity, but they quickly run afoul of a giant robotic cleaning machine. It quickly overcomes the young man before his companion arrives in her own robotic craft. She fights the robot's lasers with her cutting torch but, when it runs low on power, settles for forcing the marauding robot to the edge of a precipice. Arguably, the real star here is Cameron's miniatures work. He initially funded this film by raising money from a local dentist (no, really), and this inclusion of miniatures impressed low-budget horror and exploitation film maestro Roger Corman enough to hire Cameron for future work, effectively putting him into the Hollywood ecosystem. It's not hard to see why: With a budget of only $20,000, Cameron convincingly transformed his own living room into an eerie alien landscape. The miniatures themselves serve as a fun preview of the kind of things we'd later see in The Terminator (in particular, the menacing robot in this short movie will remind genre fans of the Hunter-Killer robots in that movie's futuristic hellscape). The other striking thing about Xenogenesis is just how hard Cameron hit the ground running as a filmmaker. The characters are introduced via the director's evocative art (some of which later inspired designs in Avatar) and mythic narration: "They made him a machine, trained to deliver humanity from the final cataclysm... She was raised by a machine, but alone knew the power of love." In some ways, this modest short film showcases everything Cameron loves to focus on in his work: saving the future, fighting against sterile machinery, impressive effects, and the power of love. Is there any wonder Cameron would return to these potent ideas again and again for future inspiration? 03 of 12 10. Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) Disney It's a testament to James Cameron's clout that Ghosts of the Abyss was more than a Titanic documentary. On the heels of his immensely successful Titanic, this documentary (which also happens to feature the charming Bill Paxton) became a relatively successful theatrical release in its own right. However, as EW's critic originally noted, the film is a "logistical footnote to his great, primal, heart-of-the-ocean blockbuster." Furthermore, Ghosts' "journey's magic is hemmed in, paradoxically, by the transcendence of his previous effort." And that's the rub. For as visually stunning as this dive into the actual RMS Titanic is, everyone knows that it's playing off the immense success of Cameron's jaw-dropping cinematic feast. And if that blockbuster movie was a dazzling meal, this documentary is the equivalent of heating up leftovers the next day. Is it still good? Sure. Is it as good, though? Hardly. 04 of 12 9. Aliens of the Deep (2005) Disney/Walden Media When Aliens of the Deep came out, it was easy to be cynical about the documentary's title playing on the success of Cameron's early hit film Aliens. After all, what did another return to the depths of the ocean (this time, to areas untouched by the sun) have to do with alien life on other planets? However, as EW's critic pointed out, an "attractive, articulate cast of young marine biologists and NASA researchers...convey the excitement of exploration and research and describe their work to land-based viewers wearing goofy 3-D glasses, they may do more for the future of astrobiology than the sight of a billion far-out shrimp swarming a seabed volcanic chimney." And that's the stealth beauty of this documentary (which, as with Cameron's previous underwater documentary, quite breathtaking). In Aliens of the Deep, Cameron isn't so much interested in telling a brand new story as he is in geeking out about his interests. In this way, Cameron hopes to inspire a future generation of creators, explorers, and thinkers. And what ultimately makes this his more successful documentary is that in a movie that ostensibly focuses on that which is alien and inhuman, the most captivating parts involve the purely human passion for exploring and discovering the unknown. 05 of 12 8. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in 'Avatar: The Way of Water'. 20th Century Studios It's hard to argue that Avatar: The Way of Water, the (depending on who you ask) highly anticipated followup to 2009's Avatar, is a cinematic feast for the eyes. Cameron and Co. somehow manage to outdo the stunning effects of the original, with photorealistic water sequences that must be seen to be believed. He also takes more time to develop the characters of Pandora — widely regarded as a weakness of the first Avatar — to make us care more about Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their growing family as they face further existential threats. At the same time, the freshness of the original gives it a slight edge over The Way of Water, which can sometimes feel like a rehash with the same square-jawed villain and the same general conflict, just transported from the forests of Pandora to the water. The visual splendor still feels like the main attraction, rightfully winning the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, but the underlying story remains relatively generic. Like the first film, your mileage will vary on your enjoyment here — with a 3-plus-hour runtime there's a little something for everyone, from the Titanic-inspired finale to Edie Falco showing up as a coffee-guzzling general — but we're hoping that the forthcoming third Avatar will take the story in a bolder direction. 06 of 12 7. Avatar (2009) Neytiri and Jake Sully in 2009's 'Avatar.'. Twentieth Century Fox With the bevy of new and upcoming sequels, it seems that James Cameron has gone all-in on Avatar mania. Unfortunately, rewatching the original 2009 film in the context of Cameron's other classics reveals some flaws that were once hidden by all of that majestic CGI. In his own rewatch, EW's Darren Franich accurately calls the movie out for its "sparkly-strange pessimism." When you're used to the fierce optimism of Cameron, a story where the happy ending involves abandoning humanity to their ruined world lands with a practically audible clang. As usual, Cameron populates his cinematic world with great actors. We get a career-best performance out of Sam Worthington, a soldier who assimilates with the blue-skinned N'avi, especially the mysterious and exotic Neytiri. Stephen Lang, meanwhile, plays a muscular, narrow-minded evil military man, and Sigourney Weaver takes on the role of a scientist who helps humans inhabit the titular avatars to interact with this alien species. The performances are great, and the VFX still put most effects-heavy movies to shame all these years later. However, how high you personally rank Avatar depends on whether you think a movie can sustain itself on vibes alone. During the quiet scenes, you may find yourself asking questions: How did Jake Sully get disabled? What happened to the Earth? And who the hell came up with the lazy name of "unobtainium," the rare compound that drives the inevitable conflict between humanity and the aliens? No answers are provided, making Avatar the rare Cameron vehicle that is sustained entirely by cast chemistry, memorable action, and awesome effects. Unfortunately, the director's usual optimism and attention to narrative detail take a back seat to a simplified plot and a premise so basic that we can't help but wonder how the upcoming sequels will add some much-needed complexity, depth, and...well...humanity. 07 of 12 6. True Lies (1994) Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in 'True Lies'. Zade Rosenthal/20th Century Fox Let's rip this band-aid off right away: True Lies is a very fun movie, but it has aged more poorly than you might imagine. As Nisid Hajari, Pat H. Broeske, and Anne Thompson wrote back in 1994, the movie was already credibly accused of racism when it came out due to "its cartoonish depiction of fanatical, kaffiyeh-clad Arab terrorists." And it's true: This movie is so absurdly anti-Islamic that you'd be forgiven for thinking it came out in the wake of post-9/11 hysteria rather than preceding the tragic attack by a cool seven years. Cameron himself insists that these were just convenient, generic bad guys for Arnold Schwarzenegger's secret agent character to mow down by the dozens. Unfortunately, the other albatross around this movie's neck is baked into the script: We are meant to be charmed by the plot of a character played by Jamie Lee Curtis being bored by her milquetoast "traveling salesman" husband and fooling around with Bill Paxton's character until she discovers her husband is actually a thriller superspy. Before they reconnect, though, we get a lot of wall-to-wall misogyny from both Schwarzenegger and his onscreen partner Tom Arnold. And one of the movie's most memorable scenes, in which Jamie Lee Curtis strips down and performs a sexy dance, is marred by the fact that her husband is secretly lying to her and humiliating her for his own amusement. And while Curtis really owns the scene with her sultry moves, the premise of a scene involving controlling and humiliating a woman goes right past "the male gaze" and settles into "the creep gaze." Here's the thing, though: if you can turn your brain off and get past the racism and misogyny, this may be one of the best action pictures ever made. Schwarzenegger blends in just enough comedy and charm to make most scenes memorable. Plus, Cameron never seems to relinquish the excitement: When our two leads embrace as a nuclear bomb detonates behind them, the credits don't roll. Instead, we get another 20 minutes of Arnold hopping into a fighter plane and unleashing hell on terrorists hiding in downtown Miami. By the time Schwarzenegger blurts out "You're fired" and literally fires a missile the lead villain is clutching into a helicopter full of baddies, you'll find that it's really hard to stop smiling at the pure excess that fills every corner of this movie. 08 of 12 5. The Abyss (1989) Everett Collection It's fun to dive (no pun intended) back into The Abyss and see how this movie helped James Cameron grow as an artist. On one hand, it's Cameron doing what he did before in Aliens. As EW's critic wrote, "Cameron again delves into the dynamics of a close-knit group united to perform near-impossible tasks." However, this tale of a reluctant blue-collar crew sent to rescue Navy sailors who must deal with both "intercepted nukes" and "underwater aliens" shows how much Cameron has learned about humanizing his characters. For example, as much as we love Aliens, the marine characters are mostly cocky action figures who get to do little more than spout memorable lines before they get massacred by monstrous aliens. In his narrative for The Abyss, however, Cameron takes a more mature and measured approach to both the humans and the aliens. The humans, specifically, have an intimate bond that is instantly relatable. For example, Ed Harris is a gruff lead from the very beginning, but when his character tells the Navy that "When it comes to the safety of these people, there's me and then there's God, understand?", we can see the love he has for everyone from the resident conspiracy theorist to his estranged wife (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). The aliens, meanwhile, are appropriately mysterious, forcing audiences to ask themselves whether they would assume the best of these glowing visitors or instead the worst. Nobody in the movie does the latter quite like Cameron favorite Michael Biehn. As a Navy SEAL suffering from high-pressure nervous syndrome, he and his killer 'stache provide a nice heel turn and villain for our heroes to overcome. And his belief that America can do nothing less than unleash nuclear hell on a mysterious new power serves as a reminder of the Cold War anxieties and tensions of the time. Still, a shrewd Cameron seemed to understand that no war can last forever. And this movie, like the director's other genre favorites, reveals him as an optimist who believes that humanity's willingness to take a leap of faith (whether that is into the depths or into the jaws of death itself) will help us achieve a brighter future for our species. 09 of 12 4. The Terminator (1984) Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'The Terminator' (1984). Everett Collection There has been a critical tendency to examine The Terminator as a spiritual follow-up to Cameron's Xenogenesis. And certainly, there are surface similarities: As with Xenogenesis, Terminator's characters include a strong female lead, a man trying to save humanity, and a killer robot. However, The Terminator does everything that much better, and this longer film helped establish James Cameron as a serious action director even as it showcased how ambitious science fiction movies could be. Cameron himself is the first to admit that this movie was a culmination of different things he had been thinking about for a long time. As Cameron said in Joe McGovern's excellent oral history of the film, "The Terminator themes had been important to me since high school. Those apocalyptic visions, ideas about our love/hate relationship with technology, our tendency as a species to move in a direction that might ultimately destroy us, and a central faith in the resourcefulness of humanity." Furthermore, Cameron sees this apocalyptic tale as one that established some of his most resonant messages. "Those are motifs that have gone through all my films — Titanic has a lot in common with Terminator for those reasons." That's not as peculiar as it sounds. As much as audiences mostly remember this movie for Schwarzenegger's performance of the titular cybernetic organism, the real story is the blossoming love between Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese and Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor. Cameron's big theme, and what makes this narrative so resonant, is that it is only the union of Kyle and Sarah that will produce John Connor, the future savior of humanity. This is Cameron's heart fully on his sleeve as he shows us that the only way to fight robotic extinction on our horizon is to do nothing less than love each other like there's no tomorrow. 10 of 12 3. Aliens (1986) 20th Century Fox/Everett Among horror and sci-fi fans, there is an endless debate: Is Alien or Aliens the better movie? In reality, the debate is moot because these are entirely different kinds of films. In the original, Ridley Scott delighted in bringing subtle, creeping horror to what was, essentially, a haunted house in space story. However, in Aliens, as EW's critic pointed out, "Subtlety went out the window." Crucially, though, while "Aliens has less on its mind than the original...it's arguably more fun." And "fun" is the perfect description for a film that brings Sigourney Weaver back and sends her into the slimy nest of aliens in the company of some hardcore space marines. Each marine is a colorful character unto themselves, and we get to particularly know steadfast Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Private Hudson (Bill Paxton). In pitting these confident soldiers against a seemingly-unstoppable alien menace, the film alternates between awesome action set pieces to edge-of-your-seat horror. True Cameron devotees will notice the return of both his prevalent themes and the occasional homage to his older work. For example, the somewhat mindless action is anchored by relationships, including Ripley's burgeoning relationship with Hicks and her motherly affection toward Newt. That latter relationship culminates in a crowd-pleasing scene where Ripley, armed with a mechanical power loader suit, fights the Alien Queen to save the little girl. The scene is very reminiscent of Laurie hopping in the vehicle to fight the robot in Xenogenesis, right down to fighting toward a bottomless precipice (more specifically, an airlock into the depths of space). As always, though, the breathless action set pieces are rooted in real character development and emotion: Ripley is the survivor of a unique alien trauma that, among many other things, symbolically represents the anxiety and trauma surrounding pregnancy. In becoming a surrogate mother to Newt, Ripley refuses to be defined by her past trauma and defies the xenomorphic menace by embracing her own humanity. And as Paul Reiser's corporate sleaze character Burke serves to remind us, kindness and empathy are all that really separate humanity and the inhuman monsters they fight. 11 of 12 2. Titanic (1997) 20th Century Studios Titanic is one of those rare movies that achieved a nearly mythic status almost immediately upon its release. Much of this is largely due to Cameron's painstaking recreation of the titular ship. As EW's critic wrote, "The Titanic itself becomes a kind of floating version of the 19th century; once it hits that iceberg, we are suffused with a cathartic tumult of emotion." And, in doing so, "Cameron has restaged the defining catastrophe of the early 20th century on a human scale of such purified yearning and dread that he touches the deepest levels of popular moviemaking." What hit viewers, then and now, with the strength of an unmerciful iceberg is how entirely uncynical this movie is. For a movie where impending tragedy hangs over everyone like an icy sword of Damocles, it's impossible not to get caught up in the explosive romance between Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) and their optimism about the future. This creates an unforgettable frisson between the electric chemistry of the two leads and the impending catastrophe waiting to snatch their future away. In retrospect, it's easy to criticize this movie, with its bloated runtime, as a bit indulgent. However, Cameron wisely leaned into the impulse to go big on everything from period clothing to the immaculately-recreated Grand Staircase of the RMS Titanic. Cameron assembles actors, effects, and an unforgettable soundtrack the same way that young Jack gathers his various artistic tools. And it's difficult to fault Cameron for giving himself the largest possible canvas to create what is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest pieces of cinematic art ever made. 12 of 12 1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Everett Collection Perhaps the greatest compliment we can pay to Terminator 2: Judgment Day is that the special effects still hold up in a big way. Back when he first reviewed this ambitious sequel, EW's critic noted how the "transformation effects" of the villainous, liquid metal T-1000 played by Robert Patrick "are spectacular, in part because there's real magic to them, a sense of technological wonder." Now, decades later, those effects hold up much better than, say, the all-CGI battle between armies at the end of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. One reason the CGI still works so well is it's anchored by amazing practical effects. It's easier to believe in a rippling robot oozing through bars when you have giant trucks crashing onto the road, complete with the visceral thrill of its windows blowing out when it lands. But another reason the effects remain believable is that they always play second-fiddle to the characters. The returning stars have been transformed, both internally and externally. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, still plays a hulking robot, but he's been reprogrammed to protect John Connor (Edward Furlong). Linda Hamilton returns as Sarah Connor, but this is no frazzled waitress. Instead, her offscreen workouts have given her the badass build of a gritty action movie star, which is fitting considering she is just as much at the center of the action in the film as Arnold is. Great VFX and action sequences already make this movie quite memorable. But T2 stands the test of time largely because the action, like the effects, has been tethered to strong characters and character development. It's immediately apparent that John Connor is the archetypal disgruntled teenager, but we see the formative experiences that will help him one day save humanity. And Sarah Connor remains haunted by visions of an apocalyptic future, but she commits to preventing it from happening rather than letting it overwhelm her. Finally, our heroic T-800 begins the movie as a mindless murder machine, but he develops into a protective father figure armed with cheesy one-liners he learned from John. It all adds up to a subtle bit of storytelling from Cameron that highlights how changing our own future doesn't have to involve destroying microchips or melting down robotic arms. Instead, we have to do something harder: destroy our old selves each day and embrace each opportunity to grow and change. As Sarah Connor reminds us, "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." And Cameron, ever the optimist, wants audiences to know they can always change the future for the better. 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