Cameron’s Short Film XENOGENESIS

With the worldwide box office for James Cameron’s eye-popping Avatar passed the $1 billion mark this past weekend, it might be a good time to look back at the director’s humble beginnings, a short film called Xenogenesis. Produced independently in 1978, this is Cameron putting all his self-taught knowledge on movie making into practice for the first time. And watching the film, it is easy to see Cameron firs exploring some ideas that he will continue to explore all the way up to Avatar– tough female characters, futuristic struggles between man and machine, funky powerful exo-suits. The film impressed the folks at Roger Corman Studios, who hired him on the basis of his work here as a special effects technician and model maker. he would work on such films as the Star Wars knockoff Battle Beyond The Stars and Escape From New York, before stepping in to his first directorial gig on Piranha II: The Spawning. And I think that we know the rest of the story from there.