James Camer-thon: A Review of "Titanic", Part 1

♫"Just sit right back and you'll see a tale; a tale of a fateful ship! That started from this British port,
built by some Irish men. The lead was a scrappy hunky guy, the lady hot and pure. The passengers
set sail that day for a four-day tour... a foooour day toooour."♫

Happy Friday, and welcome back to another James Camer-thon installment. We're on the back-nine now, so to speak. So far, we've seen nothing but action movies come from the man. The terrific one-two punch of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day... the badass sequel Aliens... the adventurous undersea conflict The Abyss, and the comedic action-couple's epic True Lies. James Cameron truly by this point had built himself an incredible, noteworthy filmography. If there were a Pro Football style Hall of Fame for filmmaking... you know that wasn't the "Library of Congress"... James Cameron would for sure have that spot in it. A big brass bust, of him, goatee and all... smirking as he nail-guns your cell phone to the wall for ringing on set. (Something he is very prone to doing).

The World Series of Poker, 1912 edition. Poker brat
Jack Dawson wins two third-class tickets on Titanic.

By 1994, as soon as True Lies finished production, or even during the production, Cameron already began detailing and crafting the story for his next film, described as an epic star-crossed love story aboard a famed steam liner that sunk on its maiden voyage! No... not The Poseidon Adventure! The other steam liner... no, not the Britannic, though that would be an interesting choice to set a love story on. No, not the Olympic either... why would you even--NOTHING EVEN HAPPENED TO THAT ONE! No, we're talking about arguably the most famous shipwreck of them all. The Titanic. Cameron even pitched the film to film execs at both Fox and Paramount, reportedly by holding up a picture of the famed ocean liner and simply stating "Romeo and Juliet... this ship." The film stars then-relatively fresh faces Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Leo was looking as young as the girls he dates nowadays, and Kate Winslet was fresh off her dynamite background character performance in A Kid in King Arthur's Court. Yeeeah... 10 points if you can gimme the plot of that movie.

Titanic was and still is a one-of-a-kind movie. Everybody who's anybody knows this movie, or has seen this movie, or has heard about this movie... or at one time laid eyes on that infamous gold dual-VHS boxset of this movie in somebody's cabinet, once. I know I saw that VHS boxset in my dad's collection... but I also for some reason can picture it sitting in an old person's fine-china cabinet somewhere. Yes, James Cameron undertook arguably the biggest film production of any company or director at the time. Titanic has the distinction of, at the time in 1995-97, being the single most expensive film ever produced. So much so that the opening credits reveal two of the industry's heaviest hitters in 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures had a hand in developing/distributing the movie. That, as well as its production design, it's set work, it's props and cinematography... all wrapped in a mammoth near-200 minute runtime truly spells an "epic"; a grand scale motion picture that we're dealing with here, and it was gearing up to be James Cameron's magnum opus. His Ben-Hur, his Spartacus, his Cleopatra, his Ten Commandments, his <another bloated religious-historical-mythological movie from the golden age of cinema...> Titanic stands with them as another noteworthy triumph of production.

"Hey Leo, Kate; let me introduce myself. I'm--"
"Holy cow! First Tom Arnold, now Roseanne
Barr! James Cameron is a friend of the little
people of Hollywood!"

... but how is the movie itself? Well... I think it's a pretty solid flick, but I also think it's where Cameron started to (and I hate to say this) become a tad lazy with storytelling. Writing? Not at all, but that's different than storytelling. See, that's the thing. I have met people who despise this movie, calling it "some dumb chick flick", saying it's "too long", that it "drags", that "it's only really good here-and-there". To me it's not quite up there with the caliber of Cameron's work in science-fiction, where he tends to shine. There's a lot of small details and things about life onboard the Titanic in 1912 and how the ship operated and how the historical characters behaved and fraternized which I think Cameron definitely took some liberties on; but I think from start-to-finish, it's quite an emotional journey over the three hours. Let's step through and figure out why. I'll go ahead and knock out where the first tape or VHS ended for now, which is just after the iceberg collision. Yeah sorry the ship hits an iceberg, I hope I didn't spoil anything for anybody.

The film opens in 1996, aboard the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, Brock Lovett (Favorite Cameron buddy Bill Paxton) and his team search the wreck of RMS Titanic. They recover a safe from the room of a person named "Hockley", a safe they hope contains a necklace with a large diamond known as the Heart of the Ocean. Worth billions. This is where the first issue with the story comes out. It's cliché... Brock's the archetype treasure-hunting asshat who is only initially in his endeavor for the money, who by the end of the movie learns the error of his way and has a change of heart. It's a popular framing advice, almost as popular as a character in elderly form being a member of the story from the past and re-telling the story through their eyes. Instead of the Heart of the Ocean, they only find a drawing of a young nude woman wearing the necklace. The sketch is dated April 14, 1912, the same day the Titanic struck the iceberg that caused it to sink. 607-year-old... or 100-year-old (if you listen to the movie) Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart), the woman in the drawing, is brought aboard Keldysh, as Brock believes even if Rose doesn't have the necklace any longer, she'll at least know where to find it. After Lewis Bodine (Lewis Abernathy) tortures Rose with a weirdly timed digital presentation of how the ship sank... something Rose would definitely have no doubt remembering... Rose breaks down and decides to regale the group with details on where the diamond is, by telling her story of her life aboard the Titanic... meaning she will serve as our character in elderly form who was a member of the story from the past and re-telling the story through her eyes..... D'OH!

"See Kate? This one's Courteney Cox, this one's
Jennifer Aniston... here's Lisa Kudrow!"
"Leo, this is gross. It's just drawings of naked
actresses from F*R*I*E*N*D*S!"
"It's not gross! See? Here's David Schwimmer--"

In 1912 Southampton, 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), her wealthy fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley (Billy Zane... who surprisingly, plays a douchebag), and Rose's widowed mother, Ruth (Frances Fisher), board the Titanic. Ruth emphasizes that Rose's marriage to Cal will resolve the family's financial problems and maintain their upper-class status... you know, being the son of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon in 1912 would certainly lock that money down. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson (Leo boy himself), a poor young artist, wins a third-class Titanic ticket in a poker game and, questionably bypassing customs and health inspection checkpoints... boards the ship with his buddy, Fabrizio (Danny Nucci). After setting sail, Rose, distraught over being rich, being pretty, having everything handed to her... remembers she's in a loveless engagement with someone twice her age. She takes it upon herself, runs off into the night, and climbs over the stern railing, intending to jump overboard and bid this cruel world adieu. Jack appears and coaxes her back onto the deck, telling tales of how cold Wisconsin is. That's usually how I try to strike up conversations: "Ya ever been to Wisconsin? They have beer, and cheese curds, and the Green Bay Packers... come back over the railing now, don't kill yourself." His saving her from committing suicide helps the two develop a tentative friendship. When Cal and Ruth strongly object, Rose acquiesces and discourages Jack's attention, but upon realizing she has fallen in love with him, she returns to him and he reciprocates.

Rose brings Jack to her state room and pays him a dime to sketch her nude, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean necklace. Movie goof: The dime Rose hands Jack, is a Roosevelt dime. That's Franklin Roosevelt. So some whacky time travel antics there. I think I'll touch upon the time-traveler theory another time. They later evade Cal's servant, Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner)... who has just a badass character name. After finding themselves in a stranger's Renault Towncar car, they decide to celebrate the occasion and have sex inside of it. Good thing the owner doesn't know about that. What you don't know won't hurt you I guess. After they make their way back to the forward deck, and smooch some more... they witness the Titanic's collision with an iceberg and overhear its officers and builder discussing the serious situation. They realize they need to report back to Cal and Ruth to let them know... for some reason... Meanwhile, Cal discovers Jack's sketch and Rose's insulting note left inside his safe, along with the necklace. When Jack and Rose return to warn the others about the collision, Cal has Lovejoy slip the necklace into Jack's pocket to frame him for theft. Jack is then confined in the master-at-arms' office. Cal then puts the necklace into his own overcoat pocket.

"Leo... I get why you're here, but why did
you invite your dad, your high school chess club
team, your brother, your neighbor, and your
mailman to set today?"

That's where the first tape in the VHS-dual set ends. Even my first DVD set of Titanic ended here. I thought for sure being a DVD they'd be able to fit more of the movie on there than they did. I think, though I can't remember... my Blu-ray set has the entire movie on one disc. At this point, if the movie was designed to be a two-part epic film with an intermission, then so be it. Hell, there's forty-five minutes worth of deleted material that gets included on every set. I say this to James Cameron; go all Peter Jackson and give us the bloated, extended edition of Titanic already!

As for the movie itself so far... right away, you can see so much love, attention to detail went into bringing the life of 1912 to the screen in the most accurate way. The cinematography on this movie is brilliant, and the SETS and COSTUMES... holy moly, no wonder this flick took home eleven Oscars in 1998. The sets on this movie are magnificent recreations of the ship as it appeared in 1912. It probably helps that the team got the blueprints from the original Harland & Wolff shipbuilding company. They reconstructed a solid shell of the original ship for exterior shots, deck-walking shots, and other outside angles of the journey. The entire set was also built on top of hydraulic lifters and shifters so it could be tilted to simulate the Titanic sinking from the bow, but putting the set in a new angle would take hours. To make up for lost time, in some shots the apparent tilt angle was simulated with various tricks, such as tilting the camera and horizon, and having the actors lean forward. Oh James Cameron, you master of filmmaking trickery and deceit, you.

I'll get into the final half of the movie as well as more about the production, the cost, the cast members, and everything else when it comes time to do the sinking. That's right, Titanic ain't over yet! Check in for Part 2 next week... James Camer-thon's going overtime!

James Camer-thon: A Review of "True Lies"

"Hello, my name is Aziz. You're probably wondering how I got here."
*Seinfeld theme song*

Happy Friday once again! Super Bowl LVII has concluded, and now we're onto baseball season as we eek through the month of February. Which begs the question... how on Earth do we even have a chance of topping Terminator 2: Judgment Day? This is probably a question that James Cameron posed to himself afterwards. Maybe he's in fact the type of director that laughs off each picture, no matter how dominant and stellar they are at the box office or at the Academy Awards (Terminator 2 won four, and it should have won Best Picture)... so the prospect of taking up another film afterwards and not even being intimidated by it seems like a behavior James Cameron would exercise himself in.

MENTOS: The Freshmaker
(Proud Sponsor of Sleazebag Simon's Used Car Lot)

What we're about to discuss today on this glorious Friday... or shitty Friday depending on where you are in the world and what your life circumstances give you... leading into this weekend is one of James Cameron's more funnier movies. True Lies is adapted from a 1991 French film La Totale!, and tells the story of a husband who tells his family he's a computer salesman when really he's a secret agent for a special undercover task force. While dealing with the threat of a terrorist organization, the "Crimson Jihad", the husband also learns that his wife is having an affair with a used car salesman. Therein lies the comedy of the situation, and it's some of the most dry-wit, excellently delivered one-liners I've ever heard in an action film. Playing the role of the husband is Arnold Schwarzenegger, his first non-Terminator role in a James Cameron movie. The wife is none other than Jamie Lee Curtis, the queen of scream herself. Let's dig into True Lies, and figure out why it's so humorous while still delivering yet another action-packed, kick-ass experience in cinema. This is True Lies... a movie that teaches us that even if you're some beefy hunk secret agent who has the most badass job on the planet... if you still don't show your wife enough affection, she'll honestly consider dumping you for a wormy, weasily man who's lesser than you... at least for a little excitement, anyway.

"Ope, pardon me. I was looking for the suite
that Donald Trump was staying in."

Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) leads a double life: to his legal secretary wife, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), and his rebellious daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku), he is a boring computer salesman often away on business trips, but in actuality, he is a secret agent for Omega Sector, a top-secret U.S. counterterrorism agency. It's even led by Nick Fury... that is, Nick Fury if it was cast in the 1990s... Spencer Trilby, played by Charlton Heston. Harry, along with his teammates Albert "Gib" Gibson (Tom... Arnold, of all people) and Faisil (Grant Heslov), infiltrate a party in Switzerland hosted by billionaire Jamal Khaled (Marshall Manesh), whom everyone may remember as "Ranjit" from How I Met Your Mother, the sitcom with all the build up and none of the payoff. LOL. Anywho, this is where Harry meets drop-dead gorgeous art dealer Juno Skinner (Tia "She Will Be Mine" Carrere). Eventually they learn that Juno is not only Khaled's art dealer, but that she is being paid by an Islamic terrorism group called "Crimson Jihad", led by Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik). Harry visits her undercover as a potential buyer to learn more, leading Aziz and his men to attempt to kill him. Harry fights them off, but loses Aziz in pursuit. As a result, he misses the birthday party that Helen and Dana had planned for him. It was also the scene with a classic Arnold pun, slamming a dude's head in a urinal and telling him to cool off. It was also also the scene where Arnold tries to jump a horse off a skyscraper. Thankfully, James Cameron wrote the horse to refuse and throw Arnold over the side. We didn't get that crazy.

"I can't see shit without my contact lenses, but
I sure hope I'm not firing at a skyscraper."

Harry goes to Helen's office the next day to smooth matters over and surprise her for lunch, but overhears her making secret arrangements to meet a man named Simon (Bill Paxton, who much like Arnold is in his third James Cameron collaboration). Suspecting Helen is having an affair, he uses Omega Sector resources to learn that Simon is a used car salesman who pretends to be a covert agent to seduce women. In disguise, Harry and other Omega agents kidnap Helen and Simon. After terrifying Simon into keeping away from Helen, Harry and Gib interrogate Helen using a voice masking device and learn that she is desperately seeking adventure because of Harry's constant absences. Harry thus arranges for Helen to participate in a staged spy mission, where she is to seduce a mysterious figure (who is actually Harry himself) and plant a bug in his hotel room. After one of the most energizing and empowering dance sequences... Aziz's men suddenly burst in, kidnap the couple, and take them to an island in the Florida Keys for interrogation.

On the island, Harry's suspicions about Juno are confirmed: Crimson Jihad paid her to help them smuggle four stolen MIRV nuclear warheads into the country by hiding them in priceless antique statues. Aziz demands that the United States remove all U.S. military forces from the Persian Gulf forever or else he will detonate a warhead each week in a major U.S. city. He also says he will detonate one warhead on the uninhabited island to demonstrate that Crimson Jihad is a nuclear power. Before he and Helen are tortured, Harry is administered a truth serum and confesses his double life to Helen, in a rather humorous manner mind you. That's the thing, a lot of parts in this movie would be tense and uncomfortable in any other movie... but in this one they come off quirky, or awkward, or just downright cheesy. You'd think the comedy wouldn't mix well... but it totally does. After a ridiculously cool, yet again, cheesy shoot out, they escape to watch as one warhead is set to explode in ninety minutes and the others are loaded onto vehicles to be taken into the U.S. via the Overseas Highway, thus bypassing U.S. Customs. Harry and Helen get separated in the ensuing melee where Harry kills most of the terrorists, but Aziz gets away with one of the warheads. Helen is caught by Juno and taken in a limousine following the convoy. Gib and other Omega agents pick up Harry and they use two Marine Harrier jump jets to intercept the convoy by destroying part of the Seven Mile Bridge. Harry rescues Helen from Juno's limo before it goes off the Highway and topples into the water. It's a wild chase scene, and again has comedy elements mixed in, such as the pelican landing on the hood of the van that then pulls three Crimson Jihad gunmen into an explosive death in the sea. Plus... the Harrier Jets play a key role in this movie's finale, but also watching them blow up sections of the bridge and watching the limo NARROWLY miss each missile? Awesome, just stunning action work.

"Helen, will you marry me?"
"Harry, that's a grenade, not a ring!"
"It's because you make my heart burst with love."
"Oh gag, Harry."

The warhead left on the island detonates in front of the public without killing anyone. Gib tells Harry that Aziz and his men are holding Dana hostage in a downtown Miami skyscraper and are threatening to detonate their last warhead. Harry commandeers one of the Harriers to rescue his daughter, resulting in a hell of an upcoming action sequence. Faisil gets into the building by posing as part of a news team requested by Aziz. When Faisil guns down several of Aziz's men, (I call it "Faisil getting his groove back") Dana steals the missile control key and flees to the building's roof, eventually climbing a tower crane and threatening to drop the key to the street. Aziz pursues and nearly catches her before Harry arrives. Harry rescues a shocked Dana, after the young lady FALLS on a FLYING HARRIER JET... and after a tense struggle with Aziz, he eventually has him ensnared on the end of one of the plane's missiles. In easily one of the most fun, wild, stand-up-and-cheer celebratory, awesome action movie moments in history... Harry fires the missile carrying the ensnared Aziz at a terrorist helicopter. The missile sails through a whole in a building to the other side into a helicopter carrying remnants of the Crimson Jihad... killing Aziz and the last of the terrorist organization. Harry, Helen, and Dana are then safely reunited by Omega Sector.

One year later, Harry and Helen are working together as Omega agents. While on a mission at a formal party, they encounter Simon, working as a waiter and pretending to be a spy as before. He runs away in fear, peeing his pants, after they reveal themselves and threaten to kill him. They dance a passionate tango while waiting for their contact and with Gib pleading with them to take their work seriously and get back in contact with him as the end credits roll.

"Alright, nobody move. I have Wayne Campbell's
girlfriend here and I will snap her like a Slim Jim
unless someone tells me where the men's room is."

...and that's True Lies. A boat load of fun! A great one-off entry in James Cameron's directorial filmography. It's so light-hearted in its delivery of sore topics like spousal unfaithfulness, terrorism, nuclear destruction, children-in-peril; it's a movie that probably can't be made today. I know that's such a silly, overused phrase on the internet (especially with movies like Blazing Saddles), but I'm not sure given the conflicts we've had overseas with organizations like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and ISIL given the impact of our country done by 9/11... True Lies also tends to stand as a monolith reminder of a time we once lived in. I think the comedy really helps this movie's presentation to keep it as a easy-going as we can hope for. Keep it so over-the-top comedically blown out of proportion that people who view the film don't walk away from it feeling scared of the real world around them.

Speaking of the comedy, that was another trademark of this film. Some of Cameron's previous films, namely Aliens... had wit in the lines that were delivered, namely from Bill Paxton's Hudson. This movie had more comedy than any other James Cameron film produced by that point. James Cameron originally hired a team of writers to help him come up with the film's jokes and comedy punchlines. However, after being mostly unsatisfied with their work, Cameron let them go and decided to try his own hand at comedy. He rewrote the script from scratch and kept only two jokes from the team of writers (one of which being Arnold Schwarzenegger's famous "You're fired!" line). Cameron's ability to break away from the hardcore action-film presentation and include some levity in the form of jokes, wit, gags, and funny imagery certainly puts True Lies in a league of its own. Another source of comedy came from an unexpected source. The character Gib, played by Tom Arnold.

"Take it from me, man. Women are no good!
If you don't get married, you've won in life!"
"Pretty easy to say when your only source of
comparison is Roseanne Barr."

Tom Arnold didn't expect to get a role in the movie, and went to the audition mostly for the chance to meet director James Cameron and lead actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He did some scenes with Arnold, and Cameron immediately noticed the chemistry between the two actors. Afterwards, Arnold jokingly said about Schwarzenegger: "He's not that big, I think I can take him", which highly amused Cameron and sealed the deal to make Tom Arnold the other Arnold's buddy. However, 20th Century Fox objected to this casting choice, as Arnold's reputation at the time wasn't positive, mostly due to his public antics with then-wife Roseanne Barr. In a surprising move which Tom never forgot, Cameron threatened to take the movie somewhere else if Arnold couldn't be cast as Gib... telling Fox supposedly "Oh well in that case, I'll drive down the fucking street and make the movie for Paramount instead"... which if you're being told that by the guy who just made Terminator 2... you're going to want to back down and let him have his way, which forced 20th Century Fox to do just that. Tom was grateful to Cameron for taking a chance on him. He became a good friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cameron afterwards.

Another terrific inclusion into the film was Jamie Lee Curtis as Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife, Helen Tasker. She had great chemistry with Schwarzenegger on-screen, and was a fun-loving inclusion to the cast. She gave a dynamite performance of a bored housewife stuck in a rut who wants nothing more than her secret-keeping husband to love her like she loves him, to the point of embarking on an island-hopping, nuke-stopping, limo-jumping, striptease-dancing adventure with him. If you want just a little tidbit as to how cool of guys James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger are, Jamie Lee Curtis said that in his contract, Schwarzenegger gets top billing, then the title, then it would have said starring Jamie Lee Curtis but when James Cameron finished editing the film and he saw that the film was really "a domestic epic, it's a film about a marriage." So James Cameron phoned Arnold Schwarzenegger and asked him if it would be ok to put Jamie Lee Curtis's name before the title, to which Arnold Schwarzenegger immediately agreed. In the world of show business, as Jamie Lee Curtis said, "The credit is such a coveted, negotiable, commodity" that for Arnold Schwarzenegger to give her billing before the title "was a real mensch move on his part."

I know this seems to be the theme of James Camer-thon, but seriously you have to go watch True Lies if you haven't already. It's got action, comedy, romance, one-liners, gunplay, funny stunts, action-stunts, cool hand-to-hand combat scenes, spy-thriller work, buddy cop vibes, domestic-epic vibes, femme-fatales, terrorism, family adventure... it's got literally everything all rolled into a film that's just shy of two and a half hours... and it is just so much fun. It's just so, so much fun. Such a great movie, and yet another solid entry into James Cameron's filmography as a filmmaker. Another five-out-of-five star film.

James Camer-thon: A Review of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"

"Arnold, I told you to stop pointing the gun at me. The camera's not even rolling"
- James Cameron (probably)

Look... we all know how this is going to go. We all know Terminator 2: Judgment Day arguably is the greatest movie ever made by mortal men on this Earth and in its filmmaking history, right? All of us know that. This post will not be breaking new ground in saying so. I haven't met a single person who wasn't a contrarian that said "You know I watched Terminator 2 and I just couldn't get into it" or "I thought it sucked". I always argue that there are three movies in our recorded history that every human being must at one point experience: Back to the Future... Star Wars... and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It's weird. The Terminator, the movie that literally started the franchise? It's like a freakin' footnote compared to T2. Reportedly, The Terminator cost $6.5 million to produce IN ITS ENTIRETY... that's salaries, stunts, sets, explosives, everything; the whole schabang. Reportedly, that's only what Arnold Schwarzenegger's trailer on the set of T2 cost alone. That alone should set the stage for what we're about to break into.

"Sorry John, I can't hear you over
the sound of my mullet."

Yes, this is Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A movie that teaches us that a high-budget sequel to a cheap, 80s noire action movie doesn't have to be some lowbrow cash-in but can in fact be endearing, heartwarming, action-packed, balls to the wall, somewhat comedic, full of heart, kind of terrifying, and all around a wildly fulfilling piece of cinema, a pop culture staple, and a wildly incredible masterpiece of film for decades to come... easily 'til film historians in the year 3329 A.D. study it while they wonder why Marvel's Phase Eighty-Six is only is grossing an average of twelve bucks at the box office. Back again is Arnold Schwarzenegger, back again is Linda Hamilton, and joining the cast is a newcomer Edward Furlong before his life fell out of control, playing none other than John Connor! The future savior of humanity no more than a juvenile delinquent. Robert Patrick joins the cast as the T-1000, the most advanced Terminator to date Skynet sends back in time, made entirely of CGI... and Joe Morton as Miles Dyson, the Steve Jobs hell-bent on creating a revolutionary microprocessor that can do everything for humans... including exterminate them! Terminator 2 goes beyond the story of the first film and, quite frankly, surpasses it. Let's step through the plot and learn why! If you need caught up on the story, read my review of The Terminator here before continuing!

*Images that precede unfortunate events*

In 2029, Earth is a nuclear wasteland dominated by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet, right after sending a T-800 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, sends a T-1000 (Robert Patrick) to 1995. Instead of Sarah (Linda Hamilton) being the target again, the T-1000's mission is to kill the resistance leader John Connor when he is a pre-teen. To protect Connor, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a less-advanced metal endoskeleton that is covered in synthetic flesh. In 1995 Los Angeles, John's mother Sarah has been incarcerated at the Pescadero State Hospital for her violent, fanatical efforts to prevent "Judgment Day"... the foretold events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will become self-aware and, in response to its creators' attempts to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust that eradicates half of mankind. While Sarah's in the nuthouse, John is taken in by foster parents Todd (Xander Berkeley) and Janelle Voight (Jenette Goldstein).

The T-800 and the T-1000 converge on John in a shopping mall and a chase ensues. John and the T-800 escape together. John calls to warn his foster parents but the T-800 deduces the T-1000 has already killed them, using trickery and deceit to fool the T-1000 into giving an inadvertently false answer to a question over the phone. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it from killing people and orders it to save Sarah from the T-1000. The "of course, I'm a Terminator" line cracks me up, cause it feels so much like an ad-lib by Arnold, but no... Cameron wrote the line. Go figure! The T-800 and John intercept Sarah during an escape attempt but Sarah flees because the T-800 resembles the Terminator that was sent to kill her in 1984! That's smart deduction, as the T-800 sent to 1984 was also played by Arnold Schwarzenegger... I don't know I thought I had a joke for that but I lost it. John and the T-800 persuade her to join them, and they escape the pursuing T-1000. Although distrustful of the T-800, Sarah uses its knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor Cyberdyne Systems engineer Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton) is developing will be essential for Skynet's creation.

"John, I want to shoot this tech-savvy
businessman!"
"Mom, you mess with one tech-savvy
businessman, you mess with all of them!"

Over several days of their time together, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs as well as encouraging it to become more human-like. May as well get him a t-shirt that says "I may be the Step Dad but I'm the Dad that STEPPED UP!" or some Hallmark shirt like that! *Pause for laughs*. Sarah plans to flee with John to Mexico until a nightmare about Judgment Day (complete with a rather gruesomely accurate vision of a nuclear device striking Los Angeles) persuades her to kill Dyson, whom she assaults in his home, but finds she cannot kill him and relents. Probably because John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 convinces Dyson of the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals his research has been reverse engineered from the 1984 Terminator's damaged CPU and severed arm, cleverly bringing this movie's story full-circle. Believing his work must be destroyed, Dyson, Sarah, John, and the T-800 break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies. The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio in a wild-as-balls freeway chase, that sees the T-1000 sprout two spare arms and fly a helicopter over an overpass and under an overpass... After wrecking two separate vehicles, the two parties jump into two separate vehicles and the chase continues, with the T-1000 eventually cornering our heroes in a steel mill.

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG*
... "LAPD, you're under arrest".

If you're exhausted from that, you're still not done. Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 hand-to-hand and deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah's appearance to lure out John but Sarah intervenes and repeatedly shoots it, pushing it toward the edge of a platform standing above a vat of molten steel, but she runs out of ammunition before it falls. The T-800, having been reactivated using its alternate power source, arrives and shoots the T-1000 with a grenade launcher, causing it to fall into the molten steel and disintegrate. John throws the CPU and severed arm from the 1984 Terminator into the vat. The T-800 explains it must also be destroyed to prevent its CPU from serving as a foundation for Skynet. The pair hug and John tearfully orders the T-800 to stay but it persuades John its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah shakes the T-800's hand, having come to respect it, and in one of the saddest movie scenes I've ever seen, helps lower it into the vat. Before its destruction, the T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it sinks into the molten steel. As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.

*Wipes away budding tears* Ok so, wow. Terminator 2 is quite the movie, and much like the T-1000 is to the T-800, T2 is a radical upgrade from The Terminator. Wow, this movie packs such a punch and is stuffed full of character development, humor, wit, fear, paranoia, action, suspense, thrills and spills. I was so blown away the first time I saw it as a kid. (Yeah I may have jumped ahead of that R-rating by a few years... lol). There aren't many times you sit in a movie theater or watch a movie for the first time and you feel so moved or changed from the experience. That was what it was like for me when I first sat down and watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I mean, it's such a masterfully written story and it brings elements of the first film's story back in such a clever way and brings the entire narrative to a close at the end, all at the same time. First off, Linda Hamilton deserved a damn Oscar nomination in the same way Sigourney Weaver got one for Aliens, I mean maaaaaan was she a badass bitch in this. A definite swap from her meager teeny-bopper girl persona in The Terminator. This Sarah Connor is one you don't want to fuck around with. Also, Edward Furlong nailed the role of the juvenile delinquent at odds with his future role as humanity's savior in 11-year-old John Connor.

"Have you two girls seen my lost puppy?"
"Aren't we supposed to ask you that?"
"RESISTING ARREST!GET DOWN ON THE
GROUND, NOW!"

Arnold is back of course, and I call this his "Terminator prime"... this is where he shines the hardest as the Terminator. In The Terminator he had kind of a prime heyday... he was menacing, imposing, and kind of scary. This one he's tough, stern, but he's also caring, protective, and will stop at nothing to save John and protect him. Plus watching him bond with John in a father-figure sort of way; James Cameron's really a genius writer. You don't want to throw the word "genius" around loosely, but I will. Having the Terminator, something that in its very name implies death and destruction... come back as a protector instead and making him the good guy, was a very noble and noteworthy move by Cameron. So much so that in a ranking by the American Film Institute (AFI) where they did "100 Heroes and Villiains"... Arnold Schwarzenegger came in as the Terminator in both lists. He was ranked #22 as the evil 1984 Terminator in the Villains list, and #48 as protecting 1995 Terminator from the Heroes list.

"Sweet ride, Terminator!"
"Thanks, I beat the shit out of some MAGA
asshole for it!"

So like I mentioned in my post about The Terminator, the whole plot with destroying Cyberdyne Systems in order to prevent the future war with the machines and Skynet's takeover from ever happening was originally in that film, as was the notion of the liquid metal Terminator (which in 1984 would have been done with Harryhausen-esque claymation effects). Due to budgetary constraints and it being his first directing job, Cameron cut a lot of those aspects and saved them should he ever got to make a sequel one day. 

Now we have Terminator 2, and all of those plot elements are again, beautifully portrayed in what feels like a final, desperate battle to save their future. Lastly, I want to briefly talk about Miles Dyson's character. Joe Morton nailed the role of a hapless computer scientist hell-bent on his infatuation with changing the world, outright in love with being humankind's technological Messiah SO MUCH, it in-turn dooms humanity as a whole. The scene where the T-800 lays out what happens over the next three years' future to Dyson to convince him to blow up Cyberdyne and prevent it all from happening is so powerful and Dyson is humanized so well. He's a family man, very wealthy, and does not at all intend humankind any harm; but has no control when his artificial intelligence software becomes self-aware and destroys everything. Such a tragedy, and he fights hard to redeem himself.

"You want a mouthful of lead?"
*Insult subroutine failed to load*
"You will not be laughing when I have a mouthful of
your ass."

The stunts and effects are another huge display in this movie. Some of the wild shit you see people do in this movie is unparalleled and unmatched, in most places even by today's standards. I mentioned the helicopter stunts in the end highway chase. There's a chase just after fleeing the Galleria where the T-1000 gives chase to John and the T-800 chases the T-1000. John's on a dirt bike, the T-1000's in a huge towing-rig semi truck, and the T-800 is on his Harley Davidson Fatboy motorcycle. You see Arnold one-hand spin-reloading a lever-action Winchester rifle, a Harley Davidson jump, the tow truck smashing through brick and crashing into a spillway to keep chasing John. All concluding in a fiery crash that sees the semi truck explode while the T-800 and John make their getaway to safety. The T-1000's effects were completed using George Lucas's highly popular "Industrial Light & Magic" special effects shop. ILM's computer graphics department had to grow from six artists to almost thirty-six to accommodate all the work required to bring the T-1000 to life, costing $5.5 million, and taking eight months to produce, which ultimately amounted to 3.5 minutes of screen time. Isn't that WILD? The other half of the T-1000 was played rather excellently by Robert Patrick, then a relatively-unknown guy. This was his breakthrough role, and he owned it. He was menacing, merciless, threatening, unstoppable at times, determined to kill John Connor by any means necessary, and yet when he spoke to humans; he was unassuming and charming. Again, a very well-played Terminator.

"I said contactless delivery you schmuck! COVID- 19 ain't
no laughing matter! Now leave my Jimmy John's sub on
the doorstep and get the fuck off my property!"

Lastly... I just want to do a brief comparison of the Theatrical cut vs. the Extended cut. The extended cut only adds about 19 minutes of screentime, but what is added back adds lots of value. The scene where they're in the autoshop and the T-800 is explaining about how Skynet has the cyborgs' CPU set to "read only" so that they don't think by themselves is fine on its own in the Theatrical, but the Extended cut adds a scene that shows John and Sarah temporarily deactivating Arnold so they can flip the switch, allowing the viewer to see Arnold becoming a learning machine and start picking up on John's mannerisms. Something that is another genius plot point, and I truly wonder why they cut it out. There's also an added flashback between Sarah and John's now-biological father Kyle Reese (cameo by Cameron's ol' buddy Michael Biehn) in Sarah's dream early on in the film which I think also adds value to the story. So like Aliens, between the two cuts, I prefer the Extended cut. The lore in the Theatrical cut is well presented, but the Extended cut adds so much more.

You need to see Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and if you have already seen it, go watch it again. It is a masterpiece among masterpieces, and easily James Cameron's finest work. It's the perfect cap to the one-two punch with The Terminator. It closes the story so well on a very coda bookend. TOO BAD IT WOULD BE UNDONE, but I got a feeling we'll get to those soon. Seriously though, James Cameron kicked off his career in the 90s with such a high-mark. It deserved more accolades at the 1992 Oscars, I'll even argue for Best Picture... and it's induction into the Library of Congress's National Film Registry is LONG overdue. I salute you, Terminator 2... you glorious treasure of a film.

James Camer-thon: A Review of "The Abyss"

"Yikes, the only time I've ever reached out and touched someone was when I was a
moonlight marriage counselor over the phone!"

It's Friday once again, and we're still cooking on another edition of James Camer-thon! We've seen Mr. Cameron deliver two action-packed science-fiction movies that have since become pop culture favorites. The Terminator was even inducted into the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 2008, and I'm sure Aliens is not far behind. With any luck of course.

What was next on the slate for Mr. Cameron? Well. The year is 1989... and nothing says "1989" like it being time to go into the deep, blue sea. I'm sure there's a correlation there but I'm not quite sure. I thought I read somewhere in Reader's Digest. Anywho, no, it doesn't mean he didn't directed The Little Mermaid, Disney's first entry into their famed "Disney Renaissance"... though I'd admit it'd be hilarious if he did. No, James Cameron instead took his usual gang of roughneck badass characters, and instead of Space Marines, Cameron made them undersea scientists on an expedition to recover a lost nuclear submarine... that discover something much, much more mystifying deep in the ocean's darkest parts... or dare I say... THE ABYSS! That's right, we're here to review The Abyss: A movie that teaches us characters can be forgettable as long as your groundbreaking special effects director continues to break ground and be especially effective! That's right, I spent a whole five minutes cooking that one up. I am not proud, and my skills at being witty could be better used learning a new skill. Let's dive (pun most certainly in-tended) into what makes this movie Cameron's most... something entry into his filmography of the 1980s, especially considering the horrific background behind-the-scenes that this movie suffered.

"Would you guys mind picking it up, I'm a
little under pressure here!"

In January 1994 (five years into this movie's future, nearly thirty into our past... *Sobs*), the U.S. Ohio-class submarine USS Montana has an encounter with an unidentified submerged object and sinks near the Cayman Trough. With Soviet ships moving in to try to salvage the sub and a hurricane moving over the area, the U.S. government sends a SEAL team to Deep Core, a privately owned experimental underwater drilling platform near the Cayman Trough to use as a base of operations. The platform's designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio... no, not Winstead... maybe in a remake), insists on going along with the SEAL team, even though her estranged husband Virgil "Bud" Brigman (Ed Harris) is the current foreman. During the initial investigation of the Montana, a power cut in the team's submersibles leads to Lindsey seeing a strange light circling the sub, which she later calls a "non-terrestrial intelligence" or "NTI". Lt. Hiram Coffey (Cameron's ol buddy Michael Biehn), the SEAL team leader, is ordered to accelerate their mission and takes one of the mini-subs without Deep Core's permission to recover a Trident missile warhead from the Montana just as the storm hits above, leaving the crew unable to disconnect from their surface support ship in time. The cable crane is torn from the ship and falls into the trench, dragging the Deep Core to the edge before it stops. The rig is partially flooded, killing several crew members and damaging its power systems.

"Do you understand what Deep Core is doing?"
"Do you understand how your BREATH smells?"

The crew waits out the storm so they can restore communications and be rescued. As they struggle against the cold, they find the NTIs have formed an animated column of water to explore the rig, which they equate to an alien version of a remotely operated vehicle. Though they treat it with curiosity, Coffey is agitated and cuts it in half by closing a pressure bulkhead on it, causing it to retreat. Realizing that Coffey is suffering paranoia from high-pressure nervous syndrome... (I call it "undersea under-stress"... again, I spent a whole minute on that one), the crew spies on him through an ROV (Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicle to you CITIZENS), finding him and another SEAL arming the warhead to attack the NTIs. To try and stop him, Bud fights Coffey but Coffey escapes in a mini-sub with the primed warhead; Bud and Lindsey give chase in the other sub, damaging both. Coffey is able to launch the warhead into the trench, but his sub drifts over the edge and implodes from the pressure, killing him. Not going to lie... Cameron deciding to kill Michael Biehn is a ballsy... oh wait, The Terminator... are we sure they were friends in real life? Anywho, Bud's mini-sub is inoperable and taking on water; with only one functional diving suit, Lindsey opts to enter deep hypothermia and trigger her mammalian diving reflex when the ocean's cold water engulfs her. Bud swims back to the platform with her body; there, he and the crew use a defibrillator and administer CPR, they manage to successfully revive her.

"Where's the undersea Taco Bell?"
"I don't know, my GPS just says 'slight right'!"

It is decided that the warhead needs to be disarmed, which is more than two miles below them. One SEAL, Ensign Monk (Adam Nelson), helps Bud use an experimental diving suit equipped with a liquid breathing apparatus to survive to that depth, though he will only be able to communicate through a keypad on the suit. What is liquid breathing? Actually, it's pretty neat. Read on! Bud begins his dive, assisted by Lindsey's voice to keep him coherent against the effects of the mounting pressure, and reaches the warhead. Monk guides him in successfully disarming it. With little oxygen left in the system, Bud explains he knew it was a one-way trip, and tells Lindsey he loves her. As he waits for death, an NTI approaches Bud, takes his hand, and guides him to a massive alien city deep in the trench. Inside, the NTIs create an atmospheric pocket for Bud, allowing him to breathe normally. The NTIs then play back Bud's message to his wife and they look at each other with understanding. Quite a touching scene. Usually James Cameron has the aliens, I don't know, screeching or terrorizing people. Pretty calming to see them actually help a human being survive one of his movies for once instead of trying to KILL them!

Back onboard Deep Core, the crew is waiting for rescue when they see a message from Bud that he met some friends and warns them to hold on. The base shakes and lights from the trench herald the arrival of the alien ship. It rises to the ocean's surface, with Deep Core and several of the surface ships run aground on its hull. The crew of Deep Core exit the platform, surprised they are not dead from the sudden decompression. They see Bud walking out of the alien ship and Lindsey races to hug him! Aww, such a touching ending to an otherwise wildly dull yet mystifyingly unsettling film.

"Yes, hello? I'm calling about my refrigerator. It's
not running anymore, I think it needs new shoes."
"Bud, for the last time, Payless Shoes is tired
of your shit."

So not a lot of people talk about The Abyss these days. I wonder why? Everyone talks about The Terminator thanks to the bastardizing of the timeline that the sequels would cause starting with Terminator 3. People still talk about Aliens as one of the greatest sequels of all time, and one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. So what happened with The Abyss? A lot of it has to do, in my opinion, with its forgettable characters. Whereas The Terminator focused hard on just three main characters and built the hell out of their personalities, and Aliens featured dynamite actors all feeding and living well off each other to the point where the dialogue feels naturally-flowing... The Abyss focuses on a bunch of "ne'er remembers". Besides Ed Harris and Michael Biehn... right now, I can't name another actor without looking them up, as I did when writing the synopsis. Not to mention... Ed Harris and lead actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had horrible times making this movie. According to reports from cast & crew, during the rigorous and problematic shoot, everyone began calling the film by various derogatory names such as "Son Of Abyss", "The Abuse" and "Life's Abyss And Then You Dive". Mastrantonio reportedly suffered a physical and emotional breakdown because she was pushed so hard on the set by Cameron, and Ed Harris had to pull over his car at one time while driving home, because he burst into spontaneous crying. Harris reportedly even full-on punched James Cameron in the face after he kept filming while he was nearly drowning during one scene. 

"Well them disarming the warhead just tightens
my ridiculous Navy SEAL cap."

James Cameron is known for being a hardcore perfectionist, and this movie is probably his greatest example of it. Even Cameron was susceptible to the movie's horrible behind-the-scenes luck. The story goes that Cameron nearly drowned during production while he was weighed down at the bottom of the giant water tank during filming. His AD (assistant director) had failed to warn him to refill his oxygen, and realizing that he was running out of air, Cameron called for help to underwater director of photography (DP) Al Giddings. Unfortunately, Giddings couldn't hear him as he was near-deaf from an old diving-bell accident, and with not another soul nearby, Cameron realized he had to go top-side as soon as possible. Cameron very instinctively released his helmet, his harness and the weights keeping him down, and started to swim with great speed to the surface, exhaling all the way in order to prevent lung damage from decompression.... yet another one of those underwater mishaps that can claim the lives of anyone at any moment working on or underwater. One of the safety divers, divers meant to keep you safe, held him down and gave him a regulator, but it was broken and only produced water. Cameron tried to release himself, but the diver, thinking that Cameron was simply having a panic attack, held him even tighter... like a dunce. Cameron only survived this ordeal because he punched the diver in the face... lotsa punching going on behind-the-scenes... and reached the surface before passing out. The assistant director and the diver were fired the same day.

"Mary, we've been down here for seventeen hours and Cameron hasn't
yelled 'cut'!"
"I think we've been bamboozled. I'm frightened Ed."
"Me too, Mary. Me too."

Reportedly, the behind the scenes drama so all encompassing, Ed Harris has publicly refused to speak about his experiences working on the film, often quoted as saying "I'm not talking about The Abyss and I never will". The only register with Harris speaking about his experiences doing the movie is in the documentary Under Pressure: Making 'the Abyss', made and released in 1993. Similarly, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is quoted as saying "The Abyss was a lot of things. Fun to make was not one of them."

Is there anything good to say about The Abyss? Yes. As mentioned earlier, the movie features even more breakthroughs in visual effects and cinematography, something Cameron is very known for. There's a scene where the NTI approaches the group inside of Deep Core in the form of a water tentacle that has a face on it. The face molds and smiles with Lindsey and there's even a neat moment where she puts her finger in the NTI's face, and when she pulls it out, it's wet... despite the NTI-tentacle-face being completely computer generated. It was one of the first if not the first completely CG effect used in a movie. It was actually the first scene to be filmed so that while the rest of the movie could be filmed, ILM could work on and pioneer the effect for the best possible result, and it ended up turning out so well that Cameron hired ILM for his next movie... and we will get to that, do not worry!

"Alright what's the plan once we get in the air bubble?"
"Fire recklessly with this rifle until we're drowned?"
"Bingo."

One last thing I want to briefly touch upon is the breathing fluid. That's actually based on a real practice and a real tool that people use, and it was demonstrated as a central plot point. Real oxygenated fluorocarbon fluid was used in the rat fluid breathing scene. Dr. Johannes Kylstra and Dr. Peter Bennett of Duke University pioneered this technique and consulted on the film, giving detailed instructions on how to prepare the fluid. The only reason for cutting to the actors' faces in the movie was to avoid showing the rats defecating from momentary panic as they began breathing the fluid. You do watch the rats breathing the fluorocarbon fluid, and it's a little alarming... and talking Ed Harris through a panic attack at the end as he breathes the fluid in also is a little unsettling, but it's neat from a scientific standpoint.

Do I recommend The Abyss? From a filmography standpoint, yes. While it isn't the triumphant powerhouse Cameron's two previous directorial features were, it's still a fun adventure. Yes, the characters are forgettable, the story drags at times, and there's not really a memorable score... but the effects, cinematography, and dialogue is at least witty enough to keep you roped in. It runs a little long, but if you can sit through it, it's a fun alien adventure. Something Cameron is very well versed in. I'd say if you find it streaming anywhere, give it a try one afternoon. Just let yourself get sucked into the underwater Deep Core platform and try to immerse yourself. I recommend The Abyss. Try it out.

... and prepare yourselves for the next post! I'm very excited to touch upon the next one. Like stupid excited!