Aliens of the Deep

Many may know about Cameron’s fascination for the deep after filming Titanic. Here in a fascinating but all-too-brief deep-sea documentary, Cameron moves into Jacques Cousteau territory, taking you down to the depths of the ocean to show in 3D, some of the wonderful creatures that exist at the bottom of the sea. Towards the end, Cameron makes a correlation with one of Jupiter’s moons suggesting a frozen surface might underneath support living organisms.

Much of Cameron’s optimism and that of his diving team rubs off on you and it is exciting to see what lies beneath, but just when you’re getting into it, the film comes to an end. It might have made more sense commercially if Cameron had extended the running time and included for example, some of the technical information about how they got their crafts down to the depths of the ocean and what contingencies they’d made for malfunctions.

As it is, we see some fine creatures, appreciate that marine biologists have great jobs, admire the way Cameron has come up with some great 3D shots, appreciate that there is a bigger world out there and then return to the surface for air and the credits.

Matt Arnoldi