James Cameron Can't Direct

That's a little too much... How about he can't direct actors. In case you don't know Mr. Cameron let's run down his keystone films: Terminator, Terminator 2, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies, Titanic. Quite a list of critical & box office success. And outside of True lies, The Abyss and Terminator 2 some seriously sketchy acting.

Why am I bringing this up? One of my favorite websites, Firstshow.net ran down a big ole list of SyFy :P movies that hottly anticpated this year, and they said this about James Cameron

From Terminator to Aliens to The Abyss, he's brought us some of the greatest sci-fi movies of all-time, and he's ready to do it all over again.

The all over again line is talking about his 3D space adventure Avatar set to be released this December. It will most likely kick some serious ass but this garbage about Aliens being one of the greatest SyFy films of all-time needs to stop. When was the last time you watched that movie? There is so much terrible acting in it that it's practically unwatchable.

Try this on for size. Watch the first film Ridley Scott's Alien and then watch Aliens within 24 hours. There is absolutely no comparison. There is not a weak link in the entire production of Alien. Released in 1979 the production quality still holds up, the intense plot and acting have you sitting on the edge of your seat the whole film, and the freaking tag line is In space no one can hear you scream. As far as I'm concerned that is the be all and end all tag line.

Now Aliens doesn't have a bad plot. Returning to that planet makes sense. But the acting and "high octane" action scenes... dreadful. The characters in Alien never talk like anything other than what they are space explorers. Bill Paxton and Michael Biehn in Aliens... they are the epitome of terrible. This space crew feels like a 1980s crew of marines sent up into space to hollar catch phrases and fire off ridiculously huge weapons.

The Alien franchise had the sincere possibility of being something amazing. On par with the greatness of the first Godfather films or the original Star Wars movies but James Cameron Aliens changed the framework of the whole game. It's the reason Aliens 3 was so horrible. Studios are like sharks and when Aliens spilled the tasty drug of franchise blood they meddled with it. Diluting the concept of Aliens 3 so bad it killed the franchise. So bad infact that director David Fincher didn't want anything to do with Aliens 3.

Shoveling more dirt on Michael Biehn would be cruel and I don't think we need to recount the tragedy that is the acting in Titanic, outside of getting actors who can just feel what their characters need... James Cameron cannot direct actors at all.