Before Aliens, Terminators and DiCaprios...

James Cameron is so cutting edge, I’ll bet the only reason he isn't normally clean-shaven is that they haven’t yet invented a razor with an advanced enough shaving system that he’ll accept – something like a Mach Infinity with 27 GPS-equipped, diamond-tipped titanium blades. That’s how much he loves new technology. Not surprisingly, his long-awaited narrative feature follow up to the 1997 super-mega-Mach-awesome-box-office-blockbuster Titanic is set to “revolutionize” cinema, using new technology for a 3-D Imax experience so mindblowing, you’ll need to wrap your skull in duct tape and rubber bands before watching it – so you aren’t killed by it awesomeness.

Called Avatar, it’s the story of an exotic yet very dangerous planet (that has features on land that look a lot like plants and creatures in the oceans), where intruding humans are at odds with the ten-foot-tall blue alien species that lives there. When scientists implant a war veteran’s consciousness into an alien body so he can infiltrate the natives, he discovers a place that makes him rethink everything he knows, which pits him against some of his own kind. The first act was screened at the San Diego Comic-Con (not on a proper Imax screen, of course) and the verdict is: visually pretty awesome, narrative-wise, more than a little New Age-y.

Based on those 20-some minutes of footage, Avatar upholds some well-known Cameron-isms, such as futuristic technology (Aliens 2, The Terminator movies, The Abyss), a military presence (Terminator, Aliens), aliens (Aliens, The Abyss), the oceans (Piranha 2: The Spawning, The Abyss, Titanic, his deep sea documentaries) and even that New Age spiritualism, which is all over the end of The Abyss. From an auteur standpoint, the filmmaker has definitely shown a persistence of vision with his films (except for perhaps True Lies; although it’s been a while since I’ve seen, it, I’m pretty sure Schwarzenegger doesn’t play a laser-guided mermaid hippie in it or anything).

When I was reading up on Avatar, I went through Cameron’s filmography on the IMDB and noticed his very first directorial credit, Xenogenesis. A student film he co-directed with writer Randall Frakes in 1978, it’s only twelve minutes-long. The synopsis on the IMDB is as follows:

 

A woman and an engineered man are sent in a gigantic sentient starship to search space for a place to start a new life cycle. Raj decides to take a look around the ship. He comes across a gigantic robotic cleaner. Combat ensues.

 

Certainly sounded like something James Cameron would make, so I searched for it on YouTube, and sure enough, it’s there in two segments: part 1 and part 2. The synopsis above says it all plot-wise, although it would be more correct to say, “Raj, who looks like he ran away from a stage production of Logan’s Run, decides to take a look around the ship, which is possibly an abandoned hallway in the Death Star.”

I mock, but for a student film from 1978, there’s a lot to admire, notably the stop-motion animated robot fight, in which the “cleaner robot” shoots lasers at, and locks arms with a crab-like, robotic vehicle, controlled by a female pilot. Sure, the laser blast effects are as bad as the hair and the costumes, the acting is a bit better (co-star William Wisher Jr. would go on to have writing credits on a number of Cameron films), but it’s clear Cameron was particularly fascinated by futuristic tech from the get-go, and here he succeeds. The struggle between the crab-bot and the cleaner-bot is the centerpiece of the film and the most accomplished bit of it, (robotic) hands-down.

It’s fascinating to see how this rookie effort fits into Cameron’s body of work. For example, the crab-bot fight was clearly the inspiration for the climax of Aliens during which Ripley fights the Queen Alien using the power loader. Both movie machines are operated in roughly the same way, and both are equipped with a cutting torch (machines with arms operated by humans are also in The Abyss and Titanic). Not to mention, you’ve got a strong female hero kicking ass in both films.

Machinery run amuck is a popular sci-fi theme, and you can see how the filmmaker might extrapolate this narrative into The Terminator, in which articficial intelligence essentially is cleaning humanity off the face of the earth. There are shots in Xenogenesis featuing the cleaner-bot’s lasers and menacing tank treads that strongly recall the war machines in the Terminator flashback sequences.

Cameron has been known for going over time and budget to complete his films; Xenogenesis ends very abruptly and has an intro made up of drawings and voiceover narration, suggesting he poured all he had into those robo battles. The opening voiceover and stills depict a cyborg guy with a metal skeleton, right out of Terminator, and lays down a sci-fi Adam and Eve scenario in which Xenogenesis is hoped to be a new sort of paradise to start over. It’s not too far off from what’s going on in Avatar.

And finally, although the set seems kinda modeled on the Death Star, it also has shades of those long, flat black-coloured hallways seen in Aliens. It has to be said though, that Cameron’s student film has absolutely no genetically-modified flying piranhas, à la Piranha 2: The Spawning. Boooo!

Despite this shameful omission, clearly Xenogenesis worked pretty friggin well as a calling card – one with a few ideas Cameron hung on to.

 

-Dave Alexander

Comments

Wow...can't believe I've never seen or heard or that before. Great find! Thanks.

I like the lifestyle of the stars of hollywood, hopefully will give me the opportunity to get to have this lifestyle, full of glamor, luxury, sex, party, money, fame, facilities. That envy that if good because by that I have a good healthy life, wife and two beautiful daughters.
John M. Santillo
1805 Grove Avenue
Enid, OK 73 703