In the exhibition dedicated to James Cameron at the Cinémathèque Française until the end of the year, we learn that the director had to abandon a film project that could have left its mark on science fiction forever.
In nearly six decades, James Cameron has established himself as a Hollywood director. Thanks to his immense box-office successes already (Avatar 1 And 2, Titanic…), but also because he revolutionized the blockbuster genre with all his films acclaimed by the public and critics (Terminator, Abyss…). It is therefore no surprise that the Cinémathèque française in Paris is currently dedicating an exhibition to him, exploring the themes of his work using drawings, sometimes dating back to his childhood, accessories, costumes and sketches.
During the exhibition, we can discover James Cameron’s influences and delve into his mind in order to understand how his ideas were born. But the exhibition also focuses on deciphering a work that never saw the light of day, and which, when we discover the ideas and artistic concepts deployed, had all the assets to be the director’s first great success, but also a huge science fiction film.
From 1977 to 1979, James Cameron and his friend Randy Frakes worked on a science fiction film project called Xenogenesis (which means “of extraterrestrial origin”). In order to obtain funding, the filmmaker created several illustrations and developed the story: a love story in space between a man and an extraterrestrial who explore several planets on which they face different dangers.
Unfortunately, this feature film will never see the light of day, due to the lack of funding and a producer. However, James Cameron explains in an interview with Le Parisien that he feels “no regrets” about this aborted project, which nevertheless looks great when you visit the exhibition. Because James Cameron exploited several ideas from Xenogenesis in these other films, like Aliens Or Avatar.
It is especially in the latter that we find several concepts from this first idea for a science fiction film: the aerial sharks of Xenogenesis gave us the Banshees of Pandora, but also the blue-skinned aliens and the creatures that inhabit the planet of the Na’Vi. The superb illustrations of what could have become Xenogenesis, as well as an extract of a battle of a few minutes, are however visited at the Cinémathèque française until January 5, 2025.