Aliens of the Deep (2005)

3/12/06

Friday: Aliens of the Deep (extended version). James Cameron is a water nut, the director of such high profile H2O heavy features as Titanic and The Abyss continues to explore his obsession with this documentary made for IMAX. Cameron has been concentrating on documentary features for several years now, and had previously made the sunken ship exposes Ghost of the Abyss and Expedition: Bismarck. In Aliens of the Deep the director goes in a slightly different direction with a look at the unusual life forms that dwell so deep in the ocean that they never encounter sunlight. Cameron is fascinated by these creatures and truth be told I find the little buggers a marvel myself. I mean these are animals that as humans we would never have been able to see where it not for relatively recent advances in technology. Some of these creatures look like they shouldn't even exist, such as the flowing doughnut of translucent fabric I call the "Jelly Cloth".

Filmed on a two ocean expedition with Cameron, his brothers, a Russian team, some scientist and a group of grad students who seem to function largely as figures for audience identification, Aliens of the Deep was no small undertaking. The unifying purpose of the expedition was to study how life manages to develop in extreme environments, with the hope that this information might give us some clue as to how alien life might have evolved in similar extreme conditions, like under Europas frozen seas. The sub-team ventures down into the cracks in the Earths crust to view the life the somehow flourishes near the hydro-thermal vents. It is important to note that scientists had not expected to find any life there when they first journyed to study these vents in the late 1970's, their encounter with a thriving ecosphere in the last place anyone would look for life was one of the great knowledge transformations of the 20th century. There are some pretty cool looking creatures in this documentary as well as some CG work of high end Discovery Channel quality. The extended version runs about an hour and forty minutes but the theatrical version is about half that if you don't think you could sit through the whole thing.