It's kind of insane that James Cameron has only directed nine films over the course of his career. While similarly renowned elder statesmen of cinema such as Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese have dozens upon dozens of movies to their name apiece, Cameron's latest offering, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is only his ninth time at bat.
This is even more ludicrous when you consider just what a pivotal role Cameron has played in pushing the medium of cinema and the technology surrounding it forward for the entirety of his career.
From his directorial debut with The Terminator back in 1984 to now, James Cameron has continued to push the envelope and find new ways to deliver heart-racing, white-knuckled, emotional stories to audiences.
As such, ranking Cameron's is a monumental challenge, but it's one we must embark on nevertheless.
9. The Abyss (1989)
For the record, being the worst James Cameron movie is a lot like being the poorest man in a room full of millionaires. And, that's The Abyss.
For his third feature film, Cameron got to explore his fascination with underwater ecosystems, and the result is a compelling watch and essential stepping stone in the filmmaker's larger oeuvre, but it's far from his best.
8. True Lies (1994)
True Lies is far and away the least ambitious film that Cameron ever made, which puts it in a unique position within this list. Every other film throughout his catalog has seen him ruthlessly pushing forward on a technological front or striving to grow as an artist unto himself or both, but True Lies is the iconic director just coasting, and clearly having a blast while doing so.
Cameron and star Arnold Schwarzenegger had clearly had a great time making Terminator 2: Judgement Day a few years prior and just wanted to keep playing within that large-scale action-spectacle sandbox. And play they do; True Lies is infectiously fun, soaring off the back of the insane chemistry between Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, and the sheer cinema-of-attraction gusto of Cameron.
7. Avatar (2009)
Cameron's first foray into the world of Pandora has been mired in faux-controversy ever since its release and subsequent monolithic commercial success, but suffice it to say, Avatar still kicks butt.
If nothing else, it is an absolute delight to see Cameron at the forefront of such boundary-pushing technology and using it to reach such high-octane emotional highs. There are gripes to be had with the film, but even if for the sheer intensity and immersion of the mid-film, attack-on-Home tree battle sequence alone, Avatar has earned my affection.
To be honest, my brain generally kind of tunes out when it comes to fully CGI action sequences at this point. So many of them in the modern blockbuster landscape just feel so monotonous and cookie-cutter that I fail to get even the vaguest of thrills from them. But even now, Avatar gets my blood pumping: there's a level of scale, scope, and ferocious impact there that cements it alongside other auteur-driven CG projects of the time like Scorsese's Hugo or Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin in my mind.
6. The Terminator (1984)
After working in the business for years, with roles like a matte painter on John Carpenter's Escape from New York and getting unceremoniously fired from the director's chair of his would-be-debut Piranha II: The Spawning, Cameron finally got to make his proper cinematic debut with this science-fiction, action, slasher hybrid that absolutely rocks.
In the present day, with the glut of sequels and spinoff media that the film has inspired, it's easy to forget just how gnarly the original Terminator is. Working off a low budget and stretching it for every cent it was worth, Cameron and his team delivered a taut, tight, and unrelenting thrill-ride that remains a testament to the director's vision, even now. One of the great debut films of all time, The Terminator rules.
5. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
After spending more than a decade away from the public eye, outside of producing films like Robert Rodriguez's Alita: Battle Angel, Cameron returned to the box office with the release of the first Avatar sequel, Avatar: The Way of the Water.
The film gave Cameron the chance to begin to peel back the lid on the amount of insane stuff he had cooked up during this prolonged incubation period, and the results are staggering.
Avatar: The Way of Water is a true-blue Cameron sequel, in the sense that it improves upon its predecessor in every way, simultaneously going bigger and more personal, all in the service of a rip-roaring good time at the cinema. Way of Water has richer characters, even more dynamic action set pieces, and straight-up one of the most go-for-broke, heart-in-mouth third acts of any film of the past decade. It's unbelievable stuff that still leaves my jaw on the floor.
4. Titanic (1997)
No one in the history of filmmaking understands more adeptly than Cameron: heavy is the head that wears the crown. And indeed, between the Avatar films and Titanic, Cameron has endured more than his fair share of criticism and backlash, largely because his films have proven to be so consistently profitable. However, it bares being said; the reason a film like Titanic blew up at the box office was thanks in large part to the simple fact that it's incredible.
Everything about Titanic feels like a miracle, in the sense that it all could have (and by many accounts, should have) gone so wrong. For further proof of precisely that, look no further than something like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor from a few years later, which cribs all the wrong notes from the film and is a bona fide disaster because of it.
Instead, Cameron delivers one of the greatest feats of pathos-driven spectacle filmmaking in the history of the medium. A love tale whose emotions feel absolutely gargantuan, meeting the scale and scope of the tragic disaster and technological innovation on display. An unfathomable accomplishment, to this day.
3. Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)
Cameron's latest film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, was just released on Dec. 19, 2025. The movie is among his very best; the go-for-broke blockbuster epic to end all blockbuster epics.
Building upon the world established so immersively and cohesively in Avatar and the characters and stakes so emotionally fleshed out in The Way of Water, Fire and Ash plays out as an unbelievable payoff.
It is very much an inside-baseball kind of film, in the sense that it isn't interested in holding your hand through the story or spending a lot of time covering what happened in the previous films. It thrusts you right back into the world of Pandora in vivid, visceral fashion and doesn't let up for its entire three-hour runtime.
Fire and Ash features not only some of the biggest and most bombastic action set pieces of Cameron's whole career, but it also has some of the most incisive and personal character moments. It's truly gobsmacking.
2. Aliens (1986)
When one of the most firing-on-all-cylinder, hooting-and-hollering-inducing blockbuster films of all time is No. 2 on your list, that means you're a pretty amazing filmmaker. That is the case with Cameron.
Hot off of The Terminator, Cameron made a sequel to Ridley Scott's instant classic Alien from nearly a decade prior, that built upon that film in organic and authentic fashion, while audaciously upsizing everything about it. What was once a claustrophobic science-fiction horror film gets mutated into a science-fiction, atomic-dread-indebted science-fiction blockbuster in the process, resulting in one of the single most thrilling cinematic viewings ever: Aliens.
It's worth noting, though, that even at this early of a stage in his career, Cameron so clearly understood the value of character. For all the technical mastery and heart-pumping, visceral action on display, what really makes Aliens feel like such a palpable raising of the stakes from Alien is the way in which Cameron and Sigourney Weaver tackle the character of Ripley. Here, she goes from being a quintessential final girl to one of the most iconic female protagonists of all time,
1. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
Nearly a decade after making his incendiary debut with the first installment, Cameron returned to deliver a similarly stakes-raising, scope-widening sequel to his own film, Terminator. The result, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, is one of the greatest action blockbusters ever committed to celluloid.
Infamously, the opening future-set prologue of Terminator 2 cost more to make than the entirety of the first film, and every single cent of that money is up on the screen for the entirety of the film's two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
The result is the most potent encapsulation of everything that makes a Cameron film so special.