Favorite James Cameron movie?

Aliens followed closely by T2

T2 it's practically perfect it hit at the right time in the early 90's man I miss that 90's. :(

Aliens

Terminator 2 Judgment Day! Follow by Aliens.

Hey man, you and me both miss the 90's. I always felt the 90's was the golden age. Great cartoons, awesome video games without the BS stuff we have now and most importantly, great 90's action movies that wasn't using too much heavy CGI either.

Terminator 1/2, followed by True Lies.

Absolutely and for me it was the last great decade of music can't stand today's music. and I miss playing at arcades pre social media and smart phones was such a better time.

None

James Cameron is one of my least favorite directors in all of Hollywood. I really can't stand him.

With that said, Terminator 2 and Aliens are his most decent films. Everything else is shit.

Ooof, this is tough.

Probably The Abyss. I watched that movie a million times in my youth, could watch it a million more times. For whatever reason it's not on Amazon for streaming *shrug*

*True Lies is a classic, though, I mean...wow. So fun, so funny, so entertaining, so well cast.

**Arrrrrrrrrrrgh....but Aliens? And Terminator 2?!?! I also watched the shit out of those. So many good movies.

@davillain-:

I think the 80's were even better overall, but 90's were great and probably had better movies.

Was the original Alien a Cameron movie......I'd vote for that. But in this poll I'll say Avatar by a hair over T2. Yep, I really did like Avatar, personally I'd place it with original SW trio and Indiana Jones among the great Adventure movies.

My fav is True Lies. T1/2 get some major love from me though. Hell even Avatar blew my mind when I first saw it. JC is just damn good at what he does.

@AFBrat77: The original Alien movie was directed by Ridley Scott.

As for the poll its a tough one, Aliens was a perfect mix of Sci Fi and action, but so were both Terminator movies. And True Lies was just amazing, sad that it still hasn't gotten a blu ray release (I don't think it even has a DVD release). Its a 4 way tie for me.

Avatar IMO was Cameron's downfall were he focused on special effects and new tech over characters and story.

I accidentally voted for The Abyss, but meant to click Aliens. :( The Abyss was okay too of course.

I like The Abyss, but I think it can get a little bit heavy-handed with the sentimentality. Still a great flick.

I sort of enjoy True Lies, but I think it's a pretty dumb movie. Out of all the movies that he made before Titanic (I still never bothered to watch Titanic or Avatar), I think that True Lies is easily his most insubstantial movie.

Terminator 2 is a spectacularly well-made action film, but it grates on my nerves for reasons that I'm not going to elaborate too much on. To put it short, it felt sort of like The Terminator, except without any real balls. It's like took The Terminator and tried to make it "safe" and it just sort of comes off as watered-down to me. And that furthermore that set the tone for the rest of the Terminator franchise, which is precisely why the other Terminator movies suck. Because they're more trying to ape off of T2's success with its mass-appeal. So yeah...I'm kind of split on T2. On one level it kind of annoys me. But it really is just a VERY finely crafted action movie, and I have to recognize that.

As far as the James Cameron movies that REALLY hit all the right buttons for me, it comes down to either Aliens or The Terminator. I've heard James Cameron say that he wanted to make Aliens feel like "forty miles of bad road", and I've seen critics describe it as an exhausting movie, and I agree. When Ripley finally sucks the Alien Queen out into space, I'm like, "thank god, FINALLY." But you know, not in a bad way as in I wasn't enjoying the movie. Rather, it's in a good way as in I was fully invested In Ripley's story and it is SO satisfying to see that end after Ripley's been put through hell.

As far as The Terminator goes, it was a mean ugly little movie, and I appreciate the hell out of that. I know that that's largely due to it being such a small budget film, but I really think it adds to the tone. And I really sort of doubt that Big Budget James Cameron will ever go on to make a film that dark ever again. Case in point: as soon as he got a much bigger budget for T2, suddenly that movie ended up being a lot less dark than its predecessor. The crappy film quality, the dark lighting, the sparse and not-overly-orchestrated action scenes...all that stuff for me kind of gave the movie a sense of authenticity, as if it is more "grounded". And that's not to say that there isn't any of James Cameron's sentimentality there, but it's not overbearing and the movie ends on a thematically perfect mixture of "sweet" and "dark as hell." I actually LOVE The Terminator, and I think it's a great companion piece to something like 12 Monkeys.

A lot of that is subjective though, and dependant upon "how I feel." If we're really being objective, then I think it's easy to say that T2 is objectively better than The Terminator simply from a technical standpoint. And many of my beefs with T2 could also be applied to Aliens, they just bug me more in T2 than they do in Aliens. But as long as we're going with "favorite" and not "best", it's got to be a toss-up between Aliens and The Terminator. Those two movies just absolutely hit the sweet spot for me and I will continue to love the hell out of them until the day I die. His other movies are either, "they're good but I could do without ever seeing them again", or "I'm sure they're probably pretty good, but I just have no desire to watch them."

My vote goes to the 1st Terminator. T2 was great and had better effects but, Cameron ruined it with his emotional terminator at the end.

"Now I know why you cry, but it's something I can never do."

I should also mention that the scene in the Terminator where the T-800 invades the police station searching for Sarah Conner and killing those cops is one of the greatest actions scenes in cinema history. Of course, it probably couldn't be included in a movie today due to political correctness but the cinematography, staging, lack of dialogue, and conception were executed perfectly.

That's kind of one of the things I was thinking of when I typed my post. I mean, T2 has great action scenes. T2 looks a lot more slick and well-polished than the first movie. T2's villain is far more "bad-ass" than the original Terminator what with its whole indestructable nature.

Yet, that scene where the original Terminator walks into that police station and slaughters everyone without giving even half a f*** about it: that's just far more raw and brutal than anything I recall seeing in T2. The original Terminator movie was dark as hell. And as well-crafted as Terminator 2 is, I just get a really big impression that that kind of stuff couldn't have even happened in Terminator 2. I don't know if anyone remembers, but there were freaking Terminator 2 kids' trading cards back when that movie was released. Despite being a violent R-rated action movie, it was freaking HUGE. And with that kind of mass-appeal often comes the condition that there's no longer going to be the kinds of brutal and ugly stuff such as that police station scene. Stuff like that can be a BIG turn-off to audiences, and that's a big problem when talking about HUGE movies that are relying on a butt-load of mass appeal.

As far as I can recall, the closest that T2 ever came to being that freaking dark and brutal was with the Judgement Day scene. And that was just a dream sequence (and James Cameron went so far as to shoot an ending to the movie in which everyone's happy and Judgement Day never happens).

I don't know, man...I'm really not trying to knock too hard on T2 because it really is a very well-crafted action film. But it really begs being compared to the original movie. And in my personal opinion, T2 is just far too slick and safe for me. It really does feel to me like, "The Terminator, except with a much larger budget and not as much balls."

I voted T2, but honestly, Titanic will always have a special place in my heart. I was obsessed with Titanic as a kid and James Cameron did a really good job recreating the ship and the sinking for the movie. The effects still hold up to this day.

Aliens, but he's easily the most overrated major director I can think of.

Aliens is the film of his that I enjoy the most, but I consider The Terminator to easily be his best work.

There’s nothing in that film that feels unnecessary or superfluous. I love its visceral tone and unrelenting, almost tangiably prohibitive atmosphere and pacing. It just feels as close to pure, unadulterated filmmaking as it gets, which I attribute largely to him being a new director combined with having only a minuscule budget to work with. Very minimalist and Cameron down to the bare metal.

Does anybody know why True Lies hasn't hit blu ray or gotten a hd release yet?

@vfighter: my guess is that it’s not very PC for these days

Avatar guys come on ! someone has any idea when we can really expect the 2nd ? cant wait for that

Aquaman. It beat Spidey FFS.

Hopefully before James Cameron dies. I actually never saw Avatar and don't really care about a sequel. But I know the movie has its fans, and it's increasingly more apparent that James Cameron became a filmmaker who sort of stopped making films.

I mean, not counting his documentary stuff and not counting Piranha 2 (which I'm under the impression wasn't a real James Cameron film), the dude has made 7 movies. Seven movies in 35 years. Meanwhile we've got master filmmakers like Martin Scorsese making great movies at a much more regular pace.

Look, I know that what's important is "quality over quantity". And yeah...he should take as long as he needs to make his movies in order to ensure that they're good. But I don't think he needs to take this much time to make good movies. I mean, all of his movies (aside from Piranha 2 and Avatar) were released in the period from 1984 to 1997. That's six movies (most or all of them great, depending on who you ask) released in a 13 year period. Not a bad output. Then he takes more than a decade off, releases Avatar, and it's been almost a decade now since THAT was released.

Point being: he clearly doesn't need to take this long to release movies. Hell, most of his best output was when he was making movies a lot more regularly. But in the last 20-something years he's only released ONE movie that wasn't an underwater documentary (and as far as I'm aware he's not even directing those any more). And it's been basically 10 years since Avatar came out.

I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't think that James Cameron really WANTS to direct movies any more. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's his life and he should do what he wants. And yes, I know that there are upcoming movies that he is "involved" with (Battle Angel and another Terminator movie). But if you're wanting to see more of his directorial work, then you really ought to lower your expectations. If he EVER directs another major film, his output is sure to be sparse as hell. He clearly just doesn't really want to be a film director any more.

Aliens (of course)

Terminator

Not really a big fan of Terminator 2. It kinda lost that sci-fi appeal with the snotty kid.