In his 1997 review of James Cameron’s “Titanic,” Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers wrote that the film was “shot with a poet's eye and a tin ear for dialogue.” This type of criticism of Cameron’s writing has been around for decades. The man is a visual master but isn’t necessarily known for his poetic dialogue.
When it comes to his screenplays, James Cameron’s writing has long been the target of criticism by fans and critics. After all, it should be noted that one of the few Oscar nominations Cameron didn’t get for “Titanic” was in the Screenplay category.
Can we really consider a writer/director with a “tin ear” for dialogue a visionary filmmaker? I tend to believe so. Cinema can very much be a visually driven medium, and Denis Villeneuve seems to be in agreement about that (“frankly, I hate dialogue”).
Cameron is now finally tackling these criticisms in a new interview with Empire Magazine. In fact, he’s gloating about how much money his films have made at the box-office, and that he couldn’t care less about what the haters think.
“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 the outlet. “You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”
Fair enough. Of course, commercial success doesn’t automatically equal to prime artistry, but it’s hard to argue about how valuable and important Cameron has been to the medium, especially with a filmography that includes “Aliens,” “The Terminator,” “T2,” and “Titanic.”
Ironically, despite having had films sprinkled with clunky dialogue, Cameron is still responsible for some of the most iconic lines in film history (“I’m the king of the world,” “I’ll be back,” “"Get away from her, you B*TCH!"). Sometimes, the simplest writing can be the most effective.