James Cameron Claps Back At People Who Criticize The Dialogue In His Movies
By any financial measure, James Cameron is the most successful director in the history of Hollywood. That’s not an exaggeration, because Cameron’s Titanic was the highest grossing movie of all time for over a decade before it was surpassed by his next film, Avatar. Even Cameron’s follow-up, Avatar: The Way of Water, landed at No. 3 on the list of the highest grossing movies behind Avengers: Endgame. With that resume in mind, it’s easy to see why Cameron bristles at naysayers who don’t like the dialogue in his films.
“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 told Empire Magazine. “You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films–then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”
Cameron is unquestionably a gifted visual storyteller, but there have definitely been some shaky bits of dialogue in his films, especially during the most-over dramatic scenes in Titanic. It’s not disingenuous to say that Cameron is better at some aspects of filmmaking than others. But he’s not wrong about his track record. Audiences have clearly responded to his movies in unprecedented ways.