James Cameron is, in fact, King of the World.

Because I hate life, I read US Weekly. Recently, Linda Hamilton, one of James Cameron's innumerable ex-wives, quoted him as saying the following during their marriage: "anyone can be a father or a husband. There are only five people in the world who can do what I do." Now, at first blush, this seems like the ravings of a cartoonish egomaniac, exactly the sort of uber-douche whose tyrannical behavior on his film sets has become the stuff of Hollywood legend. But after thinking about it for a bit, I realized that, if anything, Cameron is actually being modest in that quote.

As far as I can tell, there is exactly one person on earth who can do what James Cameron does, and that's him. What does Cameron do, exactly? He conceives, from story to screenplay to storyboard to every aspect of technical filmmaking to post-production, movies that make obscene amounts of money and grab the zeitgeist with both hands. Nobody else, that's who. All other possible claimants fail at least one critical test. Spielberg? The man doesn't write his own screenplays. Peter Jackson? Lord of the Rings was an amazing accomplishment, but he had a huge built-in fanbase created by the Tolkien books to work with. George Lucas is really the only other contender, and he hasn't had an idea that didn't involve midichlorians or gay Jamaican lizards since 1984. For all his reliance on cliche story elements, Cameron finds a way to make those cliches resonate with millions and millions of people. Not just enough to get people to shell out billions of dollars to see his movies (he wrote, produced and directed the two highest grossing films OF ALL TIME!), but enough to make the characters, dialogue and iconography of those movies indelible fixtures of the pop culture landscape. All from shit that he just made up. I mean, the dude invented a new kind of camera in order to shoot Avatar. Even if his screenplays are weak, there's no denying the power of his images and his ability to hit the sweet spot of audience appeal, and I care a lot more about what he comes up with next than whether or not he remembers Suzy Amis' birthday.