As Avatar: Fire and Ash hits cinemas worldwide, we figured now is the perfect time to step back and take a look at director James Cameron’s entire sci-fi slate, ranking them from worst to best.
The Canadian filmmaker has carved out an iconic status in the movie industry for his visual effects artistry, incredible research, and extraordinary storytelling – and while The Terminator might be the first sci-fi title that comes to mind, it actually wasn’t his debut.
We’re not adding Avatar: Fire & Ash to the list just yet — we need to stew on it before we can firmly slot it into the rankings — but otherwise, here’s every James Cameron sci-fi movie ranked, worst to best.
6. The Abyss
Release date: August 9, 1989 | Cast: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn | Rotten Tomatoes: 76% on the Tomatometer
The deep sea is scary enough, but you know what makes it even scarier? Finding aliens down there. Unfortunately for Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, — starring as estranged husband and wife, Bud and Lindsey — their passion for diving takes them on a horrifyingly claustrophobic adventure to the depths of the ocean.
When a nuclear submarine disappears, the crew of a civilian oil rig goes on a search and rescue mission with jaw-dropping consequences. For James Cameron, who’d already risen to fame with The Terminator and Aliens, it was a watery shift that no one saw coming. And, unfortunately, it wasn’t a massive hit at the time (though it still won an Oscar for best visual effects).
More recently, though, it’s become a well-loved sci-fi pick, with a revised (and extended to a hefty 171 minutes) version that viewers are even more eager to dive right into and experience the unexpected.
Cameron tells a fantastically tense sci-fi tale, gripping audiences with the heart-wrenching relationship of Bud and Lindsey, and the romantic tension that builds throughout is a welcome reprieve from the intense water-dwelling extraterrestrials. Nothing like a fear for human life to put your love into perspective, right?
5. Avatar: The Way of Water
Release date: December 16, 2022 | Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang | Rotten Tomatoes: 76% on the Tomatometer
13 years after Avatar stormed onto the big screen, the sequel arrived. And it says a lot about Cameron’s abilities as a director that it felt like no time had passed at all. Jake Sully has fully integrated himself into his life as a Na’vi, still with Neytiri, and now with a family to look after. Unfortunately, they don’t get their ‘happily ever after’ as humanity returns to Pandora. So instead, they get to star in another exhilarating action movie.
Once again, Cameron intertwines the pillars of his directorial work: outstanding visuals, epic storytelling, and an unwavering ability to create tension. VFX is the cornerstone of a movie like Avatar, transforming actors into their Na’vi form and formulating their lives in a whole new world. Cameron’s always had bigger plans for Avatar, though, telling Variety: “We were working on three scripts and then it turned into four.”
In fact, Avatar: Fire and Ash is the second half of the original The Way of Water script. With plans for another sequel, that kind of freedom and ability to plan ahead is something most directors can only dream of. For Cameron, it’s a well-deserved reality.
4. The Terminator
Release date: October 26, 1984 | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton | Rotten Tomatoes: 90% on the Tomatometer
We’ve been talking about The Terminator for years. I even ranked The Terminator movies back in 2022 – and it’s still an absolute pleasure to discuss. And yet, it’s in fourth place on this list, a testament to just how strong Cameron’s sci-fi chops are.
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as The Terminator, a time-travelling cyborg on a mission to take out one Sarah Connor. Why? Well, because one day she’s destined to become the mother of humankind’s salvation, and as far as The Terminator is concerned, that can’t happen.
Not only is The Terminator a bona fide sci-fi classic, but it’s the first major work of Cameron’s career, and its success was the spark to sent him on the path to directorial superstardom. Up until this point, Cameron had been mainly working in visual effects, and he poured everything he’d learned up to this point into The Terminator, bringing the entire story to life in a way that’s still incredible to watch to this day.
3. Avatar
Release date: December 18, 2009 | Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez | Rotten Tomatoes: 81% on the Tomatometer
Cinematically breathtaking, deeply immersive, and the highest-grossing movie of all time, Avatar is a piece of cinematic history. It feels almost criminal to place it third, but perhaps Cameron shouldn’t be so good at directing sci-fi movies. Avatar is the first movie I saw in 3D in the cinema, and I distinctly remember feeling like if I just reached out, I could touch the falling leaves of Pandora.
Avatar sees Jake Sully, a paraplegic veteran, on a mission to the moon Pandora, in an entirely new form, adopting that of the Na’vi people. But while he’s there to gather a rare resource, he falls in love and vows to protect Pandora and the Na’vi as his own.
The groundbreaking use of 3D technology was one of the main reasons Avatar was such and is still such a huge success, but beyond that, it just tells such a compelling and relatable tale.
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Release date: July 3, 1991 | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick | Rotten Tomatoes: 91% on the Tomatometer
Terminator 2: Judgment Day holds the top spot amongst the best Terminator movies, and it’s also arguably one of the best sequels to any movie, ever. Acting as Cameron’s own conclusion to the Terminator franchise (disputes over rights saw his directorial ties severed after this), it’s a sequel that took everything about the first movie and made it even better.
In Terminator 2, Arnie returns as the T-800, but this time as a reprogrammed good cyborg protecting a young John Connor. That leaves a gap for a bad cyborg to take his place, and that’s where Robert Patrick’s T-1000 comes into play.
Action-packed and full of robotic terror, Terminator 2 is the T-800’s redemption arc perfectly translated onto the big screen with Cameron’s dedication to telling a perfectly paced story. And, by this point, Cameron has sci-fi thrills down to a tee, building on his work from the first Terminator movie. It’s not quite the best sci-fi movie he’s ever made, though; that title goes to…
1. Aliens
Release date: July 18, 1986 | Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton | Rotten Tomatoes: 94% on the tomatometer
Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen! You knew it was going to be Aliens.
Picking up a sequel when you didn’t direct the previous title is a hard task, but Cameron’s bold decision gave us a bigger and (arguably) better Alien movie than the original. In fact, between this and T2, Cameron might be the best sequel director out there.
For Aliens, the xenomorphs are back. We all knew it would happen, but none more so than Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who returns after a deep freeze to find that big corporation Weyland-Yutani is very close to rattling their nest again.
And here comes Cameron’s absolute genius in the director’s chair, building on the sci-fi horror of the first with visually terrifying xenomorphs, suffocating tension, and world-building prowess that truly takes you away from reality. Ellen Ripley may have started as a character that Cameron didn’t have a say in, but he transformed her role into an Oscar nomination-worthy performance, cemented in a sci-fi world that you’d be primed to visit again and again.
