Guillermo del Toro’s biggest criticism of James Cameron: “All right, sue me”
James Cameron has made three of the top four highest-grossing movies ever. This would be an impressive feat, even if all three were entries in some of the biggest franchises or were based on well-known IPs. With Titanic and two Avatar movies, Cameron captured the world’s imagination with a disaster movie/romance hybrid and an original science-fiction exercise in worldbuilding. Despite his unprecedented successes, though, Cameron has always had detractors, and some of the same criticisms of his films tend to recur again and again. He even gets it in the neck from friends, such as when Guillermo del Toro affectionately levelled a critique at him that he could only acknowledge as true.
Over the years, Cameron’s films have wowed audiences and banked eye-watering box office totals, but that hasn’t stopped people from saying he writes cringy dialogue, prioritises special effects over characters, and seems to think the world loves blue cat-like aliens from the planet Pandora way more than it actually does.
Naturally, Cameron may counter those critiques by pointing to the culturally ubiquitous lines of dialogue he has written, such as “I’ll be back”, “Game over, man!”, “I’m the king of the world”, and “Come with me if you want to live”. He’ll say that he has done more to push technology further than almost anyone in Hollywood, and he’ll quite rightly point out that more than $2 billion worth of people went to see both Avatar movies. Ergo, there must be something moviegoers like about those blue aliens.
In truth, the underlying reason behind most criticisms of Cameron’s films is this: he unapologetically makes big movies for big audiences. This means everything is big in a Cameron movie – the action, the spectacle, the emotion. He has always been upfront about the fact that the films he loves are mainstream entertainment. In fact, he’s OK with that, admitting in 2013, “My tastes have always been pretty blue-collar. I never went to film-study classes. I went to the drive-in. So I figure, if I like it, somebody else is going to like it.”
Cameron has always worn his heart on his sleeve in his films, and 90% of the time, that has connected with audiences worldwide. The one time it worked less successfully was 1989’s The Abyss, and when Cameron re-watched the film in 2023 when it was remastered in 4K, he was worried that he’d dislike this raw, naked emotion as an older filmmaker. He wondered, “Is this going to work for me now?” After experiencing his film again more than 30 years after its release, though, he confirmed, “It did. I found myself tearing up because that’s what the movie was there to do.”
Ultimately, Cameron realised that being so upfront with emotion in his films isn’t a weakness – it’s a strength. He also realised that, even as a much older man, he was still the same guy at his core. He said, “I was worried, but I guess my sensibility hasn’t really changed that much. I’m still kind of a romantic at heart.”
This is why he didn’t let it bother him too much when his good friend del Toro remarked, “You don’t understand irony. Your films are very earnest.” Instead of getting upset, he agreed with the Mexican filmmaker and shrugged, “OK, all right. Sue me. They’re earnest.”
