Giant Freakin Robot

James Cameron’s The Abyss is one of my favorite movies of all time. I’d never make the argument that it’s an overall better film than Cameron’s Aliens, but it is hugely underrated in my opinion. As such, it’s a crying shame that it still isn’t available in high-definition or on Blu-ray, but thankfully that oversight may finally be rectified next year.

The folks at Digital Bits reported the rumor last year that a Blu-ray release of The Abyss was in the works, along with Cameron’s True Lies. The director was reportedly taking a little time off working on the Avatar movies to help prepare the high-def transfers. While there still hasn’t been an official street date or announcement, True Lies actress/geek icon Eliza Dushku mentioned on BBC America’s The Nerdist that she had recently worked on the True Lies Blu-ray. Well, if True Lies is indeed in the works, it stands to reason The Abyss probably is too. Especially since The Abyss will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2014, and movie studios do so love an anniversary-timed home video release.

Sci-fi fans may also finally be able to take home The X-Files in Blu-ray next year as well. Digital Bits says the post facility HTV is working on the X-Files Blu-rays. We reported last November that X-Files Blu-rays might drop sometime in 2013, so this news would fit with that information. The bad news is that HTV was involved in the Star Trek: The Next Generation second-season Blu-rays, and that set had some problems. Hopefully The X-Files will get a little more tender-loving care before it hits the shelves.

At this point, it’s hard to believe that James Cameron’s Avatar is four years old. It’s also hard to believe that Avatar 2 hasn’t been released in theaters everywhere by now. As James Cameron is putting the finishing touches on the Avatar sequel screenplays – both Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 will be made concurrently – the films’ producer Jon Landau talked about the technology behind the sequel films.

According to THR, the Avatar sequels will take place in the oceans of the alien planet Pandora. While the production can replicate water and underwater sequences using CGI and motion capture, they cannot replicate the actors’ performances in CGI water. So it seems like James Cameron may have to make the Avatar sequels the old fashioned way, underwater. Landau explained:

We have kept a team of digital artists on from Avatar in order to test how we can create performance capture underwater… We could simulate water [in computer graphics], but we can’t simulate the actor’s experience, so we are going to capture performance in a tank.

Historically, this would not be the first time James Cameron shot a movie completely in an underwater tank. He used this method to create real reactions and situations on The Abyss in 1989. According to the actors in The Abyss (especially Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), the production was hellish and miserable. There were a number of incidents where Mastrantonio, Ed Harris, and Cameron himself almost drowned while making the film.

Between his voyages to the bottom of the sea and dominating the highest-grossing films of all time, it’s easy to forget that self-proclaimed King of the World James Cameron used to be a struggling filmmaker trying to find that special project that would break him through to Hollywood success. Just run down the resume. The Terminator movies. Aliens. The Abyss. Hell, I didn’t like Avatar but there’s no question it was an important and influential movie, for good or ill. But a few short decades ago, a young James Cameron was so determined to direct the first Terminator film, he sold his original screenplay to producer Gale Anne Hurd for one single dollar.

I ran across this little bit of science fiction history in a years-old IGN piece about the history of the Terminator franchise, and I’m kind of astonished that I’d never run across the story before now. When Cameron wrote the Terminator screenplay, things were rough. He was living out of his car and struggling to get by. Needless to say, he could have used the cash a screenplay sale would bring in. But Cameron apparently wasn’t going to be satisfied just with selling the script. He wanted to direct The Terminator as well. Giving the reins to an unproven director would have been a tough sale in the best of circumstances, but Cameron was willing to put his money where his mouth was. In exchange for the directing gig, he sold the script to Gale Anne Hurd for one lousy dollar. Four quarters, for a movie that went on to bring in around $80 million worldwide, and which launched Cameron’s career into the stratosphere.

Regardless of how people feel about his films, I don’t think anyone can deny the wealth of filmmaking and technical talent that director James Cameron brings to both his own projects and to cinema in general. Not to mention the Titanic flood of fetishism for fucking in old cars on giant ships that he spurred with his box office magnum opus.

In addition to his films, his behind-the-scenes documentary work has been extraordinary on films such as the Titanic-centered Ghosts of the Abyss and the Mid-Ocean Ridge exploration doc Aliens of the Deep. His next film focuses on his trip down to the Challenger Deep for Deepsea Challenge 3D, which took place a year ago this week. Now Cameron is donating both his submersible system and the science platform that he helped create to Massachusetts’ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the largest in the U.S., which will receive the vehicle sometime in June. Woods Hole will be using the Challenger Deep to film a series of reality shows about the ocean life hanging around the Jersey shore. Just kidding, probably.

Woods Hole has entered into a deal with Cameron and his team to use the sub both to advance current research and to inspire future expeditions. Multiple submersibles playing bumper cars on the bottom of the ocean? It isn’t a ridiculous idea. Cameron calls Woods Hole “a place where the Deapsea Challenger system will be a living, breathing and dynamic program going forward.” Sounds like carnival rides to me.

Just because he’s giving the submersible away doesn’t mean Cameron is finished taking rides in it. He told the New York Times that he’s eager to travel down to the Sirena Deep, six miles deep into the Pacific. Oh, to be a member of the Six Miles Deep Club.