I'm one of those weirdos who preferred the theatrical Aliens and Abyss.
Directors cut of Aliens just seemed so much slower paced, and Abyss was like they jammed in bits from a whole other movie taking you out of the isolation/immersion.
You're not weird.
Aliens theatrical cut is superior, imo. It's a masterclass in pacing.
The DC is fun for fans, but none of the extra scenes add anything the film was lacking. The one exception being the scene between Ripley and Burke regarding Ripley's daughter, which adds to the mother/daughter dynamic of her and Newt, but even then the TC gets that across perfectly well.
If it was easy to elicit that kind of emotion from an audience, everyone would do it and go cash a $1.8 billion dollar cheque, so I think you are understating the impact of Titanic considerably. Generally character depth is not really Cameron's strong suit.His film's are not really about "character" so much as they are about the journey (often times amazing) that the characters go on. Often times the characters are just Joe/Jane Average.
I know some people don't want to admit it, but Titanic probably is the most iconic Hollywood film of the last 25-30 years. I don't think anything else is really even that close. It is the last hurrah in a lot of ways of the classic Hollywood "epic" married with modern tech and filmmaking scope.
It was the mix of emotional stuff and technical marvel that did it, not just the emotional stuff... which wasn't anything special.
The technical stuff is absolutely stunning, which is pretty much what carried the entire film. Take always all of Cameron's masterful effects, direction, etc.. and the film would have done nowhere near those numbers.
There's literally nothing to "admit", lol.
And your assessment of Cameron's character writing is correct... from Titanic onward. It's been downhill, yeh.
Many of his earlier works included some incredible character writing, but he lost it as he grew older unfortunately.
