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James Cameron has a lot of flaws as a director, the chief one being the most exciting action sequence is usually the first one (Marine ass kicking in Alien, semi chase in T2 (though in this case there were visually cooler ones later), crane falling in the Abyss, just to name three), but one of the things he does well is set up those action sequences with pretty good detail.

Now, for the record, while I liked Aliens quite a bit, the queen was about the most boring solution he could have come up with, for what was an interesting set up in Alien (thank you restored footage); a weak excuse for a monster versus mechanical Ripley bot. I thought it was lame when I was a kid and I still think it's lame now (though the rest of Aliens was a very exciting action movie that had some good one-liners despite being a b grade war movie follow-up to a classic work of genius disguised as a b grade horror movie). Overall, Cameron is a slightly smarter, slightly more exciting, better attention to detail version of Jerry Bruckheimer. Sorry, it's true.

But where does Titanic fit in? It's Cameron's masterpeice, on all levels.

What? Don't believe me? Jumping on the Titanic backlash?

Titanic was a well paced, well put together action/romance, using all of Cameron's tools. Besides his anal attention to detail, one of the things Cameron does very well is clever explanation of upcoming events. Bill Paxon's little remembered computer graphic Titanic sinking speech is Cameron at his best.... not only greasing the wheels for letting the audience in on what was a complicated series of events when the ship was sinking (allowing him to stay with the characters, while showcasing his love for special effects), but it set an alarm clock countdown for the audience, letting them know exactly what was coming and when.

Wanna see how it's done badly? Watch Pearl Harbor... which not only started it's countdown nearly a fucking year before the attack, but offered no forewarning about the ships or Pearl Harbor itself... leaving most of the audience in the dark (all those 'historical accuracies' lost on all but the most studious of Pearl Harbor researchers). Yawn.

Titanic didn't 'just' garner an oscar or two... it was nominated for 14 and won 11; tied for the most ever. And while we all poo-poo the oscars and the politics involved, only one other movie was even in the same ballpark. And it was more oscars than all the other movies Cameron worked on combined (including Piranha 2)... and those were all for effects or tech (including T2, which won 4, all in tech catagories).

How else can we judge Titanic? Box Office sales? How about 1.8 billion (that's billion with a 'B') worldwide. No other movie has even crossed the billion mark, much less come close to 2 billion. The best Lord of the Rings barely broke 900 million and don't believe the hype: Return of the King may break 1 billion, but it ain't getting 1.8.

What's left? Titanic was his best reviewed, most award, and by far his top grossing movie. I'll step up and say I saw it 5 times in the theater. It's not on my top ten list and it certainly has some cheese in it, but I didn't pay 400 million dollars a ticket; most (if not all) of you saw it there, too.

I can only look at the raw numbers. Most. Successful. Movie. Ever. In any way that it matters. Cameron's best. work. ever., in all the ways it matters. No matter what he said after the backlash started, he spent 2 years of his life in research before filming even started (including very risky dives to the actual site), spent millions of dollars designing technology to film it, and gave up all his fees aside from the screenwriter one, in order to film it. It even cost him (another) marriage. No matter what he may say in hindsight, he thought it was the best work he ever did until that point, as well.

And, honestly, it's really a man-killing robot away from the Terminator movies. All of his movies are essentually sappy romances with monster or action (or both) skins dropped over them ("I came back in time for you, Sarah... I love you so much )