James Cameron taunts critics of his dialogue: ‘Let me see your highest-grossing films’

Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s great.

I'd expect bitterness like that from a young newbie filmmaker, not him.

Always such a persuasive defense: how dare you criticize my art unless you can make more money doing it yourself.

His ego has always been a huge turnoff.

This is who he’s always been. Remember him crowing “I’m the king of the woooorld!” onstage at the Oscars?

"Sooner or later that fire I love about you Rose, that fire's gonna burn out."

Jack! rose! (Repeated 250 times)

Nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh.

Well he’s no George Lucas

The dialogue from Titanic is so bad that it’s good, like dialogue from an Ed Wood movie. I’ll give him that.

Most people are idiots they don’t care about his shitty dialogue and they live his shitty movies

There are a bunch of crappy best-selling novels also, with passages that would earn Ds and Fs in a college level, introductory writing course.

All he ever needed over the years was a good co-writer to fix things like dialogue. ("Paint me like one of your French girls, Jack.") But that would mean he'd have to share a writing credit, so no way. He's like Elon in that way. Me, God.

I'll always like him for tearing up his U.S. citizenship application after Dubya was reelected.

The expository dialogue in his films is always so heavy-handed and unnecessary. There is a scene in the original Avatar where Giovanni Ribisi talks about "Unobtanium" (cringe) and every line is spelling out things for the audience, I guess because the assumption was that everyone would be too dumb to figure it out without being told, in detail. I felt embarrassed for him, but he was just performing what was in the script.

R13 an editor would already be a godsend.

„Paint me like one of your French girls“ did become an iconic line, by the way.

He shoulda been in that Titanic tourist thingy that went boom.

He's such an asshole. But he's made some great films.

He seems like a miserable person to be and to be around.

Forgive me if I conjure up the Aspie troll, but Cameron is 100% part of their tribe.

An awful lot of film directors are aspies, from Orson Wells to Kubrick to Spielberg to Snyder, and on and on.

I wonder why that is

I just put all Aspie freaks on "Ignore" now. That includes all of you above me.

Go start your own forum devoted to discussing Aspies if that's what you want to do, but don;t do it here. It's not even an actual diagnosis anymore.

R22 I rarely diagnose Aspies, but (if there is such a disorder), James Cameron has it in spades. You can see it from space. If only 1% of the population are high-functioning autistic people, he’s one of them.

The thing is his films would be nigh unassailable if he just let someone else write the dialogue.

Do people watch his films for dialogue though?

I agree with him - it seems like a critique from jealousy. He's not writing deep existential dramas. Sometimes simple dialogue is best to keep the story moving along.

I think the bad dialogue reveals how much he lacks interpersonal communication skills. It’s not even close to the way people talk in real life.

His use of stock character types bugs me more than the dialogue those characters utter. It's one of the things I dislike about Aliens compared with its predecessor

[quote] I agree with him - it seems like a critique from jealousy.

They're all just JEALOUS!

"jealousy"?? Did you mean "envy"??

There is a difference between the two words.

JAMES YOU'RE SO STUPID !

Jealousy? Frustration, actually, because he could easily find a script doctor to take his films to another level instead of producing big budget movies with low budget dialogue.

[quote]"Sooner or later that fire I love about you Rose, that fire's gonna burn out."

Not only is it a stupid line, they’d known each other for about 12 seconds when he said it.

R21, Kubrick maybe but Orson Welles seemed very un-Aspie.

He gets a lifetime pass for me because of Aliens. I don't care how much of an asshole he is.

Right there he just fucked himself. He thinks artistic merit is bases on money. That’s trashy.

R33, when I started reading Welles' biography, that was the things that really jumped out at me, something I had never considered before. I did a little researching and it turns out that this is widely suspected, though I can't remember if biographer Simon Callow himself does.

I'm very sad that r22 won't get to enjoy this

I've watched a lot of old interview footage of Orson, R36, and he does not appear to display any problems with communication or social interaction: the opposite is true. The man was extremely charismatic and a born raconteur, and unlike many showbiz denizens he was also highly intelligent and actually interested in what other people have to say.

Hard to tell if they’re aspies or just assholes. Aspies can’t manage or “be the boss” so an aspie director…? Seems like a they would be few and far between.

What has he done lately?

[quote]Aspies can't manage or "be the boss" so an aspie director…? Seems like a they would be few and far between.

I would think that directing a film would be very challenging for someone who had impaired executive functioning. Also filmmaking frequently involves dealing with the unpredictable, which is not something autistic people tend to excel at.

[quote] It's one of the things I dislike about Aliens compared with its predecessor

Get away from him, you bitch!

Those comments are doing him any favors, he sounds defensive and childish for a man his age.

I took my mother to the Terminator 2 in a rerelease a couple of years ago. I was not allowed to watch it as a child because of the violence decried by the media. Imagine our surprise at the strong anti-gun message espoused by little Edward Furlong.

Anyway, I loved the movie, it was loads of fun.

I don't see how his dialogue is any worse than any other of the genre films of the 80s or 90s. All sci-fi, action, and horror films had an element of cheese back then. Is there anything better in any Clive Barker, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, or Paul Verhoeven films from that era?

Why does he care?

No one watches his films for the dialogue. An OG like himself, who has been around the block already knows this.

R13, that’s because his films were never about character development or decent dialogue.

The man makes films in order to test out his ideas and is clearly an innovator.

That’s pretty much it, which is beyond good enough for the bean counters, the studios, the economy, his audience, etc.

He needn’t ever throw down the gauntlet.

What a weird flex.