The Master of Sci-Fi Movies, Canada's Own James Cameron

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James Cameron

Pride of Canada James Cameron, who is undoubtedly one of the world's greatest and well-known filmmakers, was born on the 16th of August 1954, in a place called Kapuskasing, in Ontario, Canada.

James, who was the eldest of five siblings, and his family moved to California when he was 17, where, unsurprisingly considering his love of science-fiction, he began to study physics at Fullerton College.

His mother Shirley Cameron (formerly Shirley Lowe) was an artist and a nurse and his father Philip Cameron was an electrical engineer. It’s not difficult to see that he inherited his mother’s artistic talents and his father’s skill for engineering.

Indeed, he has used these skills and talents in countless interesting and innovative ways within his many roles in the field of filmmaking since.

In 1977 his life changed forever when he saw Star Wars for the first time and was so inspired that he decided to pursue a career in filmmaking. He was only 24 when he directed his first movie, a sci-fi short called Xenogenesis. This opened up a lot of doors for James and he began taking on more and more work as an art director, a production designer, a model maker, and - of course - a special effects artist.

All of these jobs ended up being the training for all the amazing projects which were yet to come in his life, but even right in the early stages James always put his own masterful vision into his work. This vision, along with his considerable talents and skills which give him the ability to recognize that vision, is how he has proven himself to be such an amazing director, screenwriter, editor, production designer, and executive producer.

His big break came in 1984 when the 3rd film he wrote and directed The Terminator defied low pre-release expectations by becoming a massive hit. Indeed, it topped the US box office for a full two weeks and, despite only using a relatively modest budget of $6.4 million, in the end, grossed an epic $78.3 million!

This incredible success solidified, not only Cameron’s career, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's position as a leading man in Hollywood, but also led to an enormously lucrative franchise which comprised of numerous sequels, a television series, novels and comic books, and even video games, and casino slot games. In fact to this day, if you are someone who plays at an online casino, real money can be won on “The Terminator 2” slot game, and if you do play at an online casino real money, it’s fun to try out these Hollywood spin-offs.

Since The Terminator films took off James Cameron has made one big epic film after another. Many of these movies have broken records in the box office and earned him countless awards for his different roles. None of these films have been quite as large as Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic, and then his incomparable 2009 film Avatar the latter of which was for a long time the highest-grossing film of all time - having made a whopping total of more than $3 billion, and grossing more than $2 billion!

After many delays, due in no small part to the pandemic, Avatar 2 which is rumoured to be called Avatar: The Way of Water is set to hit the cinemas in December 2022: And if the whispers are to be believed then Cameron is set to change the face of film yet again by using a whole host of new, ground-breaking innovations in the world of special effects.

We can only imagine what wonders he still has in store for all of us film lovers. What we can be sure of is that we can’t wait to find out!