James Cameron Hasn’t Made a Non-Avatar Film Since 1997 — Is He Playing It Too Safe?

James Cameron has spent almost 20 years living on Pandora. Impressive, exhausting, and yeah, a little frustrating if you miss the guy who once jumped from killer cyborgs to deep-sea horror to spy-comedy without blinking. The new Avatar is out, it is huge (of course), and Cameron is finally talking like he might step off the banshee and try something else.

Where Cameron has been locked in

Since Titanic in 1997, Cameron’s feature directing has basically been one lane: Avatar. That’s only three movies this century, but they’ve all been monster hits, which makes him the highest-grossing filmmaker on the planet. Commercially, that’s a slam dunk. Creatively, it’s more complicated.

Before all this, the ’80s and ’90s Cameron run was a flex: The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies, then Titanic blowing the doors off the industry and the Oscars. Two of those are regularly tossed into the "best sequel ever" argument. After Titanic, he could have done anything. What he chose was to spend the next two decades building and expanding a single sci-fi world. Technically jaw-dropping? Absolutely. But it does make you wonder what other films we never got because Pandora took over his calendar.

Now playing: Avatar: Fire & Ash

The latest entry keeps the franchise’s box office muscles toned and, judging by the early response, lands right where these movies usually land: audiences are into it, critics are mixed-to-positive.

• Title: Avatar: Fire & Ash
• Director: James Cameron
• Rotten Tomatoes: 65% critics, 91% audience
• Runtime: 3h 17m
• Release date: December 19, 2025

Three Avatar features in 16 years is not the most prolific pace, but each one is an engineering project and a spectacle event. That part of the Cameron mythology is very much intact.

Is he done with Pandora?

Not totally. Cameron says he still has stories he wants to tell on Pandora, but after Fire & Ash he plans to dial back the all-Avatar-all-the-time approach and branch out. Translation: he’s finally ready to make something that isn’t blue.

What that could be (and what it won’t)

The obvious question is: what’s next? He’s teased interest in circling back to Terminator, though he hasn’t cracked the new angle yet and he’s clear about one thing: if he does it, it wouldn’t be a nostalgia replay.

"I can safely say he won't be [in it]. It's time for a new generation of characters. I insisted Arnold had to be involved in 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate, and it was a great finish to him playing the T-800. There needs to be a broader interpretation of Terminator and the idea of a time war and super intelligence. I want to do new stuff that people aren't imagining."

That’s a pretty direct statement: no Arnold, bigger canvas, and a fresh take if and when he returns to that sandbox.

The big what-if

Here’s the weird part when you zoom out: the guy who gave us Aliens and Terminator 2, then won all the Oscars with Titanic, basically made one franchise his full-time job for 20 years. It paid off at the box office, obviously. But in terms of variety, it’s hard not to imagine the alternate timeline where Cameron kept bouncing between genres and reinventing himself every few years. That “what would he have made instead?” question is going to linger no matter what he does next.

For now, Avatar: Fire & Ash is in theaters, the numbers are big, and Cameron sounds ready to mix it up again. If his career has taught us anything, it’s this: don’t bet against him when he says he’s got a new trick up his sleeve.

What’s your take on Cameron’s post-Titanic run? Stick with Pandora forever, or time to switch gears?