James Cameron shares brutally honest opinion on 'The Terminator'

James Cameron’s career as a director took off when he made 1984's The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Cameron is now the directing force behind three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films ever, with his 2009 epic Avatar being the number one. The sequel Avatar: The Way of Water comes third, after Avengers: Endgame, while Cameron’s 1997 mega hit Titanic.

Marking the 40th anniversary of The Terminator, Cameron revealed his thoughts on the movie in an interview with Empire.

He said: "I don’t think of it as some Holy Grail, that’s for sure. I look at it now and there are parts of it that are pretty cringeworthy, and parts of it that are like, 'Yeah, we did pretty well for the resources we had available.'"

However, he clarified that the cringeworthy part of the movie is "just the production value.”

He went on to defend his dialogues in the hit movies, which have been called cringeworthy from time to time.

He said: "I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue, but I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write.”

Addressing the dialogue critics, he added: "You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”

Talking further about his 1984 sci-fi hit, he recalled that he initially wanted to cast body-building legend Arnold as Kyle Reese, but thought to cast him as the antagonist after meeting him.

"I went to lunch to pull 'creative differences,' but I actually liked him," James Cameron recounted. "I was studying him at the restaurant, just watching the light from the window on his face and thinking, 'Holy crap, what a face! Forget the Reese thing. Arnold would make a hell of a Terminator.'"