Customer Reviews

Aliens Of the Deep

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

"Aliens of the Deep" is the first commercial film to document the mysterious creatures that live at the bottom of Earth's oceans, where no sunlight ever reaches. It was filmed in 2003, as 4 manned deep submersibles made 40 dives in 10 sites in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to get a firsthand look at these sun-less ecosystems thousands of meters below the oceans' surface. "Aliens of the Deep" was released theatrically in 3-D IMAX, which was probably more impressive than the smallish 2-D picture on a DVD. Director James Cameron, exploration enthusiast and a great student of deep sea life, was on one of the submersibles and does some narration, but most of the narration is by other members of the team: astrobiologists, marine biologists, and a marine seismologist. Both the 47-minute theatrical version and an extended 95-minute version of the film are included on the DVD.

The pictures of the ocean floor are great. There are plants, fish, microbes, giant squid, giant tubeworms, and a lot of unidentifiable stuff down there. I was pleased to see the tubeworms, as I have always had trouble envisioning them from descriptions. An entire sun-less ecosystem powered by superheated, toxic fluid emitted from hydrothermal vents is intriguing stuff. But the narration is bad. The enthusiasm of the explorers comes across, but very little else does. They're excited. Very excited. They proclaim everything to be "incredible" with no explanation of why. But they aren't informative. The narrators are scientists of various descriptions, but not experienced deep sea explorers. They seem to just be along for the ride. They're not authorities on the subject by any means. So their narration is ebullient but superficial. Ironically, a sequence that speculates on how we might discover undersea life on Jupiter's moon Europa is more entrancing than the deep sea footage, even though it's not real, because it's something the narrator knows well.

The technology of the submersibles and the conditions inside of them make a great story in themselves. But instead of taking the opportunity to impress us with the realities of exploration, "Aliens of the Deep" says nothing, leaving the audience with the impression that it's easy to putter around on the ocean floor. The description of the deep sea environment is barely even cursory. The narration mentions the heat, but not the pressure against which plumes of smoke blast upwards. The fish have eyes, but do they see? Does infrared light reach that far? Granted, there is limited knowledge of the creatures we see in this film. But I've read accounts of earlier dives, and there is a whole lot more to say about these creatures and their environment than "Aliens of the Deep" would have us believe. This film talks more about the scientists than about the subject. The creatures that live around the hydrothermal vents and the efforts to study them are fascinating, but you wouldn't know it from "Aliens of the Deep".

Veteran film director Jim Cameron (Titanic, Terminator) turns his talents to filming the amazing ecosystem of the deep sea hydrothermal vents. The IMAX footage is unlike any glipse of this amazing universe ever seen! Cameron shares the spotlight with many up-and-coming scientists and explorers, which is great.

My only wish was that there were more details provided about the fantastic (real!) creatures in this film... it's a pure visual treat, and a fantastic glimpse at an amazing world, but perhaps a little shorter on substance that I would have wished. However, there's a companion book I just ordered that I think will help answer questions where this movie leaves off.

All in all, a MUST SEE, especially while it's still on the big IMAX screen!

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.

Director James Cameron originally made this film for 3D theaters and a lot is lost in the translation to television. "Ghosts Of The Abyss" served well in a smaller format, but "Aliens Of The Deep" just sinks and sinks. There is more emphasis on special effects and hypothesis of life on other planets than seeing the real "Aliens". Sure, thousands of shrimp piled around a volcanic vent is kind of cool, and that fish with two feet-like appendages is unusual, but other than a large translucent jellyfish, there's not much here. All the younger scientists look and talk like actors and the technology of going deep in clear bubble-like compartments is amazing, but it all seems too staged. The extras are interesting only in that they go into more depth about the crew and the machinery. I would recommend this perhaps, on a large 3D screen, but don't bother for the home theater.

to capture all of the things that you will see.

I sat down and before I knew it the movie was over. It was so captivating and well done that the time flew by.

The renditions of exploring the moons of Jupiter were the best I have seen, and if more work like this were to be released, NASA would have an easier time securing their funding.

Seeing the superheated vents so deep in the ocean and the life surrounding them was amazing. To see life that exists without photosynthesis makes me believe that being close to a star has less to do with life than we have been willing to admit.

"Aliens of the Deep" has a lot of scenes of James Cameron playing scientist and lots of computer-animated outer space stuff, but not much actual footage of the eponymous deep sea "aliens" here on Earth.

The point of "Aliens of the Deep" is confusing. Cameron starts out discussing how little we know about the fascinating creatures inhabiting the most extreme depths of the ocean. However, Cameron then veers off to spend the bulk of the film speculating about life on Mars and the moons of Jupiter. Very little of this film is dedicated to showing actual "aliens of the deep" here on Earth. I counted ten or so. The few that we do see are mind-blowing, so it's even more mind-blowing that Cameron should throw in so much gratuitous computer animation of other planets, space probes, and fake extraterrestial ocean creatures.

This could have been an excellent film. Unfortunately, Cameron, for all his professed love of the ocean's depths, didn't seem to want to make a film about them. He really wants to make a movie about exploring oceans on other worlds. At least for now, that's science fiction, not documentary filmmaking.

There's actually very little deep sea footage in this movie. There was more discussion of life elsewhere in the Solar System. While sitting around discussing alien life is fun, I would rather they focused on deep sea life. I would also have prefer it if they had taken a Marine Biologist, instead of an Astrobiologist (yea, that's a usefull profession). Frankly, this played like an after school special. There's very little here of interest, and one can do much better watching PBS. Watching the extended version only prolongs the pain. Don't buy this, don't reward bad work.

Good nature documentaries beat Hollywood blockbusters in excitement, alien-ness and sheer beauty of images as well as in depth and relevance. Bad ones look like a "making of" of an expedition on which actually not all that much happened (you know, a bunch of scientists filming themselves talking for an hour about how they don't find the platypus while showing off their equipment).
I was so excited when I found and bought this one. Acclaimed Hollywood director James Cameron embarking on a 40-dive-4-submarines-Mega-underwater expedition. At the end of the lengthy feature (because you keep waiting for them to start showing what they filmed OUTSIDE of their submarines), you've seen brief shots of five sea creatures (none of which I hadn't seen before), always the same hypothermal vent and a few crabs, and a lot of talk and boasting from the makers about how expensive this mission is. Oh yes, there's some cute (and at the same time pretentious and shallow) Hollywood-style animated interjections about the notion that life in the oceans could be linked to alien life in space, but it makes the impression only stronger that they didn't actually find all that much. What the hell did they do down there? 40 dives?

I regret buying this film. If you want real aliens of the deep, check out "The Deep" of the BBC series "The Blue Planet", which is a hundred times more amazing. National Geographic also has some good programs on the same subject. Forget this one.

This is an adequate documentary about explorations around the mid oceanic ridges but it is nothing special. It contains some interesting footage dealing both with deep sea creature and with some of the equipment and methods used to study those creatures. This is done from the points of view of several people on board the research vessels chronicled. Some are marine biologist, some are geologists, others are planetary scientists. Each takes a different spin on things.

A fair amount of this program is taken up with speculation about life on other planets. This is interesting at times but, again, is nothing spectacular. That is the problem with the entire program. It deals more with the "Feel Good" emotions of the scientists and the "I'm so lucky to be doing this" reactions of the crews and the "isn't that cool" exclamations of all involved. A little of this goes a long way.

There is nothing wrong with this program but there is nothing particularly right with it either.

James Cameron is a guy with a fascination with the deep ocean (he made the THE ABYSS and TITANIC). He is also the guy whose ego is so big ("I'm king of the world!" at the Oscars) that even much of Hollywood finds him insufferable.

And that is the good and the bad of this movie.

The clarity and composition of the deep ocean footage are spectacular: it's safe to say that the ocean floor has never been captured this way before. However, Cameron is no Jacques Cousteau and this film suffers for lack of a coherent, or compelling, storyline. It's the equivalent of making an action picture full of explosions, expecting that the spectacle will carry the picture.

One of the mistakes is that there is a lack of decent narration. Saying "Oh, wow, how cool" doesn't tell us much and what narration there is mostly consists of telling us what we can already see on screen. There is a reason for this: with a ship full of senior scientists, Cameron has chosen himself, his brother, and the young graduate students aboard as the humans that will guide us on our journey. The choice of the youthful students instead of their advisors may have been for photogenic reasons (same as casting a Hollywood movie!) or a chance for Cameron, as the only senior guy, to dominate the conversations.

Time and again, we are subjected to Cameron "explaining" things that you know he got from others. Much as Tom Hanks fancied himself as a NASA expert after appearing in APOLLO 13, Cameron fancies himself an oceanographer, simply because he has the financial clout to get to the bottom of the ocean. So we are treated to his challenging a young planetary scientist on theories of where oxygen can come from and to Cameron's "version" of the Drake equation regarding extraterrestrial life. You know a senior researcher wouldn't put up with this and would politely remind Cameron that he is, after all, just a Hollywood director and producer.

There is also a problem with expository animation: it's not there were we need it (explaining, for example, some of the deep sea experiments regarding the geology of the ocean floor or the experimental chamber to simulate Europa's surface) and it acts as filler when we could be seeing other things (explaining, for example, the fancy NASA missions that people can imagine like so many PowerPoint slides). In particular, the animation of the Jupitor Icy Moon Orbitor (JIMO) has a lot of screentime - and is made even more pointless by NASA's recent cancellation of this mission. At some point, one wishes the Cameron would lay off the heavenly choirs on the soundtrack and stick to more realistic sounds on the bottom of the ocean floor.

In short, Cameron doesn't seem to know if he wants a travelogue, an adventure story, or a scientific documentary. This is a shame because the ocean photography is so amazing. It's his inability to come up with a consistent compelling narrative that leaves us nothing more than a home movie of Cameron's underwater vacation. Rent, don't buy.