"For me, the ending comes first and then you write backwards, and all the threads converge on that. And when it happens, there's a rightness about it that resonates through the rest of the film."
That "rightness" seems to strike a chord with critics, who had heaped an unusual amount of praise on his early films, which included such big-budget sci-fi blockbusters as The Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss. "No one in the movies today can match Cameron's talent for . . . hyperbolic, big-screen action," declared Hal Hinson in the Washington Post. Los Angeles Times contributor Kirk Honeycutt simply proclaimed: "[He] is Hollywood's preeminent science fiction director." At the same time, Cameron was generally regarded as a difficult, egocentric perfectionist, who had little regard for production budgets or the feelings of people with whom he worked. "Obsessive and hot-tempered, [Cameron has] developed a reputation as a throwback to commandant-style Hollywood directors such as Michael Curtiz and Erich von Stroheim," Nancy Griffin reported in Esquire.
Titanic Success
However, in the wake of Titanic's unprecedented success--eleven Oscars, a host of other major awards, almost universal critical praise, and (most important of all) a staggering $1 billion in gross revenues worldwide, Cameron is viewed much more sympathetically.
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