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Is The Abyss James Cameron's Best Film


SteveMc

Is The Abyss James Cameron's Best Film?  

35 members have voted

  1. 1. Is The Abyss James Cameron's Best?

    • Yes!
    • No!!
    • It Might Be!
    • I Don't Even Like James Cameron!


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No, practically every time Lucas is interviewed its a "I haven't done them, but I will soon." You can also glean from the recent (excellent) Coppolla interview that there's been nothing new coming Lucas' way.

 

Its just his way to say to his audience "I know I've made all these big commercial films, but I'm actually an arthouse type, you guys!" Its nothing more than a pretense on Lucas part.

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30 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

My point is not to say that these films don't have a plot, and that plot doesn't have a significance. It's merely that we experience the combination of visuals and sound in many ways; they're not all narrative. If you go to a modern art installation, you try to create meaning out of the combination of sound and visuals that aren't necessarily narrative. It can be more abstract. Being envelopped in a mood, for example.

 

Same applies to film. In a film like BLADE RUNNER, for example (which was one of the examples I used in my thesis), it's just as much about being envelopped in the dystopian, retrofitted universe as it is to experience the story. Both forms of experience are equally valid. Same with AVATAR. You can go into it and gain some appreciation from the Pocahontas storyline, but for me, the most important thing was to feel, touch, absorb and enter the world he created. I couldn't care less about the story, really.

 

So this form of experience doesn't only have to be limited to abstract, non-narrative arthouse films like those of Godard et.al.. It can be experienced in a good ol' Hollywood movie too -- jammed into a story, or using the story merely as an "entrance fee".

 

I don't disagree with any of this. Of course the visuals, sound etc. were vital to creating the experience of Avatar. It's simply not the same experience without it. It's what made Avatar (or Blade Runner) special. Without those things Avatar is just Dances with Wolves in space.

 

I was more responding to the "fuck the plot" sentiment (which I know you didn't express).  The narrative is still important. And having no narrative (or one told strictly though visuals and sound) is fine as well, but that's just a different (though no less valid) thing than what Avatar is.

 

30 minutes ago, Thor said:

Same with AVATAR. You can go into it and gain some appreciation from the Pocahontas storyline, but for me, the most important thing was to feel, touch, absorb and enter the world he created

 

Touch? In the cinema? You can be arrested for doing that in the theater Thor.

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6 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Ah, but he hasn't had time yet. He's still counting the money after selling his IP.

 

Three billion, seven hundred million, six hundred and eighteen thousand, nine hundred and five...three billion, seven hundred million, six hundred and eighteen thousand, nine hundred and six...

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11 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

having no narrative (or one told strictly though visuals and sound)

 

All movies tell their stories to some extent with visuals and sounds (i.e. cinema). Some more than others: try timing the stretches of screentime in Braveheart when there's absolutely no dialogue - they range from 2 to 10 minutes at a time! But they are forwarding the story of the film, not going on a tangent, as Thor would have it.

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54 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

I was more responding to the "fuck the plot" sentiment (which I know you didn't express).  The narrative is still important. And having no narrative (or one told strictly though visuals and sound) is fine as well, but that's just a different (though no less valid) thing than what Avatar is.

 

Yes. Again, it's not to minimize the importance of plot. It's rather to open up for other ways to experience a film. During the course of a film, one ignites different kinds of audiovisual experience. Narrative is one, and often dominating, but by no means the only one. Some filmmakers are great at nurturing those other forms. Godard made a point out of highlighting the transparency of narrative films. Slow cinema directors like Tarkovskij or Angeloupoulous or Tarr made a point out of stretching the experience of film time itself, and occasionally avoiding normal causality. In the case of Cameron, he operates comfortably within the Hollywood machinery -- his "project", if you could call it that, is not so much to avoid or experiment with narrative, but to experiment with how we absorb film, and how we can use the latest techologies to achieve it. This applies to ALIENS, THE ABYSS, AVATAR, TITANIC, the TERMINATORs. Perhaps not so much a film like TRUE LIES, though, which is more straightforward.

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If you put it that way all the remakes of animated Disney classics are about experiencing old stories using latest movie technology.

Then we can at last praise the Star Wars Sequels when you see them just as movie goers just experiecing any type of unsgnificant action in their beloved movie universe at technically highest standard.

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50 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

I was more responding to the "fuck the plot" sentiment (which I know you didn't express).  The narrative is still important. And having no narrative (or one told strictly though visuals and sound) is fine as well, but that's just a different (though no less valid) thing than what Avatar is.

I might have been channeling my annoyance at people who gave a pass on the film because they couldn’t get past the plot quality problem when I wrote that. They couldn’t see the Pandoran forest for the trees. 
 

Yes, plot matters, but for me, a basic or serviceable plot is sufficient if it allows the world-building to flourish. Which it did in Avatar. And especially when it’s for the first time. I will grant you that this can only go so far. If Cameron had decided never to touch Avatar again, the film would still stand as a singular achievement in modern film. Of course, as he’s said there are four sequels coming and two are already in the bag, we the film-going public face a situation where plot will matter more since we now have seen this world and will remember the first film’s plot was thin. But I have total confidence that Cameron knows what he’s doing. 

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24 minutes ago, Bayesian said:

I might have been channeling my annoyance at people who gave a pass on the film because they couldn’t get past the plot quality problem when I wrote that. They couldn’t see the Pandoran forest for the trees. 
 

Yes, plot matters, but for me, a basic or serviceable plot is sufficient if it allows the world-building to flourish. Which it did in Avatar. And especially when it’s for the first time. I will grant you that this can only go so far. If Cameron had decided never to touch Avatar again, the film would still stand as a singular achievement in modern film. Of course, as he’s said there are four sequels coming and two are already in the bag, we the film-going public face a situation where plot will matter more since we now have seen this world and will remember the first film’s plot was thin. But I have total confidence that Cameron knows what he’s doing. 

 

That's a good point. But in theory, the fictional universe is infinite. Which means there can be all kinds of new places and locations and moods to explore over the course of the next four films. Cameron is very good at presenting these rich worlds that always hint at something more. When watching films like ALIENS or THE ABYSS, I've often myself desiring to see more of the Sulaco, more of LV-426 or more of the underwater facility, respectively. In the case of AVATAR, the scope of the world is even greater than that, so I have great confidence in how he will solve it. I would also love more time at the places we've already been presented to. 

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3 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

Of course the visuals, sound etc. were vital to creating the experience of Avatar. It's simply not the same experience without it. It's what made Avatar (or Blade Runner) special.

 

Or Alien, where the camera sometimes finds dwelling in the corridors of the Nostromo more important than advancing the narrative. The slow pacing of the film alone is worldbuilding by itself. To be honest, I don't seem to remember that in more snappy movies like Prometheus or Avatar. Sure, you have shots where characters are walking/flying/moving against sci-fi backgrounds but you have that in every movie. 

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6 minutes ago, AC1 said:

Or Alien, where the camera sometimes finds dwelling in the corridors of the Nostromo more important than advancing the narrative.

 

On the contrary, I thought those shots in Alien very much advanced the narrative.  The opening shots alone told us a lot about what was going on that ship. You don't need dialogue or even action to move the plot along.

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Yeah, the visuals in Alien set-up the atmosphere that is necessary for the story of the film (and they do it as well as any film can ever hope to).

 

They don't go on somekind of tangent. They're entirely complementary to the story being told.

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18 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Yeah, the visuals in Alien set-up the atmosphere that is necessary for the story of the film (and they do it as well as any film can ever hope to).

 

They don't go on somekind of tangent. They're entirely complementary to the story being told.

 

Creating atmosphere through worldbuilding is NOT essential for the narrative. You guys want to see everything as 'plot'.

 

The bicycle riders shot in Blade Runner is not necessary for the scene but Scott wants us to see it anyway.  And confused producers felt it only slowed down the movie.

 

Is it narrative, is it atmosphere, or is it showing off? To me that what I'm feeling with the 'Brett is searching for the chestburster' scene.

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16 minutes ago, AC1 said:

Creating atmosphere through worldbuilding is NOT essential for the narrative.

 

In the case of Alien it absolutely is. You need to sell the outer-space setting and the general creepiness of the whole thing. Its not a tangent.

 

Haven't seen Blade Runner in too long to comment.

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14 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Haven't seen Blade Runner in too long to comment.

 

Doesn't matter, I know your answer already. :P

 

14 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

In the case of Alien it absolutely is. You need to sell the outer-space setting and the general creepiness of the whole thing.

 

 

But you can leave all those things out, make a snappier movie, and still tell the same story. And trust me, kids will thank you for it. 

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32 minutes ago, AC1 said:

But you can leave all those things out, make a snappier movie, and still tell the same story.

 

That its a focused narrative film doesn't mean it can't take its sweet time in telling its story!

 

There's also tempo to keep in mind here. A fast-pace isn't really conducive to horror (or to tragedy). In that way, film is much like music: what's the first thing you do when you try and make a piece of music more solemn? You slow it down.

 

Alien's relative slowness (or, as I would have it, its self-assured patience) is a huge part of its horror, which in turn serves the story.

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1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

 

That its a focused narrative film ...

 

I guess that's why at the time American reviewers, who, more than Europeans, are champions of plot, criticized Scott for being more interested in the production design than in the characters or the story. I don't even watch Alien for its story anymore. Yes, story keeps things together and provides for the foundation of a movie but it's the least interesting part of Alien, and it was certainly the first aspect of the film to wear down. I now revisit Alien for the art, the design, the style, the atmosphere, its world. And it's a transcendental experience.

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“To make a great film you need three things: the script, the script and the script.”

  -Alfred Hitchcock

 

Two great directors with dramatically different opinions, the truth is probably between both

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11 hours ago, AC1 said:

And yet you're a Star Wars fan?

 

Of some of them, yes, very much. I easily would rate Avatar's dialogue above the prequels. I would not take Avatar over any of the OT.

 

Avatar is not a worthless film. My skin just prickles when people talk about it a certain way.

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Just now, Chen G. said:

None of us are claiming its some masterpiece, but I think its a very strong motion picture in a lot of ways.

 

I don't do half stars but this is one case where I feel it is greater than a 3 but not quite a 4.

 

A solid 3.5 star film for me. I don't give out tons of 5s.

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Just now, blondheim said:

A solid 3.5 star film for me.

 

Sure, somewhere around about there. Maybe a **** for me, I dunno. Haven't seen it in a while.

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Avatar should have won the Oscar for Best Picture.

 

And I’m not even a particularly huge fan of the film. It blew me away in the theatre, even if it lost a lot of its power on subsequent home viewings. It’s not even Cameron’s best film.

 

But it still should have won that year, for the same reason Star Wars should have won. If Hollywood can’t give their most prestigious award to a film that delivered to audiences that kind of ground breaking, pure cinematic experience, then they are lost and the Oscars mean nothing. Which of course is the case.

 

 

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It is not his best film (maybe Aliens or The Terminator, or Terminator 2 would take that crown), but it has been underrated by some, and is one that needs a Blu-ray / 4K release with all the trimmings.

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I'm sure you're being facetious, but if not, in my case I definitely don't and never have.  I had no clue I was close to any milestones whatsoever 🤷‍♀️

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1 hour ago, Nick1066 said:

If Hollywood can’t give their most prestigious award that delivered to audiences that kind of ground breaking, pure cinematic experience, then they are lost and the Oscars mean nothing. Which of course is the case.

 

Its certainly always nice when a big spectacle movie that the unwashed masses actually go and see wins big at the Academy Awards. Not that the Academy Awards should be a popularity contest, but they shouldn't be this ivory tower institution, either.

 

It was never a very frequent occurence, unfortunately, but it does happen: The Bridge on the River KwaiBraveheart, Titanic, Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings all come to mind, and are all great and worthy winners, at that.

 

Would that it happened again!

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I'm not a fan of T2.

To me, it's just one long chase sequence.

 

TERMINATOR is a good example of a film with a brain dead script.

But. it has two great scenes so it works as entertainment!

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  • 1 month later...
On 6/10/2021 at 2:04 AM, bruce marshall said:

ABYSS is like CE3K under the ocean.

 

Other than they are both about aliens, where is the overlap? CE3K introduced a government conspiracy to discover and cover up the presence of extra-terrestrial (not that one) life and the entire film is about the aliens reaching out to ordinary people and the havoc it causes.

 

For the first half The Abyss only tangentially introduces "something other" (could be sea monsters) but it's a technological thriller / disaster film. (Some people actually considered that a problem because they felt the ending came too much out of nowhere. I never did.)

 

I might give the argument that Terminator is a better film than The Abyss. But the Abyss aimed higher. The Abyss was the first time Cameron got an emotional response from me.

 

I remember liking Titanic a lot. And Aliens is just amazing.

 

But T2 was the beginning of the end for me. It was when Cameron started to let you know he was IMPORTANT. The reason I feel that T2 has aged worse than Terminator (and about as badly as the extended Abyss) is they suddenly have a message that takes precedence over the film.

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I enjoy the Abyss, both theatrical and extended versions, but I don't feel the need to revisit it anytime soon.  I enjoy Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2, Titanic and even Avatar more.  What takes away from the Abyss, particularly the extended version is that I don't buy the aliens' strategy would ever work.  Humanity as a collective have too short of a memory for it to work.  I have the same problem with the Watchmen.  The film has plenty of fun moments, and I enjoy it much more than True Lies.

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On 8/15/2021 at 1:18 PM, Ollie said:

I'm still waiting on a proper DVD release for The Abyss, and True Lies as well.

You'll might be old and dead when that happens.  He has to finish Avatar 2, and he has to prep Avatar for a re-release with updated effects for next summers re-release. 

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No, it is his 3rd best.

 

His great movies:

1) ALIENS is the best.

2) THE TERMINATOR 

3) THE ABYSS

4) TERMINATOR 2

5) TRUE LIES

 

His OK but not great movies:

6) TITANIC

7) AVATAR

 

His really bad movie:
8) PIRANHA II: The Spawning

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