James Cameron | No 1 | Film Power 100
Director: Avatar, Titanic
James Cameron, 56, may not have won many admirers when, quoting the lead character in his mega-hit Titanic, he accepted his Oscar for best director in 1998 with the announcement that he was now "king of the world". But this is no personality contest, and understatement only gets you so far in Hollywood. Twelve years but only one movie later, Cameron occupies the top two spots in the list of the highest-grossing movies of all time, with Titanic (worldwide gross: $1.8bn) second only to Avatar ($2.7bn). Those figures are so high that it seems scarcely worth mentioning that another of his films, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, stands in the lower reaches of the top 100 with takings of over $519m; loose change, really.
Currently Cameron is preoccupied with his role as the motivating force behind the contemporary 3D resurgence; indeed, he is almost the entire reason why it is no longer viewed exclusively as a sideshow gimmick. No wonder he took umbrage at the recent Piranha remake, accusing it of "cheapening" the medium: he had, after all, spent the last decade working out ways to jazz it up. No film-maker has taken a more passionate interest and involvement in cinema technology than this Canadian-born writer-director-producer, who pushed 3D and computer-generated character creation to a point of sophistication that would enable him to make his Pocahontas-goes-science-fiction extravaganza. The knowledge he has gained as a founder of the effects and animation house Digital Domain was the key to the development of both Avatar and 3D: "If you don't have a project driving the technology," he said, "it just lies dormant."
But if it hadn't been 3D, it would have been something else: Cameron has to be at the forefront of innovation, just as he was nearly 20 years ago with Terminator 2. Maybe that's why it was so refreshing when his personal life came into play at the Academy awards ceremony, where he was competing with his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), for the best director prize. Bigelow won, but it would be churlish indeed to claim that the gentle rivalry hadn't introduced a pleasingly human, soapish note into Cameron's image as cinema's presiding techno-boffin. His next project is an adaptation of the manga series Battle Angel (in 3D, naturally). An underwater Avatar sequel is also promised, though not for at least another three years. No matter. The future is his. He can afford to take his time.