One Oscar-winner defends another against a widely negative reaction.

James Cameron sticks up for Kathryn Bigelow and A House of Dynamite: ‘I utterly defend that ending’

One Oscar-winner defends another against a widely negative reaction.

By Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman is a writer at **, mostly covering nostalgia. He has been writing about entertainment since 2007.

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December 29, 2025 3:29 p.m. ET

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James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow in 2010. Credit:

Michael Buckner/WireImage

**The following contains some spoilers for the film *A House of Dynamite. ***

As Michael Caine said in *The Dark Knight*, "Some men just want to watch the world burn." If you happened to be on social media on the day Kathryn Bigelow's latest film, *A House of Dynamite*,* *debuted on Netflix, you may have noticed several comments that confirmed that position.

Bigelow's military thriller is a moment-by-moment examination of how the U.S. government would react in the face of a nuclear attack. (Experts have weighed in, suggesting that the movie gets it mostly right, but isn't terrifying enough.) The film approaches its subject from three overlapping points of view, all climaxing in what appears to be the destruction of a major American city. (Chicago, for a change. New York can breathe a sigh of relief for once.)

However! Though the film starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, and many more lights the fuse, it doesn't *exactly* go boom. In a way, the conclusion is even more disquieting.

Tracy Letts having a really tough day at the office in 'A House of Dynamite'.

Eros Hoagland/Netflix

This annoyed no shortage of Netflix viewers, who are perhaps more accustomed to traditional endings. (This is a polite way of saying there was a mushroom cloud of "Worst. Movie. Ever." comments on the internet that day.)

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Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson race to stop a nuclear attack in new trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's 'A House of Dynamite'

But one guy who knows a thing or two about delighting audiences disagrees. That would be James Francis Cameron, a.k.a. the King of the World, and box office titan behind the *Avatar *series. He and Bigelow have a deep history, having once been husband and wife, but he also co-produced two of her films, namely *Point Break* and *Strange Days*. (He also cowrote that one with Jay Cocks.)

In conversation with *The Hollywood Reporter*, Cameron said that he and Bigelow had recently gone out to dinner, and he told her, "I utterly defend that ending."

He continued, saying, "It’s really the only possible ending." He then compared it to Frank R. Stockton's 1882 short story, "The Lady, or the Tiger?" saying, "You don’t get to the end of [it] and know what’s behind which door.”

Kathryn Bigelow at a screening of 'A House of Dynamite' in 2025.

Paul Archuleta/Getty

He went on: "But that’s not even really the point. The point is: From the moment the scenario began at minute zero when the missile was launched and detected, the outcome already sucked. There was no good outcome, and the movie spent two hours showing you there is no good outcome. We cannot countenance these weapons existing at all. And it all boils down to one guy in the American system, the president, who is the only person allowed to launch a nuclear strike, either offensively or defensively, and the lives of every person on the planet revolve around that one person. That’s the world we live in and we need to remember that when we vote next time. So the end of that movie was the only way that movie could have ended because — as the computer says at the end of *War Games* — ‘the only way to win is not to play.'"

*A House of Dynamite* was written by Noah Oppenheim, former head of NBC News. He also wrote the screenplay for the Natalie Portman/Jacqueline Onassis project *Jackie *and entries in both the *Maze Runner* and *Divergent* series. Though Bigelow's film is not officially connected to it, it shares many commonalities with Annie Jacobson's 2024 bestseller *Nuclear War: A Scenario*. (Missile defense systems can only fail so many ways, after all.)**

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Source: “AOL Movies”