Yes, James Cameron’s sci-fi epic, Avatar, has out-grossed Cameron’s previous film, Titanic, to become the highest-grossing film in history.

For over twelve years, James Cameron’s Titanic was the highest-grossing film of all time, but now it has been dethroned by its very successor. Titanic, as we all know, was the first film to ever gross one billion dollars worldwide. And in the twelve years before Avatar’s release, three other films broke the billion dollar mark: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and The Dark Knight.

The Return of the King became the second highest-grossing film in history when it was released in 2003. Pirates 2 took third place in 2006, and The Dark Knight claimed fourth place in 2008 (well, technically it hit the billion mark in early ‘09, but let’s ignore the technicalities). But with Avatar’s new rise to dominance, each of these films has been bumped back a space.

Of the bunch, I can’t say Avatar would be my number one choice in terms of quality (that would be either Return of the King or Dark Knight), I think Avatar’s plot is too predictable and its characters too one-dimensional, but it is good nonetheless, and a great technical achievement.

On the one hand, it seems kind of funny that it took a James Cameron film to out-gross a James Cameron film as the highest-grossing of all time. But on the other hand, it seems completely appropriate, for James Cameron to make a film that broke so many records, it took a film made by James Cameron to break its records.

So while I’m still not completely won over by Avatar, I would nonetheless like to honor its monumental achievement of becoming the highest-grossing film in history.

Home Tree is swimming in money.