Deepsea Challenge 3D

The first name you read, voice you hear, and face you see in Deepsea Challenge 3D all belong to James Cameron. The director responsible for Titanic, Avatar, and the first two Terminator films has never been shy about his passion for underwater exploration, having already released two documentaries on the subject: 2003’s Ghosts of the Abyss and 2005’s Aliens of the Deep.

Alas, this account of his 2012 quest to lead the first solo manned mission to the heart of the Mariana Trench has the careful polish of a campaign ad, and the imposed narrative of your average National Geographic special. (The institution was as much a partner on the dive as it is on the film.) We begin with reenactments of a young Cameron piloting cardboard submersibles from the comforts of home in the Sixties before jumping forward to present-day Sydney, Australia, where the 12-ton Deepsea Challenger vessel is being assembled under seemingly arbitrary deadlines as an insistent score drums on.

There’s something to be said for a borderline billionaire devoting his considerable resources and determination to funding a venture into what Cameron considers “the last great frontier,” and the 3-D footage of heretofore unseen ocean depths and the creatures living therein is occasionally breathtaking to behold. However, the focus is all too often turned toward Cameron himself. For precisely one scene, he’s a family man; later on, he becomes a colonial crusader for the tsunami-struck natives of Papua New Guinea, whose enduring faith in the forces of nature is casually dismissed by way of science-supporting voiceover.

Given the rhythms of the hokey reenactments, the eye-rolling Rolex product placement from 35,000 feet below, and the ad-anticipating fades to black, it’s difficult to feel genuine empathy when a tragic helicopter crash, which claimed the lives of co-director Andrew Wight and camera operator Michael deGruy, arrives with all the calculation of expected second-act pathos. By the time Cameron giddily observes that he’s bested the depths of the fictional protagonist from his own film, The Abyss, it has become apparent that, while the Deepsea Challenge mission may have been intended to plumb the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the Deepsea Challenge movie is mostly meant to plumb the depths of his own ego.