James Cameron Films | James Cameron Filmography | James Cameron Biography | James Cameron Career | James Cameron Awards

In a career spanning almost two decades, James Cameron has strategically positioned himself as the ?guru? of high-tech, muscular, blockbuster dramas that rely heavily (some would say solely) on state-of-the-art special effects. Depending on which side of the critical fence you're on, he has either salvaged the popular science-fiction/action genre with a thoughtful layer of human-interest narrative (e.g., The Terminator), or has strangled the humanity of his pictures with an excess of dazzling but superfluous computer-generated imaging (e.g., The Abyss). What is beyond dispute is the fact that Cameron has a talent for staying one step ahead of cutting-edge technology and generating big profits despite stratospheric costs.

As a boy, Cameron's fantasies were fueled by sci-fi comics and astronomy books (The Abyss is said to have been adapted from a story he wrote when he was twelve). But it wasn't until he saw Star Wars in 1977 that he realized what he had been visualizing in his head could actually be transferred to the screen. ?That's what turned me into a filmmaker,? he told the Los Angeles Times Magazine (24 March 1996). "All the things I'd been imagining were now being done."

Given his beginnings in process work and as an art director for Roger Corman and John Carpenter, it does not seem unusual that Cameron developed a penchant for special effects. Even when well into his career as a director, he continued to be involved with the nuts and bolts of technical effects, creating the design for the queen alien in Aliens, for example. ?Dream with your eyes open,? is the axiom at Digital Domain, Cameron's special-effects company, which, in addition to creating effects for CD-ROMs, theme parks, television commercials, and films like Apollo 13, serves as his movie backlot.

Today, Cameron holds fast to the belief that digital effects are more than just wild rides. He considers applying the latest computer technology to a good story an exercise in overcoming cultural barriers around the world through the medium of film. Never mind that, at the same time, audiences are being homogenized and conditioned to accept no less than total (virtual) ?reality? via this technology, and the effort by filmmakers like Cameron to keep up with (and spend buckets of money on) the latest trend is, in the minds of some critics, usually at the direct expense of any viable plot-line. Cameron believes that good storytelling endures, and special effects simply allow for getting it all out of our heads and onto the screen.

Cameron made his directorial debut with Piranha II: The Spawning- not a notable picture, but a chance for him to test and refine his skills. His first popular breakthrough was with The Terminator-fox which he also wrote the screenplay. Here was a raw and resonating, mythic action-thriller with an ideally cast Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role as the ultimate humanoid. The movie became one of those ?sleeper? successes, and launched Cameron's career into high-orbit overnight.

Youthful moviegoers especially get their money's worth of a high-tech ride with Cameron's pictures, but many critics note that, since The Terminator, his films have been primarily overlong, under-written attempts to simply maintain his box-office returns-and desperate drives to justify his record-setting expenses-minus any allegorical poetry. Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and True Lies -all of which he wrote and directed- had the adolescent-audience appeal factor working for them, but their costs (Terminator 2 came in at a then-record-setting $90M, True Lies at $100M) created a lot of pressure for Cameron to recoup money for the studios. Cameron argues that the price of cutting-edge visual effects is justified because they increase profits. However, Terminator 2 never matched the success of the original, and The Abyss and True Lies missed the expected mark both critically and at the box office.

Ironically, just under the surface, many of Cameron's trademark techniques reflect a loss of humanity via our modern embracing of all things technological. Modern technology is the ultimate villain even as it is being utilized to create a frenzied cinematic experience. Frequent sequences in which a video monitor is the perspective of the camera also create a feeling of claustrophobia-the notion that we are trapped inside of our own invention. T-800's infrared viewpoint in The Terminator and Terminator 2 is one example, as are the helmet cameras in Aliens, ' 'little geek'' exploring the submarine in The Abyss, and the surveillance cameras in True Lies. This feeling of inescapability is further enhanced by Cameron's use of action cutaways- numerous close-up shots of feet trampling and wheels running over things. For critical fight scenes, he likes to bring the camera in uncomfortably close, and often the fighters are drenched in deep blues, or battling beneath the strobing of split-second flashes of light. As a counterpoint, chaotic background scenes of huge explosions, crashes, nuclear wars, and/or gun battles point up an impending Armageddon between forces of good and evil.

Cameron has long had a reputation as a difficult director: he is said to have nixed bathroom breaks while filming True Lies, threatening to fire anyone leaving the set. Impatience is, in Cameron's eyes, a director's prerogative when spending the kind of money he does, and he is notorious for expecting cast and crew to rise to his standard 16-hour-day work schedule. At the same time, his devotion to his projects is also legendary (again, some would say obsessive). He made, for example, while in pre-production for Titanic, over a dozen visits to the actual wreckage site, necessitating a three-hour drop to the ocean-floor in a tiny bathysphere with two other crew members, resulting in footage from inside Titanic that had previously never been seen.

"We do spectacle," Cameron told Time (25 November 1996) while on the set of Titanic. ?Spectacle costs money.? Not surprisingly, Titanic came in a half-year overdue and as the most expensive film ever made ($200M-plus for production and marketing). Costs were so lavish that the film was financed by both Fox and Paramount, and Hollywood insiders were openly skeptical whether it would ever make a profit (as of February 1998, Titanic had grossed over $300M domestically). Ever the perfectionist, Cameron insists on taking no shortcuts in getting his vision to the screen. For Titanic, he commissioned a 90-percent scale replica of the ship (complete with a hydraulic stern to simulate the climactic sinking) as well as historically accurate artwork and decor for the interior of the ship. When filming on Titanic began, some of the technology eventually used to create the film's effects did not yet exist. Digital Domain had to create much of the software that, for instance, allows the camera to stay with a character's face on deck while pulling back to reveal the entire ship-without any distracting cuts. While Cameron's detractors continue to insist that his obsession with effects over storyline will eventually ' 'break the bank'' for his career, the critical and popular success that has met Titanic (winning 3 Golden Globe Awards and being nominated for a record 14 Academy Awards) all but assures that Cameron's career is anything but dead in the water. As the director told the LA Times Magazine (24 March 1996), "you can't sell the same car radio to people you could ten years ago... it's the same with movies."?JEROME SZYMCZAK