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As a huge Philip K. Dick fan, it's a movie that took me a while to warm to it- I first saw it on DVD, in the '92 cut, in high school, and found it lumpily paced and visually too muddy to be truly awe-inspiring. Seeing the Final Cut in the theater as an adult made me a total convert, though- I honestly don't give a damn about the plot motivation for Tyrell's terrible apartment building (which exists, and is unexplained, and I'm fine with that,) it's a movie I love the way I love Metropolis, for its strange and terrible grandeur. The Deckard as replicant stuff does bug me, though, albeit mostly for irrelevant reasons (if the book Deckard were a replicant, it would wildly undermine a huge part of the arc of the story) but it's easy enough to ignore, really.

It's also a movie I look at as a marvelous example of adaptation, since the book has huge plotlines the movie totally cuts own for laser focus on the most visual and plot oriented sections- a full, novelistic adaptation of the book would be nine hours long and hopelessly paced.

Gregory wrote:I'm far less expert on this film than some here, so I don't really feel comfortable disagreeing, but my understanding was that Scott's vision of the near-constant rain was that it was acid rain as a result of (ongoing) despoiling of the environment and what came to be called catastrophic climate change. It takes many of the frightening changes that befell LA in the 20th century—pollution, destruction of green spaces, burned-out and abandoned ghettoes unfit for human habitation, etc.—and extended them into the future. It's a hellish, oppressive, corporate-run city that most of those who can have abandoned for the Offworld Colonies. It's even more bleak in the original workprint, isn't it? If Scott "loves" the world, isn't it in the sense that an artist who creates a dystopia loves his creation, and not the actual place itself?

Yeah, but it being an unpleasant place for the fictional creations who live in it doesn't mean that Scott doesn't want it admired with awe, wonder, and love. It's like saying that all film noirs make LA or NYC look like unpleasant, dingy, ugly places to live in.* Some do, of course, but most are primarily concerned with making these locations exciting, alluring, and romantic, and a little bit of dirt and danger is necessary to achieve that. Extracting an environmental or political message from Blade Runner is missing the forest for the trees.

It's this kind of literalism that made Andersen's L.A. Plays Itself a bit of a slog for me. Is a naturalistic style the only respectful way to film the Bradbury Building or Ennis-Brown House?

*Or (to mention another Blade Runner source) to describe Hopper as a painter of miserable, lonely people and buildings.

For the record, I don't know how high in my own list I'd rank the film (or if it'll rank at all). I just think it's odd to not recognize that the world of Blade Runner is intended to be beautiful.

I have a certain fondness for bladerunner, but I've never fully understood all the hype that's built up around it. For all the talk of it's revolutionary special effects, they seem to amount to little more than some nice looking establishing shots surrounding what feels like a very disconnected and hollow storyline. For me the film kind of plays out like a collage of nice visuals and nice moments, but I never really come out of watching it feeling as though I've been immersed in the world and narrative.

FerdinandGriffon wrote:Yeah, but it being an unpleasant place for the fictional creations who live in it doesn't mean that Scott doesn't want it admired with awe, wonder, and love. It's like saying that all film noirs make LA or NYC look like unpleasant, dingy, ugly places to live in.* Some do, of course, but most are primarily concerned with making these locations exciting, alluring, and romantic, and a little bit of dirt and danger is necessary to achieve that. Extracting an environmental or political message from Blade Runner is missing the forest for the trees.

I don't think it's a "message," but the dystopian setting has environmental and political content, which according to at least one book on Blade Runner (Future Noir) was part of Scott's vision. It's not just really rainy; this was part of an elaborate effort by Scott to create rain with a certain look (acid rain, plus some of the other things I mentioned before) to create a frightening vision of the city. I think the LA and NYC of nearly every film noir I've ever seen were postively lovely compared to the LA of Blade Runner.

It's this kind of literalism that made Andersen's L.A. Plays Itself a bit of a slog for me. Is a naturalistic style the only respectful way to film the Bradbury Building or Ennis-Brown House?

Of course not, but not all stylized creations of place are as degraded and ruined as the city in Blade Runner, and I can't see how Again, maybe there's something I've failed to take into account, but I've at least thought I understood why Scott put so much effort into creating the look of perpetual acid rain, noxious smoke, and what generally looks like a broken society. I'm in awe of the place (in a negative sense obviously) but couldn't understand how it could be viewed with love. The beautiful features of it (such as the Bradbury Building, which I love) seems to exist as relics of the past.

I think the problem is you're relating the intent of a piece with its beauty which doesn't seem to be what everyone else is arguing. I don't think anyone has said Scott wants to live in this LA, but rather he gives his horror noir a sense of beauty. Whether it is a case of him being unable to help himself or not, but his LA is aesthetically beautiful and he does explore it in a way to, for lack of a better term, showoff the effort put into making his LA. It may be a horrible place to live, but it is a beautiful one to witness.

Gregory wrote:Of course not, but not all stylized creations of place are as degraded and ruined as the city in Blade Runner, and I can't see how Again, maybe there's something I've failed to take into account, but I've at least thought I understood why Scott put so much effort into creating the look of perpetual acid rain, noxious smoke, and what generally looks like a broken society. I'm in awe of the place (in a negative sense obviously) but couldn't understand how it could be viewed with love. The beautiful features of it (such as the Bradbury Building, which I love) seems to exist as relics of the past.

Fair enough. I just know I'd much rather take a stroll through Blade Runner's locales than those of just about any other sci-fi film, and that, without having to be concerned by it's long term effects, I'd find the acid rain beautiful as it drizzled and sluiced past all that neon. And the Bradbury Building seems of a piece with its surroundings, as nothing in the film resembles future tech so much as that of the 1940s.

domino harvey wrote:I think it came in at number two or three on the previous 80s list, so I think some level of board approval can be surmised.

Remember that for all of these lists, even the highest ranking films are typically not receiving anything close to a unanimous mandate. For instance, in the '70s list, only 58% of contributors voted for the films that took the #1 and #2 spots, and one film in the top 10 got votes from less than 30% of contributors. For all we know, everyone else hates those films.

FerdinandGriffon wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Throughout I was in mind of the famous Pavement lyric, "So much style and it's wasted"-- so much effort and time clearly went into creating this vision of the future, and yet like many modern critical visions of the future, it is almost relentlessly ugly and dingy and unpleasant to look at.

Well, I think you're in the minority here. I don't mean in disliking the film, but in finding its imagery and production design unattractive. A huge part, if not most of, the film's appeal is the design, which many (myself included) find breathtaking. It's a sensual, overwhelmingly decadent world, where noir and art-deco style have deliquesced to some kind of limit-point of Sternbergian grandeur. The rain, preposterous as it may be, is another wash of texture and light over an already hyper-saturated image, and it's more than forgivable, for those who are buying in. This is the reason it's been so relentlessly influential, not it's plot mechanics, which are a little creaky. I also wouldn't say the film is a "modern critical vision of the future". Scott loves this world, much more than Dick did his, and it's less a coherent prognosis of the future than a portrait of a personal utopia, suffused with nostalgia for a fantastical past.

Interestingly, that is a pretty apt description of Fritz Lang's Metropolis as well, probably the biggest influence on Blade Runner and another film that (for different reasons) exists in various versions. Neither film tells a particularly compelling or logical story, but they have remained enduring and celebrated works chiefly for their pioneering visual effects and production design. I will readily admit to loving both movies for that very reason. For me, it goes beyond simply impressive visual design. Both movies create a fantasy/futuristic atmosphere that is so immersive and "complete" (for lack of a better word) in their own unique way, that they feel real, even if they don't make logical sense. And I agree with Mr. Sausage that it is an emotional experience for me too (I know I am definitely in the minority on this one, but the character and performance I am most moved by is Sean Young's Rachel).

Feego wrote: (I know I am definitely in the minority on this one, but the character and performance I am most moved by is Sean Young's Rachel)

I'll join you!

knives wrote:I think the problem is you're relating the intent of a piece with its beauty which doesn't seem to be what everyone else is arguing.

FerdinandGriffon brought up the aesthetics specifically in relation to of Scott's intents and personal views of the city in the post I was replying to in the first place.

I don't think anyone has said Scott wants to live in this LA, but rather he gives his horror noir a sense of beauty.

FG said it was "a portrait of a personal utopia for Scott" and that he loved the world of his story more than Dick did his, which meant Scott's was less bleak and dystopian, or at least that was my understanding. To me at least, the discussion has everything to do with his intent vis-a-vis whether the film's LA is meant to be a grand gorgeous place and a world worth "loving" or an aesthetically pleasing environment per se (the place itself rather than it being staged and filmed in beautiful ways) that's toxic, corrupted, and ruined (I think it's the latter).

Whether it is a case of him being unable to help himself or not, but his LA is aesthetically beautiful and he does explore it in a way to, for lack of a better term, showoff the effort put into making his LA. It may be a horrible place to live, but it is a beautiful one to witness.

The question of whether it is beautiful is not only subjective but a problematic question that has to be unpacked, as I've tried to do.

To very briefly comment about the ideas of the film, for me the most interesting thing is not whether or not Deckard is a replicant but instead the replicants themselves and some of the questions they raise about the mind, self-perception, emotions, and artificial intelligence (which are explored far more interestingly here than in A.I., I've long thought, though I don't have a great memory of A.I. anymore).

The difference is that A.I. is much more of a fairy tale in sci-fi garb, while Blade Runner is film noir in sci-fi garb (which is why all the characters are tragic and conflicted in their own ways, and Blade Runner shows a great deal of compassion for everyone involved. Even a smaller character such as Joanna Cassidy's Zhora is allowed a femme fatale tragic ending in a magnificent scene which is both aesthetically beautiful and aesthetically horrific simultaneously). Both films do interesting things with their sci-fi settings and the worlds they build but eventually it becomes difficult to compare the two. Both are existential to some extent but while A.I. is constantly emphasising that David is a robot and not a real boy in order to leave the question of 'why does it matter anyway?' open and force viewers to feel emotion for a main character who we are never sure actually has the equivalent of human feelings, Blade Runner is heartbreakingly asking us to see our evil and murderous replicants as equivalent to any human bad guy, with their own reasons, consciousness and part that they want to play in a society that views them as a threat or outdated. Perhaps in both films 'individuality' and 'personality' comes down to the accumulation of experience.

I remember an interview with Marvin Minsky years ago talking about experiments in convincing people that they were interacting with a real person rather than a machine, and he made the comment about artificial intelligence that "at some point you won't be able to tell the difference any more and you might as well say that a machine can think. After all, what's the difference?". That might be slightly controversial if you want to keep the biological distinct from the technological but it is an interesting approach to take that beyond a certain level of complexity such distinctions might end up becoming philosophical rather than physical.

the Osterman Weekend (Sam Peckinpah 1983) A great cast, a storied director, and a promising premise make the disappointment of this film all the more palpable. For a while, even despite the somewhat suspect habit of introducing every one-note female character with a nude scene, the film does suggest it may work: Political TV host Rutger Hauer is informed by CIA bigwigs Burt Lancaster and John Hurt that his three old friends, Dennis Hooper, Chris Sarandon, and Craig T Nelson's mustache, are actually Russian turncoats, and the government agency asks for Hauer's help in turning them back to the US over the course of a vacation weekend. Unfortunately, things go south pretty quickly as the inherently interesting turns and suspense this could foster are completely disregarded and then halfway through comes a twist so moronic and nonsensical that it ruins whatever hope there was that everything might still work. Peckinpah's last film and not a proud note to finish a career on.

the Terminator (James Cameron 1984) Another popular film I've never seen, but while I'm not over the moon about it, I did mildly enjoy it on its own merits. I thought Cameron did a good job with pacing and I liked how he smartly held onto the expository passages til halfway through the film-- and one of these info-dumps is handled extremely well by having a police psychologist anticipate every audience complaint and cheekily point them out in derision to Michael Biehn! I know this film cemented Schwarzenegger as a star and is one of his most closely associated roles, but I didn't think he left much of an impression, with Biehn far more compelling and charismatic in the real lead role.

And even though it doesn't count for this decade, I went ahead and watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day as well, which I had seen most of on cable many years ago, and found myself agreeing with the masses yet again: this isn't a great film by any means, but it is an entertaining improvement on the first film, has some expensive-looking set pieces, and features the novel twist of making the villain of the first picture the hero of the second. And here I buy Schwarzenegger's star power. I also appreciated the touch that Edward Furlong's character commands the Terminator to stop killing people, so he just goes around doing great but non-fatal bodily harm to all antagonists. And the then-revolutionary computer graphics hold up surprisingly well too, probably because Cameron and co. hedge their bets with combining practical and CGI work in a way that the overconfidant CGI messes of the latter half of the 90s didn't, and the result is a degree of timelessness that has no doubt helped the film's (still somewhat inflated) reputation.

2010 (Peter Hyams 1984) I hesitate to mention that I don't like 2001 (though I've said it before I'm sure) as the timing suggests a board persona I'm not interested in embodying, but I only bring it up to assert that I don't think there's anything sacrilegious about producing a sequel to the film and I went in with an appropriately optimistic attitude. And right away I knew this could work, as director Hyams opens the film with a nice visually comic meeting between a Russian scientist and Roy Scheider's American astronaut amidst the vast landscapes of SETI atennas. And there are soon weird but fun touches like Candice Bergen voicing SAL to Bob Balaban's program designer and my hopes were up up up…. and then the film settled into a strangely toothless and listless space odyssey that seemed to be three anthology segments of a film no one wants to see. Dull answers to the questions of the first film and even duller "adventures" in the present, with the mystery of the obelisks resulting in an unconvincing cosmic event that left me with questions not out of wonder but frustration at a more straightforward film trying to do ambiguity and ending up with some pisspoor Weird Tales set up with no followthrough. Oh well, I tried.

The 2010 novel is better.

Although I seem to remember 3001: The Final Odyssey being a little listless as a novel too. The main problem with the film of 2010 is that it is all perversely mundane in reducing cosmic (if overblown) events into disappointingly contemporary 'can't we all just get along?' Cold War ones. Also, one of the major alien-y scenes involves the chap from the first film appearing to say goodbye to his mother on the TV in her interchangable kitchen of her retirement cottage, which is perhaps one of the most unintentionally depressing farewell scenes in cinema! I'm sure it would just end up getting the staff there to double her meds as soon as she mentioned the visitation to anyone else! And strangely the final shot of the film is almost exactly the same as the final shot from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan!

Yet within its more down to Earth style 2010 does have some great moments. I back domino up on the great opening scene between the Russian and American representatives on the stairs of one of the SETI antennas, with their hesitant eventual meeting halfway (symbolism!) actually being beautifully handled. I also like all of the Dr Chandra HAL/SAL stuff (which gives Bob Balaban the chance to do a wide-eyed idealistic scientist character after having had to scoff at William Hurt all the way through Altered States!), which is where all of the prosaic explanation of HAL's backstory should be grounding the film, much as HAL was the focus in the mid-section of 2001.

And while all of the Russian/American tension stuff falls pretty flat (retreating to separate spaceships being a bit of an overwrought metaphor for Earthly divisions until they have to unsurprisingly ignore orders to combine forces to survive; Helen Mirren's straight-woman Captain character not really being developed much beyond 'female' and 'Russian', showing that both aspects are not really a detriment, at least until the film undermines them by having the politics back home force her hand, and have Scheider have to cuddle a scared female Russian cosmonaut during the 'Jupiter braking' sequence), I do think by far the best, as well as most spectacular, scene of the film is John Lithgow's and his Russian counterparts space walk scene to the spinning Odyssey, which through specific and tiny cultural co-operation (of learning the word for "coward" in Russian) blows through all of the wider Cold War stuff to forge a connection in the middle of nowhere.

Spoiler

But of course we immediately have to kill the far-too-sympathetic Russian character in that scene off almost immediately afterwards to ensure we focus on our American characters! Although presumably he's gone into the monolith and therefore wherever Bowman went in the first film, so not entirely death. But in a film trying to be as 'grounded' as 2010 is, perhaps going off into the unknown actually is a fate worse than death here, rather than the start of another great adventure or evolution of humanity?

In the end, for all of its 'world coming together' celebrations, I find 2010 rather bleak in its 'Day The Earth Stood Still' suggestion that humanity needs a greater force from beyond itself (as well as a threat not to visit) to put its petty Earthly squabbles in perspective. The film seems less about expanding your consciousness than replacing the God father-figure 'scary otherworldly being' with a new blank-faced impassive monolith!

I don't want to be too harsh on the film though - I used "Phoenix" as my computer log-in password from around 1998-2006 entirely due to the SAL discussion! Which I think illustrates how any films, even flawed ones, can provide viewers with inspiration in the strangest ways! I've changed my password now of course! (It's "Phoenix2"!) :-$

(Oh, and I just realised another thing I liked about the film - Roy Scheider's open plan house with swimming pool containing dolphins! I think that would be very close to my dream house, and I've always had the idea that every Silicon Valley millionaire probably has one exactly like it! I wouldn't want to visit and have my ideals about that dashed though!)


On Terminator and Terminator 2, I agree that Michael Biehn is a great asset to the first film (along with the police psychologist, who is the true star of both the first two films!), with Linda Hamilton able to be allowed to be more vulnerable, while in the second film her character is having to wrestle with becoming an emotional robot herself. It is interesting that domino brings up the non-fatal bodily harm to all the antagonists in T2 - I think the film was edited in the UK for a number of years for many of the brief scenes showing the kneecappings, presumably because of some sort of IRA-connection fears!

On The Osterman Weekend, there are major flaws with the use of technology in the film. Apparently the original novel features audio recordings rather than video playback footage, and I think it shows that the filmmakers have just changed the technology to perhaps be 'more cinematic' and then fudged how manipulating video footage and editing works by not knowing enough about it, which is a major problem in a film that is all about the perils of believing in the truth of an easily manipulated image! It is a sad swansong for Peckinpah (though it works much better with the Peckinpah scholars commentary running over it!), and the actual double-crossing spy plot is far secondary to all of the deteriorating friendships stuff, but I did think all the actors looked to be having fun in the film, for example in the one amusing/tense scene using video technology (Poor John Hurt!) and the brilliant, if short moment of the old Peckinpah slow motion style in which Meg Foster's Diana-huntress-mother character firing an arrow into the chest of a bad guy gets intercut with Rutger Hauers' character (who has been left with the comically small crossbow!) diving into the swimming pool. That really tightly intercut sequence done in almost complete silence except for the splash, the thud of the arrow and the chirping of the crickets (with the edits seeming in time with the chirping) is a magnificent flash of Peckinpah action which despite being only about thirty seconds is frankly worth watching the entire film for!

I've still never seen 2010. Ages ago, after I first saw 2001, I figured I'd check out the sequel even though I knew it didn't have a great reputation, so I went to the neighborhood video store to rent the tape. But the opinionated film-nerd clerk refused to rent it to me because it wasn't any good. I persisted for a moment, but he just said, "No. Pick something else!" I think he was trying to "look out" for me. Remembering this now, I feel like watching it just to see why anyone would consider it such a blasphemy against the Holy 2001 that no eyes should be cast upon it. I expect that, like domino, I'd just find it really dull.

I don't particularly hate 2010 but it was always going to have an impossible task to follow the Kubrick film. It just doesn't have any of the sense of transcendence or wonder contained in 2001, or provided to any of the characters (except strangely enough for HAL!), and is trapped in 'middle manager' human politics from start to finish - and not in the satirical way that the mundane conference about the monolith on the Moon in 2001 was handled either!

I think there is also an interesting thesis to be written about the way that a sequel film reveals its 'more mundane' cards early on through repurposing elements of an original film in a slightly off-key manner. For example starting 2010 with a slightly sped up version of Also Sprach Zarathrustra already creates a quite tonally different film to the more lyrical Kubrick one. And the way that apart from that undroppable 'theme tune' for the series, there is no classical music used elsewhere, instead a more obvious (and occasionally cheesy) composed score for the film is perhaps also another telling philosophical difference. All of the key elements from 2001 are there but repurposed into a more conventional movie - so for instance the great John Lithgow scared spacewalk scene is 2010's chance to do a 'minimal sound and heavy breathing' sequence, which they don't do again anywhere else. Every moment is almost hermetically sealed off from every other one, as if each scene has been thought through too much for what their particular function is going to be.

Strangely I also think that 2010 has been much more influential on later sci-fi films than 2001 was, and perhaps that is actually down to it being more easily graspable, and rip-offable! For example the end of the Lithgow scene, with opening the airlock and starting to explore the derelict Odyssey in darkness is kind of similar to Event Horizon's opening! And Bob Balaban's race against the countdown clock from convincing HAL back to the Russian ship is extremely similar to the sequence of jumping from one half of the Icarus to the other in Danny Boyle's Sunshine!

I did find it kinda of interesting that in keeping with the "Can't we all just get along" message of the film, HAL goes off again and is then placated only when a character takes the time to peacefully and respectfully talk to him about why what the murderous computer system wants to do is a mistake! If I remember correctly, wasn't Dullea pretty calm throughout the first film anyways? Maybe you just needed to have Bob Balaban's dulcet tone / demeanor

domino harvey wrote:the Terminator (James Cameron 1984) Another popular film I've never seen, but while I'm not over the moon about it, I did mildly enjoy it on its own merits. I thought Cameron did a good job with pacing and I liked how he smartly held onto the expository passages til halfway through the film-- and one of these info-dumps is handled extremely well by having a police psychologist anticipate every audience complaint and cheekily point them out in derision to Michael Biehn! I know this film cemented Schwarzenegger as a star and is one of his most closely associated roles, but I didn't think he left much of an impression, with Biehn far more compelling and charismatic in the real lead role.

And even though it doesn't count for this decade, I went ahead and watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day as well, which I had seen most of on cable many years ago, and found myself agreeing with the masses yet again: this isn't a great film by any means, but it is an entertaining improvement on the first film, has some expensive-looking set pieces, and features the novel twist of making the villain of the first picture the hero of the second. And here I buy Schwarzenegger's star power. I also appreciated the touch that Edward Furlong's character commands the Terminator to stop killing people, so he just goes around doing great but non-fatal bodily harm to all antagonists. And the then-revolutionary computer graphics hold up surprisingly well too, probably because Cameron and co. hedge their bets with combining practical and CGI work in a way that the overconfidant CGI messes of the latter half of the 90s didn't, and the result is a degree of timelessness that has no doubt helped the film's (still somewhat inflated) reputation.

I broadly agree with you about both films, though I think the first has a certain low-budget high tension feeling that lends it a charm that the glossier sequel lacks. As far as the no-kill order in the second one goes, I thought that was turned almost into a dark joke by the scene in which he blasts the legs out from under dozens of police- as Rosenbaum pointed out, kneecapping rather than killing antagonists was a favorite move of the IRA, on the grounds that their targets would be crippled for life and in incredible pain. It's a scene that to some degree demonstrates how horrific non-lethal damage can be.

I did really like the Linda Hamilton character in T2, though I get there's a certain creepy 'this is what the director has a fetish for' feeling about it, as whenever Tarantino points the camera at a woman's feet.

What aspect of Hamilton's character is a fetishistic example of Cameron's predilections?

He seems to really enjoy tough, hardbitten, gun-toting women- I'm reminded of the commentary for Aliens, where he talks about how he worked to get Sigourney Weaver to fall in love with guns, and has an obvious leer in his voice. The direction he takes Hamilton's character seems very similar to the direction he took Ripley, and neither of them seemed necessarily logical continuations of where their characters had been previously.

I mean, to be fair, that could just be something he finds artistically interesting, and I could be reading something in that's not there.

Couldn't you argue that in both cases, the characters have suffered through and survived an extremely traumatic series of events from the first film to the second, something which has been known to drastically change people in a dramatic fashion in real life? I mean, I haven't seen the Abyss in a while but I don't recall any such characters in it or Titanic, so could it just be an odd affect in these sequels? Cameron may indeed find these kind of female characters arousing, but I don't think he goes out of his way to make them in such a fashion without it having some kind of internal logic to the previous and current narrative's purposes

Hmm, that's a good point- it would be worth rewatching a few of his movies to see if it pops up elsewhere, although Avatar would probably be a reasonable starting place, and I really don't ever feel like watching Avatar again.

domino harvey wrote:Couldn't you argue that in both cases, the characters have suffered through and survived an extremely traumatic series of events from the first film to the second, something which has been known to drastically change people in a dramatic fashion in real life? I mean, I haven't seen the Abyss in a while but I don't recall any such characters in it or Titanic, so could it just be an odd affect in these sequels? Cameron may indeed find these kind of female characters arousing, but I don't think he goes out of his way to make them in such a fashion without it having some kind of internal logic to the previous and current narrative's purposes

The Abyss has a typically confident, assertive Cameron female, but she doesn't carry a gun and doesn't engage in any macho behaviour. Indeed, it's the aggressive, violent militarism of the marines that's the primary antagonist, with the aliens being peaceful and gentle. It's the polar opposite of Aliens.

Matrixschmatrix: your fetish comments are unfair, especially considering you only have two movies in mind. It's especially inaccurate when you say "neither of them seemed necessarily logical continuations of where their characters had been previously." How do you figure? What did you expect the Sarah Connor of Terminator to be 15 years down the line? And why wouldn't Ripely have responded to her situation as she did? It feels like you're trying to imply something distasteful about Cameron for no other reason than that you perceive an ideological difference between the two of you (tho' considering the anti-militarism of the two Terminators, The Abyss, and Avatar, you're probably mistaken).

Anyway, Cameron seems to like stories of women being forced by their situation to become stronger people. The Terminator is the prototype, with Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies, and Titanic continuing that in various ways. That said, in The Abyss, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio stays consistently strong throughout the movie, and Avatar has no female characters of note.

Agreed with Mr Sausage: they might be more muted than in Aliens or T2 but Kate Winslet does wield an axe in Titanic (and is by far the more 'masculine' character whose decisions drives the plot forward compared to DiCaprio's enabler-figure Jack) and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in The Abyss is also the one who gets in the big submersible fight to finish off Michael Biehn's character before we move beyond goodies vs baddies into her big drowning and rebirth scene (which is also something that prefigures what Ed Harris's character goes through at the finale), which is all part of moving her away from her asexual career woman persona at the start of the film and getting her back into part of the blue collar team and back in love with Harris by the end.

There is also Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies as well, who also learns to find her inner strength to move from mousy housewife to punching Tia Carrere in the face by the end!

I think it is also telling that in both Aliens and T2 that the main female characters become 'hyper-masculine' by an almost over-stifling maternal impulse towards their children while the female characters in the other films don't really have children (or in True Lies, Jamie Lee Curtis bows out to let Schwarzenegger save the daughter, the daughter who herself ends up stabbing and escaping from the ineffectual terrorists! Never cross mothers at the end of their tether or teenage kids in a James Cameron film, as you'll be destroyed by them!)