He followed up two years later with writing and directing the film Aliens. In 1989, he did the same with The Abyss which is an amazing movie that didn’t get as much press. He received a lot of praise for his special effects in the movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). His film True Lies came out in 1994 (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Paxton, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tom Arnold), and I loved it. Not only did it have action, it was extremely funny especially the rolls of Arnold and Paxton.
Three years later, he crushed it with the biggest film of all time: Titanic. He won Academy Awards for this film as Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Film Editing.
It took him ten years to produce the amazing 3D film: Avatar (2009). To this day, it is the greatest grossing 3D movie that has ever been created. It won several awards, but people were shocked that he didn’t win Best Director and instead his ex-wife won for her movie The Hurt Locker. It was a strange moment at the Academy Awards since Avatar had grossed significantly more revenues than her movie. The total gross revenues from his films have reached $8 billion dollars worldwide. Avatar and Titanic are two of the greatest performing movies in history.
Cameron took a break from producing Big Box Office films and worked on some other projects such as documentaries. He helped develop new technology called the Digital 3D Fusion Camera System. He loves the ocean and did several documentaries on the topic. He improved filming technology underwater along with remote vehicle technologies for underwater submersibles; basically, remote controlled mini-subs. Then in 2012, he became the first person to reach the Mariana Trench using a submersible called the Deepsea Challenger. The trench is 36,000 feet deep which is amazing to me since the submarine I was assigned to could only go 1,000 feet deep. Only two other people have made it to the Trench after Cameron did.
On a personal level, Cameron’s love life hasn’t been as successful as his film career. He’s been married five times (once to Linda Hamilton), and has four children. He was extremely intelligent growing up and loved all things technical (his dad was an electrical engineer), but he couldn’t really find where he fit. He was a truck driver in Canada when he saw the movie: Star Wars in 1977, and he decided to head for Hollywood to get in the film business. He was 23 years old at the time and he worked behind the scenes learning everything he could about the business. Seven years later he was directing and writing the movie The Terminator.
A biographer wrote that Cameron was an artist and scientist and that he used these abilities to become one of, if not the, greatest director in history.