best james cameron feature film

yeah the aliens director's cut really needs to be pulled from circulation or treated as a weird curiosity in the dvd. like the close encounters and star wars special editions it's pretty obvious the film is being made draggier and less focused whatever else the problems are.

hey i like the aliens director’s cut!

i mean the original cut is perfect but idk i don’t mind the occasional sentimentality of that movie at all

i’d argue that the t2 director’s cut is mostly unnecessary but there’s that wonderful scene where sarah almost smashed the terminator’s chip that really should’ve been in the original cut

the problems imho with the aliens director's cut aren't to do with sentimentality but with pacing and the unfolding of the story - the auto-guns scene is neat but comes at a time when it breaks the ramping-up of to the barrage of climaxes, and all the added stuff in the first act bogs things down similarly, plus seeing that the company sent the colonists out there robs the film of any "have they reformed? is this on the level?" tension. which obv is less of an issue when you've seen it ten times but to me they are classic cases of the right decision having been made back in the editing bay when the filmmaker was in the zone and making the tough choice to cut out good scenes that were tough and expensive to shoot because they aren't helping the film work.

this is all true! i still like it, mostly bc i have the beats of the original all memorized

Terminator definitely his best. It’s so resourceful & thoughtfully crafted.

Co-sign. Been a few years, but that grim air of impending doom hanging over everything really struck me last viewing. To say nothing of its other many virtues.

Did we say abyss theatrical or extended?

theatrical i think? iirc the deleted stuff there makes the on-the-surface plotline make slightly more sense but it's not needed, and the more we see/know about the ending the weaker it is... same logic as close encounters. i believe there are some great effects shots in there, but it's also possible these have dated way worse than his usual fare.

cameron makes long, but efficient films... adding stuff back in tends to make them less efficient and strain one's patience for a popcorn movie.

Thks

the abyss is like 2/3 of a really good movie but tbh the making-of documentary is at least as good as the film itself - what an insane production

The Terminator is amazing, fire everything else

i think Michael Biehn as an action hero is supremely underrated, his back-to-back roles in Terminator and Aliens are two sides of the same coin and really interestingly vulnerable at the time they were released, in how these are a pair of strong, wary, brave, smart men who at various points defer to and depend on the female hero.

yeah, it’s a real shame biehn didn’t go on to a more high-profile career, partic since everyman action heroes were about to be a big thing after die hard

i think even the everyman action heroes of the post-die hard era were pretty cocky dudes, Biehn i think was too believably low-key and measured compared to Bruce Willis and some other actors. i like this bit of Alien 3 trivia:

Walter Hill and David Giler penned the final script, which had Hicks killed off in the opening scene. Biehn, upon learning of his character's demise, demanded and received almost as much money for the use of his likeness in one scene as he had been paid for his role in Aliens.

damn right, get that money

God what a great collection of patchwork claptrap

james cameron still GOAT. pic.twitter.com/dFAnVfr8Dh

— Peter LabuzAAAHH! (@labuzamovies) October 16, 2019

the propeller dude in titanic rules bc james cameron was like “this is going to be a respectful and purposeful recreation of a tragedy, except for one guy.”

— 🩸Miss Gender🩸 (@girldrawsghosts) September 20, 2022

Maybe that happened to a Titanic guy and he would’ve appreciated someone telling his story.

i hadn't seen it in 25 years and remembered v little about it besides it ending with ed harris chilling with aliens on the ocean floor but the abyss totally rocked my shit

avatar 2 inspired me to do a cameron marathon obv. i skipped pirahna 2 bc there's seemingly legit uncertainty over how much of it he directed (even though i know from a terminator doc i just watched that he was involved in post-production? unclear. the credits sequence rocks though). i think i prefer the aliens extended cut these days, it's such a richly-constructed environment why not live in it for fifteen more minutes

michael biehn is so fucking good

how did you watch the abyss? i'd like to see it but my understanding is that isn't super easy to do.

yeah i had to use methods

i also like your comment about aliens, i think that's the best thing about that movie and why it's my favorite cameron of the ones i've seen

have read at least one report that an abyss blu-ray will finally come out next year, but i've heard that one before

there is a really nice looking copy ~out there~ that i believe briefly appeared on streaming? def blu quality

The making-of doc about The Abyss (called Under Pressure, I believe) is pretty interesting if you can find it.

Did not look like a fun thing to make! Also the fact that they shot the majority of the underwater stuff in a giant, unfinished nuclear power plant containment tank is fucking wild.

i watched it last night! what a stupidly hard movie to make

there's a bit on the ILM documentary about how they did the effects for the water creature in the abyss, fun stuff

think the last time i heard about a filmmaker filming something in an abandoned nuclear power site it was tarkovsky/stalker and he died of cancer afterwards

key for Cameron and co was the choice to shoot in an unfinished nuclear power plant and not an abandoned one

There was a western film which was shot near a nuclear test site and similarly lots of cast and crew died of cancer (John Wayne being one of them iirc)

that was his Genghis Kahn movie, The Conqueror. everything about that thing sounded like a disaster.

also yeah, xxp that multi-part Industrial Light & Magic doc on Disney+ is excellent, especially the earlier episodes covering its more Wild West days.

i didnt realize the Abyss was so hard to see these days. i'm still carting around my special edition dvd from back in the day. i guess that explains why it seems massively underrated in the Cameron canon, an incredibly fun movie

Cameron claims a deluxe Blu-Ray treatment is coming out this year, but he's been saying that for years now. Presume it'll be available streaming in some capacity whenever that sees the light of day.

! 🌊

https://x.com/jimcameron/status/1724111169840124360?s=46&t=bJOqpCuQneT7ju08y55VSA

nice, been meaning to see this

it's such a great movie

Possibly the only Cameron movie where the acting is the best part.

My favorite Cameron film! This is great it's finally remastered

Hope it's not the Director's Cut. OG ending was perfect. Hope they kept that

it’s the special edition

(i prefer the special edition ending in just about every way even tho the frozen tidal wave cgi is a little ehhh)

Kind of funny how many Cameron movies feature someone fighting in a mech suit, if you include the submersible battle here. Both Avatars, Aliens, this, even his short amateur film Xenogenesis.

is it any wonder he eventually adapted an anime

Seriously. Why has Jim wasted so much time exploring the ocean when his heart is clearly set on building a giant mech suit?

I don't think much of either ending but I primarily thinking of The Abyss as a suspense movie - one of the greatest suspense movies ever IMO - so I kind of prefer the shorter run time.

It's been so long since I've seen it, I can't remember the details, but there's a scene where Ed Harris (maybe?) creeps up on Michael Biehn (I think) with a hammer (possibly?) but it's probably the most edge-of-my-seat cinema experience I can rememeber. Once Ed Harris gets to the bottom and survives, all the tension goes out of it.

Iirc it's a wrench. But same idea. Biehn has got the space madness, and he's kind of messing with some chains, and there's that great shot where Ed is being all sneaky-creepy and the camera cuts to Biehn's eyes, and he is being literally *creepy*.

I've never seen Abyss. I should probably remedy that. My favorite of the ones I've seen is the original Terminator, which I rewatched recently. It's great to see how resourceful he could be without a mega-bucks budget.

Saw The Abyss in theaters and loved it. Have never seen it all the way through since but would absolutely buy a Blu-Ray.

I read the Orson Scott Card adaptation! iirc there were maps!

Terminator > Terminator 2

I couldn't remember whether I had seen The Abyss till I read a synopsis, and . . . I'm pretty sure I've seen it.