The Oscars Snubbed the 21st Century’s Best Sci‑Fi — James Cameron Was Done

James Cameron has thoughts about the Oscars, and he did not keep them to himself. The Avatar filmmaker says the Academy still has a blind spot for sci-fi, and he pointed right at Denis Villeneuve and the Dune films as Exhibit A.

I don't think about the Academy Awards that much on purpose. They don't tend to honor sci-fi films. It's almost never properly recognized. Denis Villeneuve made these two magnificent Dune films. Apparently, these films made themselves because he wasn't considered as a director.

What Cameron's getting at

A clip of Cameron's comments made the rounds on X, and the core point is pretty simple: the Academy will shower big, ambitious sci-fi movies with craft trophies but stop short when it comes to the top creative awards.

Dune: Part One is the tidy case study. Villeneuve and his team delivered a massive, precise piece of filmmaking in 2021 that played both with audiences and critics. The film ran the table in several below-the-line categories at the 2022 Oscars… but Villeneuve didn't even make the Best Director lineup. And while he was nominated as a producer for Best Picture, he was shut out of directing again when the sequel arrived, even as Part Two later added more wins to the series in 2025.

What Dune: Part One actually won at the 2022 Oscars

• Best Cinematography — Greig Fraser
• Best Film Editing — Joe Walker
• Best Original Score — Hans Zimmer
• Best Production Design — Patrice Vermette, Zsuzsanna Sipos
• Best Visual Effects — Paul Lambert, Tristan Myles, Brian Connor, Gerd Nefzer
• Best Sound — Mac Ruth, Mark A. Mangini, Theo Green, Doug Hemphill, Ron Bartlett

That haul is no small thing, but Cameron's point lands because it highlights a pattern: sci-fi can dominate the crafts and still get ghosted in the director race.

So, does Cameron deserve a directing Oscar for Avatar?

Short version: if you care about scale, technology, and world-building being welded to giant studio filmmaking, you can make a real argument. Cameron has already won Oscars for Titanic, but for the Avatar films specifically, he's only gotten nominations in the top categories while Pandora soaks up the technical love. Whether or not Avatar changed your life, the franchise is a milestone in how movies are made and how they look. It's also exactly the kind of work the Academy tends to credit everywhere except the spot with the director's name on it.

Bottom line: Cameron isn't whining about his own mantel. He's calling out a long-running awards blind spot, using Villeneuve's Dune run — big wins, bigger snub — to make it obvious. Do you think the Academy will ever meet sci-fi in the middle?