James Cameron (1)Reviews

Fantasy

Action

Sci-Fi

2023 movie #103. 2022. I was pretty much prepared to not like this movie and the first hour or so didn't change that opinion. But the last half (the movie is 3:45 long!) was pretty good. Derivative of many different films but a fun ride anyway.

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Product Description
In this action-packed sequel to Alien, Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley, the only survivor from man-kind's first encounter with the monstrous Alien. Her account of the Alien and the fate of her crew are received with skepticism-until the mysterious disappearance of colonists on LV-426 lead her to join a team of high-tech colonial marines sent in to investigate.

Additional Features
The Director's Cut of Aliens includes 17 minutes of bonus footage. The added scenes are intermittently spread out through the film, fleshing out certain characters and plot. Included is a much-needed explanation of what happened to the colony, LV-426 (the decimated planetary outpost the Space Marines are sent to). In addition, there is more focus on the emotional state of Ripley (Signourey Weaver) after she is awoken following 60 years of space hibernation--only to find that all the people she once loved have since passed on. This in turn clarifies the strong bond between the little girl (Newt) and Ripley, which is highly relevant to the climactic showdown between the two mothers (Ripley as Newt's surrogate parent, and the alien queen as maternal protector).

Includes 1986 theatrical version and 1991 special edition

A militant corporation is mining an inhabited planet.

I was entertained. The action scenes are done quite well, although they're not especially memorable. The science fiction aspects don't work at all; I think Cameron forgot about a third of the way through writing the script that it wasn't supposed to be a magical fantasy world. And the not-so-subtle racial undertones made me fairly uncomfortable. Of course, it's the special effects that matter for this sort of movie, and they're great. But when all is said and done, I have to wonder why, if you're spending $250 million on a movie, you can't be bothered to come up with a story more compelling than a rip-off of Fern Gully.

Concept: D
Story: C
Characters: F
Dialog: C
Pacing: B
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: A
Acting: B
Music: D

Enjoyment: B

GPA: 2.2/4½

Space marines visit a colony infested by deadly aliens.

There's a lot of action movie cliches and general James Camerony corniness that comes pretty close to wrecking it, but overall it's extremely effective. And it's a lot scarier than I'd remembered it being.

Concept: A
Story: B
Characters: C
Dialog: D
Pacing: A
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: A
Acting: C
Music: C

Enjoyment: A plus

GPA: 2.9/4

(May 2010)

An unstoppable, time-traveling robot tries to kill a bratty kid.

A corny, boring mess. The first hour or so is stupid fun, with some good bad-assery. Then they go into the desert to get in touch with their feelings (which they don't really have, since one of them is a robot and the other is a James Cameron character). The action in the third act is okay, but not good enough to wake me up. I just don't get what people see in this - it's by far the worst of the three Terminator movies I've seen.

Concept: D
Story: D
Characters: C
Dialog: F
Pacing: D
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: B
Acting: B
Music: D

Enjoyment: C minus

GPA: 1.6/4

An engaged woman's fiance doesn't like her new boyfriend.

I hate this movie so much. At first, during the first hour or two, I was thinking it wasn't as bad as I'd remembered it. Terrible writing, but watchable. But then it keeps getting steadily worse. By the time we got to "I'll never let go," it was so awful it made me want to scream. I have watched many a bad movie, but I can't think of any others that are so bad they make me angry. Movies I don't like because they make me angry, sure, but movies that make me angry because I don't like them? It's a weird reaction. I mean, if it's a bad movie, why do I care enough to be angry with it?

Concept: C
Story: D
Characters: D
Dialog: F
Pacing: C
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: B
Acting: B
Music: D

Enjoyment: F

GPA: 1.6/4½

Neste livro, o leitor é apresentado a um novo mundo – uma bela e desconhecida lua em um distante sistemasolar, seus exóticos ecossistemas e seu povo chamado Na’vi. Através de fotos incríveis, notas científicas epesquisas geográficas, os cidadãos do planeta Terra James Cameon, Maria Wilhelm e Dirk Mathison oferecemneste guia grandes lições que Pandora pode ensinar aos seres humanos, que se esforçam para viver emum planeta onde a situação é crítica e os recursos estão se esgotando.

The techs move aside and suddenly John Connor is standing beside him. Connor...their grim messiah...He fixes Reese with an intense gaze. There is so much he wants to say, but cannot bring himself to. Finally Reese speaks.
REESE: Did you know I'd be the one who volunteered?
Connor nods.
CONNOR: I've always known.

There is a man in his forties playing with two small children nearby. He turns. It is John Connor.
SARAH (V.O.): John fights the war differently than it was foretold. Here, on the battlefield of the Senate, the weapons are common sense...and hope.

You don't recall those scenes from Terminator 2? That's because they were cut - Terminated - you might say. The face-to-face between Reese and Connor was never filmed but Sarah watching her grandchildren and their father, the Senator, was and this book has the pictures to prove it.

The Judgement Day script went through seven drafts, additions and revisions. Here you can find what ideas never made it to film, what characters were combined and what dialogue was ad-libbed on set. Additionally there are over 500 film stills and storyboards illustrating the facing text, though most are in black-and-white. But what I found particularly interesting were the 'production notes' which detailed the evolution of a scene and often contain the kind of trivia fans love to discover. Question: do you know how many hands the T-1000 has while pursuing the SWAT van in the helicopter? I'll wait why you slo-mo the DVD...

Yes, interesting, huh? I also enjoyed James Cameron's introduction. Like a man who's about to pull back the curtain and show you the goods, he's really candid about the writing process.
"I hate writing. It is the most tedious, solitary, terrifying part of making of a film. It is the moment when the creative die is cast, although it will take months, maybe years, and millions of dollars to find out if the throw was lucky... The problem is that when you're writing, you can't think of that awesome responsibility or you won't ever get a single word down on paper. You have to divorce yourself mentally from the director-self which will be sweating months later under the yoke your writer-self is creating. And to take responsibility for the financial success of a multi-million dollar project at that fragile stage of creation is the death of art... With a kind of abandon, I pre-absolve myself from the responsibility of creating stunts and special effects in the real world, and plunge into the story as if I am writing a novel, rather than a screenplay which is only a means to an end.

So if you are looking for a Terminator fix, or are just a student of story-craft, you might want to give this one a try.

Great commentary on the special features disc. This was done before photoshop was on the market. Revolutionary CGI.

Very interesting to read the scenes that were written for the movie, but not actually included.

I don't give 5 stars to many films. I'm kind of surprised at how much I love this movie, in fact, because I never even bothered to see it when it was in the theatre. After all, I reasoned, while it's goundbreaking in terms of the way it was made -- and even though it's opened up an entirely new way of making a movie, no one's ever said anything good about the story. And isn't that the real reason for making a movie? To tell a story? And Cameron _did_ have a story to tell.

Even though the story reminds me greatly of _Dances With Wolves_, it is told beautifully. A man from a different way of life, living in a dystopia, comes to a new place and meets a different people. Unlike his own, these folks live in unity with the land and nature. He learns their ways and comes to love them and their world passionately. At last, however, his own people come and try to destroy the simpler, gentler culture because they have something the dystopians want/need. In the case of the Lakota people of _Dances_, it would ultimately gold. Here, on Pandora, it is "unobtainium."

Remarkably, the addition of the extra few minutes in the Collectors' special edition makes a great movie even better. The added footage shows how bad Earth has become, explains exactly why unobtainium is so highly sought-after (It's not too big a spoiler for me to reveal that it's a room temperature superconductor, something of a "holy grail" to today's scientists), and expands on the link types of critters found on Pandora and the Na'vi's link to them and all of nature. I wish (and hope) that in the ultimate edition, he spends more time letting us get to know the People better, since all but Natiri are one-dimensional. This was one of the strengths in Dances With Wolves -- Costner fleshed out many of his Lakotas, and we grew to love the people individually as well as the culture.

Do I recommend Avatar? You betcha. I've got both releases now, and will spend more money buying the next, ultimate version when it is released in the future (or, to quote Tommy Lee Jones in _Men in Black_, "I guess I'm going to have to buy the White Album all over again."). I'm not anywhere near bored with watching it, and it's going to stay in my DVD player for a while longer. I hope that, if you haven't discovered this great piece of filmmaking for both its story and its ground-breaking techniques.

Thi9s is my first taste of Orson Scott Card, but it shall not be my last. He's taken the screen play and made ita bettere story. Cheers for him.

When bitten by a genetically modified spider, a nerdy, shy, and awkward high school student gains spider-like abilities that he eventually must use to fight evil as a superhero after tragedy befalls his family

Fictional romantic tale of a rich girl and poor boy who meet on the ill-fated voyage of the 'unsinkable' ship.

The cyborg who once tried to kill Sarah Connor must now protect her teenager son, John Connor, from an even more powerful and advanced cyborg.

A human-looking, apparently unstoppable cyborg is sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor; Kyle Reese is sent to stop it.

A wonderful look at the movie, with all kinds of making-of details and quotes from Cameron.

Fantasy

A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic. (IMDb)½