James Cameron taunts critics of his dialogue: ‘Let me see your highest-grossing films’

James Cameron has hit back against reviewers – and filmgoers – who criticise the dialogue in his films. Speaking to Empire for the 40th anniversary of The Terminator, Cameron said he now regards parts of the film as “pretty cringeworthy” but by and large an admirable effort, given the available resources.

“I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue,” he clarified, “but I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write. You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”

Cameron directed the highest-grossing film of all time, 2009’s Avatar, which made $2.9bn, as well as the third and fourth in that chart, with Avatar: The Way of Water ($2.3bn) and Titanic ($2.2bn).

The director was combative towards people who disparage the Avatar films despite their popularity, in a 2022 interview. “The trolls will have it that nobody gives a shit,” he said, “and they can’t remember the characters’ names or one damn thing that happened in the movie,” Cameron said. “Then they see the movie again and go, ‘Oh, OK, excuse me, let me just shut the fuck up right now.’ So I’m not worried about that.”

In the same interview, he addressed concerns some moviegoers had expressed over Avatar: The Way of Water’s three-hour runtime.

Related: James Cameron: ‘It’s harder to write sci-fi because we’re living in a sci-fi world’

“I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [TV] for eight hours,” Cameron said. “I can almost write this part of the review. ‘The agonizingly long three-hour movie … ’ It’s like, give me a fucking break. I’ve watched my kids sit and do five one-hour episodes in a row. Here’s the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it’s OK to get up and go pee.”

Cameron, 70, is working on three further Avatar sequels, as well as an adaptation of non-fiction book The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back.

His robust response echoes that of Francis Ford Coppola, 85, who has recently been keen to remind people that not every critic loved many of his best-regarded films when they were first released, and Ridley Scott, now gearing up to promote Roman epic Gladiator II.

Last year, Scott, 86, told those sceptical about the historical accuracy of his Napoleon biopic to “get a life”, adding: “Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.”

Told the French also didn’t like it, he said: “The French don’t even like themselves,” before administering strong words for those who doubted the existence of aliens: “How did the Egyptians build the pyramids? Rolling 20-tonne stones on logs? Fuck off!”