Roundtable: The Career of James Cameron Part 1 (1982–1991)

Anton: We brothers have been debating how best to break down and define the phases of James Cameron’s career. Do we go by decade? 1980s Cameron, 1990s Cameron, 2000s Cameron. Do we impose early, middle, and late periodization on his life, in spite of the fact that it’s hard to tell whether he’s capping off a middle phase or in the late phase of his filmmaking? Early Cameron, Mid-Career Cameron, Late Cameron.

Instead, I think it makes sense to break his career up to this point into two distinct phases (recognizing that this may change if more and more Avatar sequels are released). Part 1 is about his beginnings and ascent into the role of blockbuster mega-director, which is solidified with the enormous success of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But his journey to that point, while full of earlier successes, was also rocky and full of scraping together opportunities and resources, both financial and technological.

Aren: It’s true. In the start of this phase, Cameron was doing anything and everything to make his way into the industry and get his name on credits. He was a special effects artist for Roger Corman. He was working on gore effects and spaceship effects and painting matte paintings for backgrounds—he did the New York City background mattes for John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. Once he decided he wanted to make movies, he threw himself into the work and took every opportunity he could get.

Anders: What’s astonishing about Cameron after re-watching all his films is, once you get past Piranha II: The Spawning, which, as I pointed out in my review of The Terminator, how fully formed he was as a filmmaker. And how consistent. I believe we gave his four films from The Terminator to The Abyss all perfect 10 out of 10 ratings. That’s a very impressive start to his career, even if it’s not marked by the gargantuan scale and control that characterize Titanic and Avatar. (I think True Lies is an outlier in a lot of ways, so one could possibly lump it in with either group, but we’ll treat it on our next roundtable).

Cameron’s First Two Movies

Anton: I agree that Cameron, after a rocky start with Piranha II, has an incredible run of early films (even if I dissent from giving them all 10s and masterpiece status). However, I think we could see how both Piranha II and The Terminator are marked by a rawness and lack of polish that we don’t see in any of his subsequent movies, once he was able to secure better financial backing. Does that give those first two films a unique energy?

Aren: Definitely, as those two films are both debut features and debut features are almost always notable for their rawness. For a long time, Cameron disowned Piranha II and refused to consider it a part of his filmography. Even today, whether he admits it’s his work or not depends on his mood; he flips between positions depending on the interview. But he still did direct the scenes on location in Jamaica, so it’s still his film in a sense, even if it’s more so the final product of executive producer Ovidio Assonitis. And as I argue in my review of Piranha II, the dysfunction of Piranha II directly led to the creation of The Terminator. Piranha II was a debut that failed to launch, so The Terminator is a kind of do over. You could see both films as Part I and Part II of his “debut feature.” The rawness of a first-time feature filmmaker is present in both films. But it’s inarguable that there’s a significant jump in quality from one to the other.

Anton: Absolutely.

Anders: There’s definitely a raw energy to The Terminator. It feels like a true debut, even if we acknowledge his work on Piranha II. To use a sports metaphor, it’s like a rookie who gets called up (or sent back down) part way through his rookie year, marring his numbers. Which means his sophomore year functions as the “real” rookie season, and he blows the ceiling off! OK, maybe I’m straining the metaphor.

Aren: I think there’s something to that metaphor though. Often, with sports rookies, being called up too early is being set-up to fail. It says more about the General Manager than the player—remember, Mike Trout was sent back down to AA after being called up initially. So with Cameron, he was set up to fail on Piranha II, as Assonitis had no interest in truly giving him creative control or even making a quality picture, it seems. So we finally see Cameron’s enormous potential unlocked in The Terminator.

Anders: But while The Terminator is in some obvious ways less polished—for instance, because of matters of budget it has fewer special effects scenes than the films that follow it—it makes up for it with a propulsive energy making use of everything it’s got. Even in that mode of early 1980s action filmmaking, we can see Cameron’s talent: in the cinematography, in the choices around pacing and narrative construction, and in the strength of its thematic cohesion. It may be less polished, but I don’t think it’s flawed in any real way. It displays a rare effort to wring as much as one can out of the resources at one’s disposal. He’s like a kid given the keys and not knowing if he’s going to get a second chance. I know it might sound like an insane comparison, but The Terminator is almost like a Citizen Kane in some ways.

Anton: A succession of slow dolly shots moving in ever closer to a castle amid the post-apocalyptic ruins of the future. We see blasted out cars. An empty swimming pool, its edge still charred by the nuclear blast. The light in a window of the castle suddenly goes out. John Connor’s lips whisper “Skynet” as he expires. At the end, we see them cast the T-800’s metal forearm into the furnaces of the factory. Plums of smoke waft upwards.

Joking aside, I’m gonna need some clarification here, Anders.

Anders: Both films draw on the possibilities of their genre in their respective era and are examples of a director given his first access to the filmmaking tools to explore something deeper than most films of their kind do—Kane has it’s noir-ish “mystery,” but it’s really about the impossibility of really knowing the motivations of a “great man,” and The Terminator uses the sci-fi action film to tell a story of a fated romance and the power of love.

Anton: I’ll agree that both mark someone telling a complex narrative in a story that could have easily been otherwise.

Here’s another strange way of looking at Cameron’s development. Did you notice that each of his first three movies is a horror movie, but each successive film is to a lesser extent? So Piranha II is a schlocky C- or D-grade horror movie. Lots of gore. The Terminator is definitely an action movie, but it is also, as you note in your review Anders, a work of body horror, with touches of the slasher subgenre. For instance, Cameron takes time to observe the physical destruction of the T-800 in a way that is demonstrative of the horror genre. Note how in T2, Cameron does not approach the physical destruction of the Terminators in the same way. It’s more about spectacle. Finally, Aliens is the sequel to a famous work of science fiction horror, and while Cameron pushes the sequel into the combat action genre, it still contains many horror elements.

So his early development is marked by a transition from horror to action filmmaking. As we’ve observed before, filmmakers often get into movies, low-budget movies especially, through horror, which at the time was definitely a niche genre (apart from a few movies like The Exorcist). By The Abyss, Cameron has totally dispensed with horror elements, and is doing action suspense entirely. Action suspense defines his works all the way to the present, when he isn’t working in documentaries.

Aren: Although Titanic and Avatar mark a transition into epic filmmaking—but we will get to those in the next roundtable.

Cameron as Franchise Filmmaker

Anton: Budget, quality, tone, and genre, however, aren’t the only way we can think about his early development as a filmmaker. We might also think about his work in the 80s and early 90s as establishing himself within existing franchises, as well as developing his own. He makes the sequel to Alien, after all, and also the sequel to his own sci-fi action movie, making a series.

Aren: He became the man to break the sequel curse. In your review of Aliens, Anton, you mention the sequel chat in Scream 2 where Aliens is given as an example of a great sequel that proves sequels can be as good as the original. Terminator 2: Judgment Day would be another such film. Piranha II is a sequel, although a sequel in the low-budget, B-movie way of endlessly extending profitable series, with no real connections between the films—

Anton: Which is kind of our big-budget movie mode today. Endlessly spiralling out properties. Anyway—

Aren: —And now Cameron’s got Avatar: The Way of Water, with even more films on the way. He’s a franchise filmmaker, through and through, whether creating franchises or extending other franchises.

Anton: I’m not sure we can say Cameron breaks the sequel curse though. What about The Godfather Part II mentioned in Scream 2? What about The Empire Strikes Back? Or does Empire defy the definition since it is, or became in development, the second part of a three- then six- then nine-part story? I guess Temple of Doom was considered a miss to some extent, really changing up the narrative approach, from quest with chases, to invading the villain’s lair.

Aren: Cameron’s films are not the only sequels to break the curse. Both The Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back are great sequels (and likely greater films) than Cameron’s. However, neither Francis Ford Coppola nor George Lucas are associated with consistently breaking the sequel curse, while Cameron has done it several times. He’s made it a point of pride in his career that he can beat expectations, which is so central to the concept of a sequel. A sequel is about meeting enormous, perhaps impossible, expectations.

Anders: His approach to franchise filmmaking is interesting. Anton, as you point out, his work in Aliens really manages to split the difference between being a continuation in style and character of Ridley Scott’s film—Ripley returns, the music, the build-up to the first fight with the xenomorphs—while showing that a sequel doesn’t just have to repeat the original and can go in new directions. Today, we don’t expect sequels to be retreads the way they were well into the 90s (thinking here of sequels I do enjoy, like Home Alone 2: Lost in New York or Lethal Weapon 2). Even when Cameron’s dealing with a sequel to his own film he’s pushing the possibilities of the sequel even as he fulfills the expectations of the audience, and plays with them. Cameron really pioneers the idea of a franchise as something distinct from a sequel, extending rather than just repeating.

Anton: This idea, of Cameron as not only a blockbuster filmmaker, but as a pioneer, along with a few others, of the franchise model for blockbusters, seems apt. And we should remember to circle back to this idea after his latest and likely grandest franchise extension: Avatar: The Way of Water.

Action Movies and Cameron’s Filmmaking Style

Aren: In terms of filmmaking technique, Cameron might not be the most notable action stylist, but he is one of the most significant action filmmakers ever.

Anton: OK, but what do you mean by that? Are you saying that he is perhaps the best example of a style of action filmmaking that dominated the 80s and 90s, and that now has largely petered off?

Aren: Let me explain. Cameron is rather classical in his formal constructions of action scenes. He relies on medium-wide shots, cross-cutting to escalate tension, clarity in the on-screen spatial environment—all stuff you see in the films of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and other students of classic Hollywood, for instance.

And he’s also hugely successful and influential as an action filmmaker. You’d probably have to put Terminator 2 and Aliens on a shortlist of the best action movies ever made. Aliens essentially creates an on-screen vocabulary for science-fiction action storytelling, which has influenced not only movies, but also video games and television shows—Halo is the most notable work indebted to Cameron. But when you think of a film by James Cameron, a single visual approach or editing style does not immediately come to mind. He doesn’t reinvent the medium. Rather, he simply masters it.

Anders: Yes, though I’d probably be more bullish on his action style than you. It is classical, but it’s also really engaging. It’s clear, but not boring. It favours those medium-wide shots, almost comic book-type constructions as I argued in my review of Terminator. By that I mean, he composes in the frame, focusing on clarifying the relation between shots and not in-shot movement as much. And you see that in Aliens and T2 as well. The Abyss is more notable in its use of suspense. Its action scenes are mostly underwater or in tight enclosed spaces, and therefore slower and more limited in scale, but they pack a punch due to their environment.

Cameron really strikes me as closest to Lucas and Spieberg as you note. He knows how to put a nice action sequence together.

Aren: I’d also argue that we wouldn’t get Michael Bay without James Cameron. Stylistically, Bay is more indebted to Hong Kong action cinema, but in terms of subject matter, he’s building on Cameron, although coming at some of the same aspects about the military, technology, and individual heroism from a slightly different angle.

Anders: Interestingly enough, on our recent re-watch of Point Break, which Cameron produced and his then-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, directed, I noted the influence of Hong Kong action on that film.

Aren: Point Break is hugely influenced by Cameron. He produced it so he could champion Bigelow’s vision and protect her from studio interference. He also did an uncredited rewrite of the script, so we can see his influence in action cinema beyond the films he directed. Remember, he also wrote the screenplay for Rambo: First Blood Part II.

Anton: But Bay is using a lot of fast cuts, montage techniques, and intercutting frequently between multiple storylines or lines of action within a single sequence. I find Cameron’s editing to be much less frantic. In fact, his storytelling is so clear I maybe forget when he is intercutting. But overall, I don’t find him to be a montage-based director. He is incredibly linear in his storytelling, especially in these early films, even when he’s telling a story about time travel. I don’t think he uses a full frame narrative until Titanic, although he begins in the future, obviously, with both The Terminator and T2.

Motifs of Water and Technology

Anton: Let’s talk about Cameron’s dominant motifs.

Aren: The dude sure loves water.

Anton: Dude has a movie called “The Way of Water.”

Aren: He’s also among the most technically-obsessed filmmakers out there—both in front of and behind the camera. For instance, his early work as a special effects artist seems to have fueled his interest in pioneering on-screen special effects in his films. You have the use of stop-motion and early animatronics in the original The Terminator, the advancement of these same techniques as well as advanced model and compositing work with Aliens, all the deep-sea photography and early CGI in The Abyss, and then the creation of a fully-CGI character in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Anton, you pointed out in your Aliens review that Cameron also layers details about equipment and technology for the Space Marines. He makes the science-fiction world real by focusing so much on all the gear and technological ways that the characters will approach and attack the aliens.

Anders: I think that the two motifs of water and technology inform each other. The term “cyborg” has its origins in things like space suits and diving suits, enhancements or “augmentations” to humans that allow us to inhabit hostile environments we otherwise wouldn’t be able to. And no environment on Earth is more hostile than underwater. And it covers 70 percent of our planet. I think that the use of technology to explore the underwater is part of the origin of Cameron’s twin interests, and how they’re connected. And it bolsters my contention that The Abyss is the master key in some ways. As I note in my review, the history of growing up by the roar of Niagara Falls and watching Jacques Cousteau documentaries leads him to recognize, first, the power of water as a raw force of nature, and second, that technology can help us to learn more about and explore these new environments.

Anton: This is why, in my Aliens review, I said that Cameron sees outer space as being like the ocean. They are both alien and inhospitable environments for humans, places we cannot normally live, without the aid of technology.

Aren: The opening lines of Cameron’s Aliens screenplay reads: “Silent and endless. The stars shine like the love of God…cold and remote.” Also sounds like the ocean.

Anton: Awesome find, Aren! You should have told me that for my Aliens review!

Aren: My bad.

Anton: Cameron’s devoted his life to movies about both space and the ocean. And, fourthly, that other environment that we can only connect to, perhaps, in an instantaneous way, through advanced technology: I mean, the future. So time travel as well as is about joining together things that could not normally exist together except through technology. On the positive end of things, Cameron sees technology as a bridge between the incompatible. On the negative, as in The Terminator, it divides and destroys.

Anders: The other thing to note is how Cameron himself is deeply invested in both water and technology. He’s not just “interested” in them, he is an accomplished diver and, as is often noted, a true pioneer in deep sea exploration—

Anton: Which we will totally get to in our reviews of his underwater documentaries.

Anders: —And on a film set, he literally knows how to do all the jobs. He’s not just moving people around. He’s intimately invested in the technical side of filmmaking.

Anton: Yes, this raises a fascinating point about the role of technology in his film productions and how that perhaps alters or shapes in some way the emergent themes. So, for The Abyss, he is pioneering new technology to tell a story about underwater oil rig divers who, themselves, have pioneered new technology. Advances in stop motion and CGI are able to tell the story about advanced robots. Does that put the cinema on the continuum of possibly bad technology that the Terminator films caution us about?

Aren: That’s an interesting connection you point out. I’m not sure that we could say that Cameron thinks filmmaking technology has a bad side. In fact, I think as we’ll see in Titanic and his deep-sea documentaries, he actually thinks the very nature of filmmaking technology can undo some of the negative aspects of technology in the past. The films, with their use of diving and filmmaking technology, create a positive out of a negative. It’s like the T-800 being reprogrammed in T2.

Favourite Films from This Stage in Cameron’s Career

Aren: Would we all agree that, aside from Piranha II, all of Cameron’s early films are successes?

Anton: Well, you guys didn’t let me write my contrarian take about the raw authenticity of Piranha II, and how Cameron has only gotten more polished and thus more contained and inauthentic since his energetic first effort.

I kid, but I maybe had a bit better time with that schlocky movie, in spite of all my bashing of schlocky horror movies in October’s Roundtable, than either of you. I guess I’m a hypocrite.

Aren: It’s very possible. You mentioned that the bad humour didn’t bother you as much as it did me.

Anders: As I note above, we gave 10 out of 10 to all the next four films in our published reviews.

Aren: So within those other films in the early phases of his career, The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which one is your favourite? Anders, I know you’ve always been very fond of The Abyss.

Anders: I love The Abyss, and it was a favourite of mine for many years even before I really deepened my appreciation of Cameron. But I think on this rewatch I’d go with the original Terminator as my favourite by a hair. I loved it so much this time I watched it twice in close succession and finally invested in a Blu-ray copy. I find it just so wonderful as a story and I love the two main characters. And while I agree with you on how good Arnold is in T2, I really like him as a villain in the first film. And it’s a good Nativity movie—the Annunciation to the Mary figure, the saviour with initials J.C., the Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt—to be somewhat seasonally minded! But T2 and Aliens are also masterful. I didn’t review them all, but I give all four of these films my highest rating. But in order, The Terminator, The Abyss, T2, Aliens, and in another universe, under a rock, Piranha II.

Anton: I said in my review of Aliens that I think it might be Cameron’s most solid movie all around, across all dimensions of film, if we account for narrative, character, themes, action, suspense, special effects. See, I think he achieves a greater height in particular dimensions in other films, but I think everything in the theatrical cut of Aliens is excellent. There is no cheese, no lines or scenes I might cut. In the special edition, I would get rid of the early LV-426 scenes, which take away from the narrative progression. But it’s also Cameron’s least romantic and least earnest film, based on a movie he didn’t make, so maybe that says something about me and Cameron. It’s also a damn dark and relentless movie, without the romance that he even interjects into The Terminator.

I appreciated The Terminator more this time around. It’s not just a good opening film and a decent prelude to T2. It’s a legitimately great movie in its own right.

I’ve always enjoyed The Abyss, but rewatching it, that is to say, the special edition, I do think it has some material that doesn’t need to be there (but the special edition is vastly better than the theatrical, from what I remember). The Abyss has incredible parts, but it doesn’t strike me as perfect, as a 10. But I do love the film’s atmosphere and slow-building suspense and the mystery of its deep-sea exploration. The final journey to the depths is profound, if a tad sentimental in its resolution.

I might be damning myself to a particular circle of film buff hell by saying that I like Terminator 2 arguably less now than I once did, as a young adult. Or maybe it’s just that I no longer see T2 as being a cut above his works of the 1980s. It’s the first film in which I can see Cameron’s later tendencies and approach, where everything is a bit more stilted and wooden and super-polished and textbook blockbuster four-quadrant. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great action movie, but it isn’t among my favourite movies anymore. It might not be my favourite Terminator any more. I think I like the Sarah Connor stuff less than in the first film, have never loved the boy John, and think the film contains fewer scenes than I remember. It’s pretty straightforward. They go to Dyson and it kind of ends. But it’s still excellent, and a great action movie.

So, right now, I’m saying Aliens, The Terminator, T2 and The Abyss, and then Piranha II, far, far away, naturally.

Aren: I get what you’re saying about T2, although I don’t quite agree that it’s fallen in my estimation. As I lay out in my review, I think it’s essentially a perfect sequel. It embodies everything we come to expect in a sequel. But it is not a significantly more complex movie than The Terminator. It’s simply bigger, with a bigger budget, better effects, larger scale action scenes, broader moments of levity. I long waffle between whether I like The Terminator or T2 more and I think at the moment, I’d go with The Terminator as the better film. I can’t help but think of what Anders points out about the ending, the shot of Sarah driving into the storm. It’s just so perfect, one of those cinematic moments that gives me chills. It captures the overwhelming effect of the film and is such a distillation of modern fears and the inevitability of human destruction, but also the bravery of facing the future head on. It’s fatalistic, but also romantic. I love it.

So for Part 1 of the career of James Cameron, I’d go with The Terminator as the best, then Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Aliens comes next. I now fully admit it’s a masterpiece that stands next to the original, but I don’t think it captures the totality of what I love about Cameron as a filmmaker. I appreciate The Abyss much more now than I used to. I admit it’s great, but I wouldn’t give it a perfect 10 rating. I think it’s too long and perhaps a little too enamoured in the filmmaking and diving toys over the storytelling.

But these are all great movies and it’s remarkable that after the (in my mind) justifiable misfire of Piranha II, Cameron went on an all-time run of science fiction movies. What comes later is more divisive, but I think any cinephile who knows what they’re talking about should admit Cameron’s run from The Terminator to Terminator 2: Judgment Day earns a special place in the pantheon of science-fiction cinema.

Anton: Yup, one hell of a run.