Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18502 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-09-12
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Synopsis
This vivid undersea exploration for IMAX offers visual thrills and educational information about the little-known life living on the ocean floor. Director James Cameron theorizes that studying this fauna could help astronomers figure out what alien life may be like on other planets. He teams up with NASA researchers and marine biologists to find out more.

Customer Reviews

Not nearly as much ocean bottom footage as you'd expect
This documentary is not nearly as good as it should have been. Before I even get to the film, I have to say I have a problem with the title. Yes, I understand that the creatures at the bottom of the ocean (few of which we actually get to see here, incidentally) are so different that they appear "alien," but the denizens of the ocean's depths are about the last creatures on planet Earth I would refer to as alien. I think the title is actually a tip-off to what this documentary really is at its heart: James Cameron's pitch to be the first explorer of the oceans possibly existing on truly alien worlds. This whole thing (and I should note that I'm talking about the 95-minute version) is more about speculations concerning alien worlds than it is about our own ocean's depths. In a sense, the methods and means of studying life miles below the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is akin to the exploration of alien oceans, but Cameron and his gang really stretch the point here. I'm sorry, but a month aboard an ocean vessel is not quite the same as a trip to Mars or the moons of Jupiter, no matter what one young scientist says. Every time we actually get to go back beneath our oceans, the documentary is soon hijacked by hypothetical comparisons to the exploration of alien worlds. By the end, some of that speculation really sounds scripted. I for one hope that bona fide scientists, rather than a rich and daring enthusiast like Cameron and a stable of giggling grad students, oversee those alien missions if and when they take place.

This film simply forgets what it is supposed to be about on several occasions. The scientists who went along for the ride, mostly young people from astrophysical as well as geological and oceanographic disciplines, just aren't that interesting, and they often sound more like tourists than scientists when they travel down to the ocean's depths. Certainly, anyone would be blown away by the sights down there, but statements such as awesome, what is that?, and "Holy pancakes, Batman" just aren't very informative in my book. The film makes another mistake, I believe, by not better identifying the locations of each dive in any way that is meaningful to non-geologists. Unless you are familiar with the names of undersea areas, you won't have much of an inkling where in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans these dives took place. Give Joe Viewer a little more context, if you please.

I think it's rather obvious that most potential viewers want to see strange-looking creatures they've never seen before. You'll see a few early on (including a fish with two front feet), and you'd better revel in it while you can because most of the footage consists of hydrothermal vents and their unique ecosystems. It's fascinating, yes, but all we did in the second half of the film (when we actually found our way back underwater) was jump from one hydrothermal vent to another.

The main problem with this film is the limited amount of time we actually get to spend exploring the ocean's depths. Far too much time is taken up getting to know the explorers and hearing their speculations on life on other planets. I would have to say that less than half of this film's time is spent beneath the waves - I for one wanted much more than that, since that is what the documentary was supposed to be about.

egocentric film, wrong way
This film looks like the making off of a documentary, an extra in the DVD. I really became tired of James Cameron and his stuff and missed the subject; underwater life under extreme conditions. James Cameron is ALL the time and he's not a naturalist.And we shouln't care about the human emotions of the research crew more than the research itself. This is a very wrong way to make a nature film. A waste of time & money.

Misleading Title
Perhaps I should have read the blurb a bit better, but I found this very disappointing. I was looking forward to seeing footage of the weird and wonderful creatures that live in the deep, but instead found most of this technical, focusing on machinery, equipment and geology (not my favourite). Thank goodness for the fast-forward button!!