Wednesday, August 28, 2024

RIMC's Directorial Retrospective Series: James Cameron - Part 1 (Pre-Titanic)

 

(This retrospective is dedicated to the memory of James Cameron’s longtime producer Jon Landau (1960-2024))

In the film industry, there aren’t a lot of filmmakers who have a legacy as considerably vast as James Cameron’s. Case in point, at the time of this post’s publication, Cameron is responsible for three of the top 5 highest-grossing films of all time, and apart from a brief period where Avengers: Endgame overtook the top spot in 2019, a James Cameron film has been known for being the highest-grossing film of all-time for nearly the past three decades. Since 2009, that honor has gone to his ambitious sci-fi epic Avatar, and in 2022, 13 years after the original’s release, Cameron finally brought audiences back into the world of Pandora with Avatar: The Way of Water, a film that defied the odds to become just as critically and commercially successful as its predecessor. However, this was only the beginning of Cameron’s plans to continue the story of the Na’vi as he also has three more Avatar films in the works; the third, recently confirmed to be titled Avatar: Fire and Ash, was filmed in conjunction with The Way of Water and is being primed for a December 2025 release while production is currently underway on the fourth film, set for a December 2029 release. But as we begin the process of waiting for our third trip to the world of Pandora, it’s time to reflect upon the career of one of the most well-known directors in the industry. Yes, folks, it’s time for another edition of what has, admittedly, been a long-dormant series here on Rhode Island Movie Corner, the Directorial Retrospectives, where I take as complete a look as I can at any given director’s filmography. However, just like the Michael Bay retrospective that I did several years ago, this one will ultimately be much more than just a single post. Given the cultural impact of his last three directorial efforts, which have each grossed over $2 billion at the box office, I decided that it’d only be fitting to give both Titanic and the first two Avatar films their own full-length reviews. And so, without further ado, it’s time to see why today’s director can quite arguably call himself ‘the king of the world’ as we look back upon the pre-1997 filmography of the one and only James Cameron.

PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING (1982)

James Cameron primarily got his start in the industry working in the visual effects department on films produced by Roger Corman, the legendary B-movie producer who also helped launch the careers of other filmmakers such as Ron Howard, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. And in 1982, Cameron made his official feature-length directorial debut with the sequel to Corman’s studio New World Pictures’ 1978 release Piranha, which was one of the early works of another Corman protégé, Joe Dante. However, Corman was not involved with the sequel which, by all accounts, was an incredibly rough production for a first-time director like Cameron. For starters, due in large part to the production’s limited budget, the bulk of the film’s crew consisted of non-English speaking Italians; however, at the very least, they had enough experience in the horror genre to deliver what Cameron was looking for. Ultimately, Cameron’s biggest hurdle on the project was his frequent arguments with executive producer Ovidio G. Assonitis over the direction he was taking the film in. As a result, it’s been widely reported that Assonitis ended up firing Cameron after just two weeks and filmed the rest of it himself, though, admittedly, this has been debated over the years. Nevertheless, it’s also been reported that Cameron was forbidden from partaking in the film’s post-production process (to the point where he even broke into where the film was being edited in Rome to work on it before he got caught), thus resulting in a unique situation where there are technically two publicly available cuts of this film. Given everything that I just noted about its hectic post-production process, the widely released cut of the film that can currently be found on Blu-Ray is, by all accounts, the one that Assonitis was directly in charge of. However, Cameron did end up getting the opportunity to release his own cut of the film thanks to a distribution deal that he made with Embassy Home Entertainment. This version of the film is about ten minutes shorter but, at the time of this post’s publication, is only commercially available on the outdated video formats of VHS and Laserdisc.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: Now, despite what I just said about Cameron’s cut not having been released in years and, thus, only being available on older video formats, both versions of this film can currently be found on YouTube. For today’s retrospective (and since I’m sure James Cameron wouldn’t mind it all that much since he doesn’t bring this film up in conversation all that often (and really, can you blame him?)), I watched Ovidio G. Assonitis’ cut due to its better video quality. For those who are curious, some of the biggest differences between the two cuts include Cameron’s cut lacking scenes of nudity (which, by most accounts, was something that Cameron wasn’t involved with) and including a unique visual style that, like what Steven Spielberg did with the shark in Jaws, represents POV shots from the perspective of the piranhas.)

Really, though, all the crazy things that happened during this film’s production are ultimately more interesting to talk about than the film itself. Yes, at the end of the day, Piranha II: The Spawning is nothing more than your standard schlocky horror film that, like many other of its peers at the time, was mainly created to capitalize on the success of Jaws. The acting is hokey (not even future Cameron regular Lance Henriksen can save this one), all the characters are one-note, and much of the early parts of this film feel incredibly disjointed as it jumps from scene to scene and minor side character to minor side character. Thus, the only major thing that this film has going for it is its sequences involving flying piranhas (yes, you read that right, flying piranhas) that, given the film’s low budget, look incredibly cheap as hell. For what it’s worth, though, James Cameron was able to use some of the visual effect techniques used to create these airborne aquatic beasts to much better effect when designing the face-hugger animatronics in Aliens. Plus, if I were to give this film any sort of credit, the flying piranhas do give this sequel at least one major advantage over its predecessor since it allows for some actual on-screen piranha attacks (which, to be clear, is not a dig against the original Piranha, which is obviously still the better film by comparison). That said, though, this is also very much a ‘sequel in name only’ as none of the main characters from the original Piranha return for this film, which only references the events of its predecessor once in its entirety. And so, with all that in mind, it’s easy to see why James Cameron spent many years distancing himself from this project even though it technically counts as his directorial debut. To be fair, you can’t fault him for how it turned out given everything he had to deal with when he made it… but at the same time, it goes without saying that his subsequent directorial outings ended up being a lot better than this one.

Rating: 1/5

THE TERMINATOR (1984)

Luckily for James Cameron, there was ultimately one silver lining from the hellish production that was Piranha II as one fateful night in Rome during its post-production ended up becoming the catalyst for the project that truly launched his directorial career. After experiencing a fever-induced nightmare in which a humanoid-looking robot emerged from a fiery explosion, Cameron used this image to create a story about a young woman named Sarah Connor who finds herself hunted by a seemingly unstoppable cyborg known as a Terminator who was sent back in time from the year 2029 by Skynet, an advanced A.I. system that would gain sentience and wipe out most of humanity in an all-out nuclear war. All the while, Sarah is protected by a lone human soldier named Kyle Reese who was also sent back in time, albeit in his case by Sarah’s future son John, the leader of the resistance movement fighting against Skynet in the post-apocalyptic future and, naturally, the reason why she’s being hunted now. Upon its release, the film became an unexpected smash hit, grossing over $78 million on its modest $6.4 million budget and eventually spawning one of the most iconic science fiction film franchises of all time. Sure, many have argued that the franchise would ultimately peak with the two films that were directed by Cameron himself, with every other installment since then (only one of which saw any direct involvement from Cameron) failing to live up to the widespread acclaim of Cameron’s films, but nevertheless, there’s no denying Terminator’s ever-enduring influence on the sci-fi genre.  

However, even with all that said, it is interesting to look back at the first Terminator when compared to all the films that would come after it. Whereas everything starting with 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a big-budget sci-fi action spectacle, the first Terminator… is decidedly not that. Instead, it’s more of a small-scale horror film that thoroughly maintains the horror genre’s well-established premise of a young woman hunted by an imposing killer. And thanks in large part to Cameron’s reliance on nighttime-set action sequences and the overall look and feel of a noir film with its seedy exterior locales and claustrophobic interior locales, the original Terminator has a surprisingly effective (and, when compared to its sequels, arguably quite refreshing) grounded atmosphere in which the sci-fi elements of its story are almost second fiddle to everything else that’s going on. Case in point, Cameron even manages to apply this low-key style to the sequences that showcase the post-apocalyptic future that Reese came from, which are naturally expanded upon in terms of scale in subsequent films. In other words, while there are undoubtedly some parts of this film that have become dated (e.g. the stop-motion animation movement of the titular antagonist when he’s nothing more than a robotic frame), Cameron utilized his minimal budget to its fullest effect in the same way that he works nowadays with the big budgets of the blockbusters that he’s very well known for. The result is a highly engaging action-thriller that’s fully bolstered by the strong performances from its three main leads: Arnold Schwarzenegger as the hulking Terminator, Linda Hamilton as the sympathetic heroine Sarah Connor, and Michael Biehn as the heroic warrior from the future, Kyle Reese. And while it’s probably safe to say that most Terminator fans tend to list its follow-up as their favorite installment of the series, this first film still holds up quite well on its own accord.

Rating: 5/5!

ALIENS (1986)

(DISCLAIMER: For today’s retrospective, I watched this film’s extended cut, which was first released on LaserDisc in 1991 (though, for the record, this is not in reference to what could technically be described as the film’s ‘first’ extended cut, which aired on CBS in 1989). I previously reviewed this film back in 2017 as part of a retrospective on the Alien franchise and did so by watching the original theatrical cut, with both versions of the film being available on its home media releases. In this instance, I decided to check out the Extended Edition for the first time since Cameron has gone on record stating that he prefers this version of the film.)

It's safe to say that things were going quite great for James Cameron after the success that he and his producing partner Gale Anne Hurd had achieved with The Terminator, which led to him netting other notable projects such as, most interestingly in hindsight, the screenplay for 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II. Yes, Cameron had a hand in developing the Sylvester Stallone-led action-packed follow-up to 1982’s First Blood; granted, Stallone would then go on to rewrite the script himself, but Cameron still got credited in the end and later went on record stating that his action sequences were the parts of his script that remained in the final film. Ultimately, though, Cameron’s first big endeavor after The Terminator would come when he was brought on to write and direct the highly anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s genre-defining 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien. Unfortunately for Cameron, production didn’t exactly go smoothly for him as he had to deal with the standard filmmaking practices of the production’s U.K.-based crew, such as the daily tea breaks that resulted in lost production time. Cameron’s infamously aggressive nature and tendency to oversee aspects of the production himself also irked many crewmembers (to the point where the film’s original cinematographer Dick Bush was replaced because of creative differences over lighting), who felt that he wasn’t qualified enough to direct a film of this nature. It didn’t help that The Terminator hadn’t been released in the U.K. at that time and any attempts by Cameron to have his crew watch it were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Hurd, in what was only her second film as a lead producer after Terminator, was viewed as being there simply because she was Cameron’s wife (at the time) rather than the stalwart producer that she’d become known for thanks to films like this and the long-running Walking Dead TV series.

But thankfully for all involved, Aliens proved to be just as much of a hit as its immediate predecessor upon its release. It earned over $130 million at the worldwide box office and was regarded by many as being just as good as the original Alien if not arguably better. As he would later go on to do with Terminator 2, Cameron injects a more action-oriented tone into Aliens’ plot, in which Lt. Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of the Nostromo massacre, is brought in with a crew of Colonial Marines to deal with an alien outbreak on LV-426, the planet that she and her old crew had visited that set the plot of the previous film into motion which is now the site of a terraforming colony. However, unlike Terminator 2, which almost entirely abandoned the original’s horror beats in favor of its sci-fi action, Aliens does manage to maintain its franchise’s prolific status in the horror genre in all the right places. Even with the change in location from a lone spaceship to a derelict space colony, Cameron still gets to work with the Alien franchise’s trademark penchant for dark, foreboding, and horrifyingly cramped locales albeit with the added benefit of having its protagonists being forced to deal with more aliens this time around rather than just one. But, of course, as we’ve well established by now, Aliens is ultimately one of the first major showcases of Cameron’s talents as an action director, which is then bolstered by some strong visual effects work to bring its alien creatures to life. Sure, Aliens may not have had the benefit of the involvement of H.R. Giger, AKA the creator of the titular Alien, but with Cameron’s Terminator effects guru Stan Winston onboard to take his place… well, let’s just say that it’s easy to see why this resulted in Winston winning his first Oscar for Best Visual Effects at that year’s Oscars just like Giger and his team did for the original Alien back in 1979.

But amidst all the exciting sci-fi horror action, Aliens also boasts a strong emotional core thanks to, of course, Sigourney Weaver in the lead role of Ripley. This is, after all, the film where Weaver made history by being the first-ever lead star of a science-fiction film to earn a Best Actress nomination at that year’s Oscars. Not only does Weaver naturally evolve the character from being the first film’s final girl to the franchise’s badass action heroine, but she also imbues Ripley with a wonderfully powerful motherly persona thanks to the touching bond that she forms with Newt (Carrie Henn), the sole survivor of the LV-426 colony. This development is even more relevant when watching the extended cut, which includes a scene where Ripley tragically learns that her daughter Amanda died in-between the events of the first two films; a scene that Weaver was particularly incensed about being removed from the theatrical cut. They’re then joined by a terrific supporting cast that includes, among others, plenty of Cameron regulars such as Michael Biehn as Hicks, the most level-headed of the Colonial Marines with a good onscreen rapport with Weaver, Lance Henriksen as Bishop, a far more good-natured android than Ian Holm’s Ash was in the first film, and Bill Paxton as Hudson, a cocky Colonial Marine who’s the primary source of comic relief, especially once he realizes how out of his depth he is once the situation on LV-426 goes awry. With all this in mind, it’s easy to see why Aliens is not only regarded as one of the best sequels of all time but also one of the best films to come out of both the science fiction and horror film genres. Under James Cameron’s deft direction, the film effectively balances its franchise’s superb horror aesthetic with Cameron’s masterfully crafted action set-pieces, all while being bolstered by a top-notch cast of well-written characters who bring life to a world full of terrifying acid-blooded aliens. And as a result, the film more than holds its own alongside the Ridley Scott-directed masterpiece that came before it as one of the best installments of one of cinema’s most well-known and long-running horror franchises.

Rating: 5/5!

THE ABYSS (1989)

While science fiction may be the genre that James Cameron is best known for as a director, he has also been well known for his deep connection to the ocean, particularly by way of his extensive experience in the art of deep-sea diving. Not only has he participated in several significant (and sometimes record-breaking) dives over the years, but the vast and untamed world of the ocean depths has played a huge role in some of his films, including Titanic and Avatar: The Way of Water. But when it comes to the first real ocean-set film of his career (that is, if you don’t count Pirahna II, which I’m sure Cameron would prefer), that honor goes to his 1989 film The Abyss. Based on a story concept that Cameron had come up with when he was in high school after attending a seminar on deep-sea breathing techniques, the film follows the crew of a submersible oil drilling platform as they’re recruited by the U.S. Navy to assist a team of SEALs in the process of salvaging a nuclear submarine that has sunk in the Caribbean. Finding themselves in a race against time to recover the sub before Russian forces can get to it and instigate an international incident that could potentially kickstart World War III, they soon discover a mysterious yet fascinating sight of extraterrestrial origin. Production, to be perfectly blunt, was not a smooth one when it came to this film. Given the extensively complicated nature of creating the film’s underwater sequences, it goes without saying that the cast and crew found themselves pushed to the limit during a shoot that lasted around half a year. Lead actor Ed Harris reportedly punched Cameron after one scene nearly resulted in him drowning and lead actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio stormed off set while filming the sequence where her character drowns and is brought back to life after numerous takes wasted the production’s film stock.

In some ways, you could say that the negative publicity of the film’s production troubles (which were even referenced in its original theatrical trailer) might have ended up affecting its commercial performance as well; while it did make its $43 million+ budget back, it only made about $90 million worldwide, resulting in it being seen as the rare commercial dud of Cameron’s career. Critically, though, the film proved to be yet another success for him and became his second straight film to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. However, upon its release, it was soon made clear that the theatrical cut was, technically, an incomplete version of what Cameron set out to make. Due to a combination of a lack of time to finish specific visual effects and pressure from the studio to not have a runtime of nearly three hours (which is an incredibly ironic notion nowadays (especially given the length of future James Cameron films)), Cameron cut out a pivotal sequence from the film’s finale in which a bunch of giant waves are unleashed upon the world. But then, a few years later after Cameron scored his biggest hit yet with Terminator 2, his studio, Lightstorm Entertainment, secured a lucrative deal with The Abyss’ distributor, 20th Century Fox, which, along with the funds for any future films of Cameron’s, included enough money to complete the climactic wave sequence. And so, in 1993, The Abyss’ ‘Special Edition’ was officially released which, along with the wave sequence, also included some other sequences that were taken out of the theatrical cut such as a few notable bits of character development and sequences that emphasized the part of the plot where the events of the film are tied around the threat of nuclear war, which was downplayed in the theatrical cut.

But whatever version of the film you end up watching, you’ll ultimately find yourself with a highly engrossing sci-fi thriller. Even with the Special Edition’s near three-hour runtime, there’s never a dull moment in this film as it does an excellent job of creating a suspenseful mystery plot, especially when it comes to how it expertly builds up the slow but gradual reveal of the alien creatures that the characters come across. Add in a great use of the narrowly confined setting of the oil crew’s underwater rig, which spends much of the film stuck thousands of feet underwater due to extensive hurricane damage, and you have a film that successfully crafts a real harrowing atmosphere amidst all its moments of pure spectacle. And on that note, as you undoubtedly guessed from earlier when I mentioned that this film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, it goes without saying that the biggest selling point of this film is its visual effects thanks in large part to the one and only ILM. Whether it’s the well-crafted underwater sequences or the various CGI effects that, for the most part, have aged relatively well, this film’s visual game still holds up immensely well even after three and a half decades. Casting-wise, Cameron doesn’t rely on a cast of big-name stars, but this allows for this film’s ensemble to have some phenomenal on-screen camaraderie. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio headline the film excellently as team leader Virgil ‘Bud’ Brigman and his estranged wife Lindsay while Michael Biehn gets to play against type for his third major role in a James Cameron film as Lt. Coffey, the leader of the SEAL team who starts to go insane as his ulterior motives begin to threaten the whole operation.

The Abyss is the only film of James Cameron’s post-1984 career that I’d never seen at the time that I started to write this, namely due to a reason that will be blatantly obvious to anyone familiar with this film and its post-theatrical release life. For the longest time, this and another James Cameron film, True Lies, went several years without any sort of home media release after they were released on DVD. Thus, when those DVDs of theirs eventually went out of print, the only legally viable way to watch either of these films was whenever they randomly popped up on premium cable networks. In the case of The Abyss, I did attempt to watch it a few times over the years, but I’ll fully admit that I never ended up getting too far into it whenever I recorded it; by comparison, True Lies tended to pop up a lot more often and, thus, was the one that I got around to watching first. Thankfully, though, this year finally saw both films get their first proper home media release in decades, which is fitting seeing how this happens to be an anniversary year for them both (The Abyss’ 35th and True Lies’ 30th). And in the case of the former, this will hopefully result in newer audiences finally getting a chance to experience what is easily shaping up to be James Cameron’s most underrated film to date as this highly engrossing and visually spectacular deep ocean adventure is yet another showcase of his unparalleled technical mastery.

Rating: 5/5!

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

As successful as the original Terminator was, the idea of a potential follow-up wasn’t an immediate guarantee at the time due to Cameron’s commitment to other projects and, perhaps more importantly, the significant creative conflicts that he had with the studio that largely financed the film, Hemdale. Said conflict ultimately came to a head when studio chairman John Daly attempted to cut out the final section of the film where Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese are being chased by the Terminator’s robotic endoskeleton and he and Cameron nearly got into a physical fight over it as a result. To make matters worse for Cameron, he had been forced to relinquish half of his rights on the project to Hemdale just to get it made and had then sold half of what he had left to Gale Anne Hurd when the two divorced in 1989. But, by the following year, she and Cameron, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stan Winston, sued Hemdale over unpaid profits, which was just one of the many lawsuits that the studio was tied up in at the time that would eventually lead to them filing for bankruptcy and officially shutting down in 1995. During this time, Schwarzenegger came up with a solution to his and Cameron’s problem by suggesting that the rights be picked up by another studio, Carolco Pictures, who he had just worked with on the 1990 Paul Verhoeven feature Total Recall. Carolco promptly did just that with an expensive $17 million deal… which then meant that Cameron had to be fully locked in for a sequel that he only had a few months to develop. He ultimately did so along with his longtime friend and collaborator William Wisher, his credited co-writer, and the result is a film that is not only considered to be just as great as its highly acclaimed predecessor but, in the eyes of many, was arguably even better by comparison: Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Set 11 years after the events of the previous film, Judgment Day sees the Connor family once again targeted by the sentient A.I. program of the post-apocalyptic future, Skynet. But instead of having a Terminator sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to her son John, this time Skynet sends a more advanced model, the shape-shifting liquid metal-based T-1000, to kill the now 10-year-old John. Fortunately for him, his future self once again sends a lone warrior back in time to protect him; it’s just that, this time, it just so happens to be a reprogrammed T-800 AKA the same kind of Terminator that went after his mom a decade prior. As I’ve repeatedly alluded to throughout today’s post, Terminator 2 took a much different kind of narrative approach compared to the original. Whereas the first Terminator was a low-budget sci-fi flick that crafted a noir-style atmosphere to go along with its horror-inspired premise… Terminator 2 boasted the largest budget of any film ever made at the time (which, by the way, was a record that James Cameron would then proceed to break twice more over the decade) and, thus, is a grand-scaled action extravaganza. Simply put, this film’s action sequences are second-to-none and they’re bolstered by, as to be expected from a James Cameron film, top-notch visual effects work. This time around, Cameron combined the two powerhouse forces that won his last two films the Best Visual Effects Oscars; Stan Winston with the robot prosthetics and animatronics and Dennis Muren and company over at ILM for the CGI effects such as the groundbreaking visual effects work to bring the T-1000’s shape-shifting abilities to life. With an all-star team like that, it’s not surprising to see that Terminator 2 became the third straight film of James Cameron’s career to nab the Best Visual Effects Oscar at that year’s ceremony.

But as great as both the film’s visual effects and action sequences are, this is then matched by a top-notch script as Cameron and Wisher do a fantastic job at crafting a natural follow-up to the first film full of phenomenal character beats that define the main protagonists’ character arcs. Linda Hamilton returns once again as Sarah Connor who, while far more battle-ready than she was in the previous film, is also now heavily traumatized by what she went through and for being cursed with the haunting knowledge of the dark future ahead; one can only imagine how this is then all complicated even further when she learns that she’s working alongside the same kind of unstoppable killing machine that once tried to kill her. But as for the Terminator, the first film’s main antagonist becomes this film’s greatest hero as an emotionless cyborg gradually gains a greater appreciation for humanity through his interactions with John Connor, for whom he becomes a surrogate father figure to. John makes his first appearance in the franchise here, played by Edward Furlong, who starts out as a cynical troublemaker but is soon forced to grow up faster than anticipated once he’s put through the same harrowing scenario his mother went through by being pursued by an even scarier antagonist in Robert Patrick’s cold and ruthless T-1000. Heck, even supporting players get some solid character moments like Joe Morton as Miles Dyson, an engineer at Cyberdyne who’s revealed to be the one who will be the primary catalyst behind the creation of Skynet but, once he learns what will happen, nobly steps up to the point of sacrificing himself to ensure that the group’s efforts to stop Judgment Day are successful.

In short, while I’m usually not one to be overly critical of blockbuster-type films for not being the most well-written or ‘smartest’ films ever made, I will concede that Terminator 2: Judgment Day is easily one of the best examples of a blockbuster that, above all else, ensures that its story and character beats are just as well-developed as its visuals and action sequences. Thus, just like what Cameron managed to accomplish with Aliens, Terminator 2 more than holds its own when compared to the first film… and is why many have argued that this is where the series ultimately peaked in terms of quality. Terminator 2 was the last film in the series to be directed by Cameron himself (not counting the 1996 Universal theme parks spin-off Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time), and while the series would continue without him, it’s never managed to achieve the same level of success that it had with Judgment Day. The reasons why have largely varied from film to film, whether it was 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines’ efforts to undo the optimistic ending of the previous film so that it could continue the story, 2009’s Terminator Salvation toning its action down to achieve a more marketable PG-13 rating, or… basically any major creative decision made on 2015’s Terminator: Genisys. Cameron did finally return to the series in 2019 by writing/producing Terminator: Dark Fate, but even that film couldn’t revitalize the franchise regardless of its efforts to return to its narrative roots. But regardless of where you stand on the Terminator franchise (case in point, yours truly has gone on record in the past admitting that he has liked some of the later Terminator films), it’s practically impossible to deny that Terminator 2: Judgment Day still stands as being nothing short of a masterpiece.

Rating: 5/5!

TRUE LIES (1994)

With a second masterpiece from the Terminator franchise under their belts, James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger would team up once more (literally, in fact, because this is the most recent film that they’ve made together) on a project that would end up being considerably different than the films that made them both household names. Sure, it’s still the kind of big-budget action extravaganza (the first to have a budget of at least $100 million (though it should be noted that Terminator 2’s budget has sometimes been reported as having been over that threshold as well)) that we’ve come to expect from this dynamic filmmaking duo… but I bet that no one would’ve expected them to do, of all things, a remake of a French action comedy. Yes, 1994’s True Lies is one of the rare instances of a Cameron film that wasn’t based on an original story of his; instead, it’s a remake of a 1991 French film named La Totale!. Like that film’s plot, True Lies follows a man named Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger) who’s an elite secret agent for a highly classified counterterrorist agency known as Omega Sector. It’s a profession that he’s kept secret for many years from his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and their daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku), who believe him to be nothing more than a boring computer salesman. However, in his efforts to track down a terrorist group known as the Crimson Jihad, Harry soon finds himself having to balance his work life with his personal life when Helen [somewhat inadvertently] gets caught up in his daily proceedings. Upon its release, the film was both a solid critical and commercial success, ultimately earning over $378 million worldwide. And while, as I noted earlier when talking about The Abyss, both that film and True Lies spent several years without a proper home media release, True Lies did tend to be the more widely seen of the two because it popped up far more often on premium movie channels like HBO, Showtime, and Starz.

As a result, while it may be one of the lower-rated films of James Cameron’s career amongst critics, True Lies does seem to be well-regarded by many as another great addition to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s extensive resume of classic action flicks. Sure enough, True Lies delivers on being just that and then some when it comes to its action sequences. Cameron’s mastery of the visual medium is arguably the finest that it’s ever been up to that point with plenty of great action set-pieces that effectively mix practical stunt work with some solid visual effects work by his then-newly established visual effects studio Digital Domain, which didn’t keep Cameron’s Visual Effects Oscar win streak going that year (they lost to Forrest Gump) but still got nominated, nevertheless. But as we’ve noted, True Lies is also a comedic action thriller and Cameron handles the comedic aspects of the script quite well, undoubtedly helped by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s well-established action star persona as an unparalleled gold mine for great comedic quips. This also extends nicely to how Cameron unabashedly ups the ante when it comes to how utterly over the top this film’s action sequences can get. In other words, this all starts out relatively tame enough with an espionage sequence that feels like it was ripped straight out of a James Bond film… and then concludes with a scene where Harry Tasker pilots a Harrier Jet and kills the main antagonist by getting him caught on a missile that he then proceeds to fire at an enemy helicopter, all while delivering a classic Arnold one-liner, “You’re fired!”. On paper, that all sounds like one of the most insane things that I’ve ever typed… but thanks to Cameron’s strong direction, you’re fully hooked by this film’s gleefully chaotic nature.

But while True Lies more than succeeds with its action sequences and its sense of humor, there are, admittedly, a few parts of it that have aged considerably. For starters, being that this is a 90’s film, it goes without saying that its portrayal of its Middle Eastern villains now comes off as incredibly stereotypical to the point of being quite arguably culturally offensive. It may also help to explain why the 9/11 attacks have largely been cited as the reason why Cameron and Schwarzenegger never got around to making a sequel. But perhaps the most talked about ‘dated’ aspect of this film is that many have argued that it sports something that you wouldn’t normally see in a James Cameron film; a noticeable misogynistic streak. This mainly comes into play by way of the film’s primary subplot in which Harry starts to suspect that Helen is having an affair with a sleazy car salesman named Simon (Bill Paxton). His subsequent efforts to investigate this to the point of using his agency’s own resources to ‘capture’ her and forcefully coerce her into partaking in a staged ‘secret mission’ have been criticized by many as being excessively cruel. And to be fair, it doesn’t help that this whole sequence ends up overtaking the plot for nearly an hour to the point where main antagonist Aziz (Art Malik) and the Crimson Jihad are absent from the film for the entirety of that stretch of runtime. But if there’s any sort of silver lining to this, it’s that Jamie Lee Curtis, despite everything that Helen is put through in the film, does own her role. And as much as the film’s humor with Helen revolves around how utterly out of her element she is in the world of espionage, it is nice that, by the end, she becomes a spy just like her husband. In other words, while it may be Arnold’s name at the top of the marquee, this film quite arguably belongs to Jamie Lee Curtis, who deservedly won a Golden Globe that year.

In general, the film sports the usual strong ensemble for a James Cameron film. Arnold is, of course, the same great Arnold that he always was at the time, Bill Paxton is, as usual, a prime source of comic relief as the scummy con-man Simon; heck, even Tom Arnold, the notoriously polarizing comedian that he is, is an excellent foil to Schwarzenegger as Harry’s field partner Gib. And because of all this, True Lies still stands as a highly entertaining piece of cinematic bombast. Does that mean that it’s as much of a masterpiece as James Cameron’s other films? No, not really since its outdated global and gender politics does make it one of the prime examples of a film that you just can’t make today in the current landscape of the film industry. But without ignoring the more problematic aspects of its plot, there’s still a lot to love about this film, such as how it unapologetically presents some of the most delightfully ludicrous action sequences that have ever come out of a film from this era. Case in point, I’ve often seen a bunch of people refer to True Lies as the film that served as the peak for the kind of over-the-top action films that thoroughly defined the careers of stars like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And simply put, it’s easy to see where they’re coming from when it comes to how one could potentially describe this film. You take arguably the most popular action star of the '80s and 90’s and pair him up with one of the best action directors in the industry to make the kind of film that the former is best known for (rather than the latter’s usual sci-fi-oriented fare) and you have a film that can best be described as ‘peak Schwarzenegger’.

Rating: 5/5!

This concludes today’s installment of Rhode Island Movie Corner’s Directorial Retrospective series on the films directed by James Cameron. As I noted in the intro, I decided to split this retrospective up into multiple parts simply because I figured that it’d be more appropriate to give his last three films their own full-length reviews given how significant they are within the pop cultural zeitgeist. With that in mind, the next time we return to talk about James Cameron films, we’ll be looking at the film that made him ‘the king of the world’, 1997’s Titanic. So, until then… well, I’ll let Arnold say it for me 😉

Friday, August 16, 2024

Rhode Island Movie Corner's Annual End of Summer Fan Poll - 10th Anniversary Edition Commencement

Hello there, folks! I couldn’t be any more excited about today because the time has come once again for this site’s most well-known tradition: the Annual End of Summer Fan Poll! And this year, folks, we’ve got a significant milestone to celebrate as this marks the 10th anniversary of when I first launched this event back in the summer of 2014. Back then, it was simply a way for me to try and come up with some content for this site during a time of the year when there simply wasn’t much to talk about film-wise. But thanks to all the amazing people who’ve participated in the event over the years, whether by voting or by helping to spread it around on social media, we’ve turned this into a relatively successful annual endeavor of ours. And so, with that in mind, the time has come for the 10th Anniversary Edition of this event, which also happens to be the 10th time I’ve held it. That said, though, it should be noted that, under normal circumstances, this technically shouldn’t be the 10th annual edition of this poll. If this truly was an annual event, this year would’ve been the 11th annual edition of the poll whereas last year’s event in 2023 would be the 10th. But, of course, the infamously awful year that was 2020 nixed any sort of chance of the event happening that year so this year’s 10th anniversary event ended up becoming the 10th official one as well which… hey, if anything, does feel appropriate for the occasion.

For those who are new to this site, here’s how it’ll all play out. The link below will lead you to a poll that I’ve set up on the survey creation website Survio that will ask you to vote for your favorite film from this past summer. You’ve got quite a lot of picks to choose from since the list of options consists of almost every major wide release that came out these past few months, but if you don’t end up seeing your favorite on the list, I always include a write-in section for anything that I missed. As always, this poll will focus solely on films that got a proper theatrical release, which means that I won’t be counting anything in the write-in section that was solely released on a streaming service. However, I will be lenient enough to accept votes from those who saw any of these films through On-Demand services in case they haven’t had any time to go to a theater; they can’t, however, be films that came out before the start of May. The voting process will conclude on September 1st and I will then proceed to write a Results post that covers all the winners… here’s hoping that it won’t take me until the end of this year to finish it like what happened with last year’s Results Post. As always, it’ll be interesting to see how this year’s votes will go. Could the billion-dollar juggernaut that is Inside Out 2 become the first-ever animated film to take the top spot in our event? Will the equally huge Deadpool & Wolverine give Marvel its first solo win since Avengers: Endgame back in 2019? Whatever the case, let’s get this party started!!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE IN THIS YEAR'S EVENT!!!

But to conclude today’s post, it’s time to do what we always do and celebrate this event’s past winners by way of…

RHODE ISLAND MOVIE CORNER’S ANNUAL END OF SUMMER FAN POLL HALL OF FAME

2014

The inaugural RIMC End of Summer Fan Poll started out on a solid note with a relatively modest 43-vote turnout. It also gave us an exciting three-way tie for first (FIVE votes apiece) that gave us quite an eclectic group of winners. You had The Fault in Our Stars, the highly popular adaptation of author John Green’s best-selling tearjerker novel about a blossoming romance between a pair of cancer patients, 22 Jump Street, the rare superior sequel to 2012’s 21 Jump Street, Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s unexpectedly great revival of the 80’s series of the same name that launched the career of Johnny Depp, and Guardians of the Galaxy, the MCU film that took some of Marvel’s most obscure characters and promptly made them some of the company’s most beloved heroes.

2015

The voter turnout increased to 47 in our sophomore year of the event, but this time there was no contest for the number one spot. With a TEN vote performance that doubled that of not only the 2014 winners but also the two runners-up of the 2015 event, Mad Max: Fury Road was the visually spectacular summer blockbuster that film fandom had been craving for quite some time. This now begs the question… with the Mad Max franchise returning to theaters this year with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, can it follow in its sister film’s footsteps and become this year’s champion?

2016

Once again, our event continued to grow in 2016, yielding a 58-vote turnout. This year saw a two-way tie at the top with NINE votes apiece, which is also notably the last time to date that we’ve had a tie at the Number 1 spot. But as I’ve always said, this year’s results provided us with what is easily the most fascinating two-way tie in this event’s history. On the one hand, you had a film that was guaranteed to do well in Captain America: Civil War, the emotionally-charged third installment of the MCU’s Captain America trilogy that kickstarted Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But then, on the other side of this predicament, you had a genuinely unexpected underdog in the raunchy comedy Bad Moms, which starred Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn (which means you could argue that, when it comes to the reason behind this film’s success in that year’s event, it was Agatha All Along… 😉) as a trio of overworked moms who, fed up with the daily struggles of motherhood, decide to let loose and partake in a night of pure debauchery.

2017

It was another 58-vote turnout for the 2017 edition of this event, which resulted in what I would describe as a bit of an upset that garnered what would be the first of two wins in this event’s run for fan-favorite filmmaker Christopher Nolan. Yes, even in a year that saw the release of hits like the DC Extended Universe’s first genuinely well-received outing Wonder Woman, it was Nolan’s take on the evacuation of over 338,000 Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk that took home the top prize with EIGHT votes.

2018

2018 was admittedly a slower year than usual for this event with only 44 votes placed, but this year’s champion did manage to set an event record with TWELVE votes… and believe it or not, it wasn’t Avengers: Infinity War. No, instead the honor went to BlacKkKlansman, the then-latest Spike Lee joint that told the true story of police officer Ron Stallworth’s efforts to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in 1972 by posing as a white man. Upon its release, the film became one of the biggest hits of Lee’s career, earning him his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and garnering much acclaim as a timely reminder of the horrors of hate groups such as the KKK and the Alt-Right.

2019

After tying for first place with other films in both 2014 and 2016, Marvel Studios finally had their first unopposed champion in 2019. Garnering a new record of NINETEEN votes from the equally record-setting 89-vote turnout, Avengers: Endgame promptly certified its status as the biggest film of the year and the immensely satisfying conclusion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Infinity Saga.

2020

Well, as I’ve made it clear numerous times by now, there WASN’T a winner this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2021

Thankfully, a year off did not result in the end of this event as we were able to successfully relaunch it in 2021 without issue. Not only that, but from the 69 votes that were cast that year (nice), 2021’s champion came very close to matching Avengers: Endgame’s 2019 performance with an impressive SIXTEEN vote performance. This year’s champion? Cruella, a re-imagining of Disney’s iconic puppy-stealing villainess… albeit now portrayed as a more sympathetic rebellious anti-hero.

2022

2022 was a historic year for our annual event as it ended up being the first year where we had a turnout of over 100 voters (119, to be specific). And while it was practically guaranteed to be that year’s champ from the moment the event started given its status as the biggest film of the summer, one final day of voting catapulted Top Gun: Maverick into the history books with a jaw-dropping FIFTY-SIX (!) vote victory that probably won’t be contested any time soon.

2023

Think a 119-vote turnout was nice? Well, how about an even bigger 122-vote turnout the following year!? And unlike 2022, 2023’s race to the top was a lot more unpredictable, with the top three films all getting at least 20 votes apiece. This year’s winner ultimately scored the event’s second-best record of TWENTY-FOUR votes and came from that summer’s biggest cultural phenomenon, the double feature of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer AKA Barbenheimer. But while Barbie may have been the billion-dollar juggernaut of the summer, it was Oppenheimer that won out in the end (thus becoming the second Nolan film to end up as the champ in our event) as Nolan’s biopic of the events that led to the creation of the atomic bomb became the biggest hit of his career outside of the Dark Knight trilogy and was the film that finally got him the Oscar for Best Director. It also helped that it also took home the top prize of Best Picture, which notably makes it the first #1 film in this event’s history to go on and win the big one.