It should come as no surprise that James Cameron, one of the film world’s great obsessives, engineered a submarine that could dive deeper than anyone ever had before. In this National Geographic documentary, the “Titanic” filmmaker takes viewers through the invention and test-diving process before bringing us seven miles down into the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, where — spoiler alert! — there’s not a whole lot going on.
You have to hand it to Cameron, who’s produced multiple oceanic documentaries alongside his aquatic dramas: Few live out their childhood fantasies so exuberantly. A true explorer, the director packs himself into the claustrophobic confines of the ultra-streamlined submersible and repeatedly test-pilots the thing into the depths, regardless of the fact that, as one of his sleep-deprived crew puts it, “There are a hundred horrible ways to die,” if anything goes wrong.
But for a movie calling itself “Deepsea Challenge,” a surprising amount of time is spent above the surface, documenting the sub’s construction and even planning meetings — not the most compelling use of the film’s 3-D (or the viewer’s money). There’s also a deeply sad twist in which the film’s original director, Andrew Wight, and underwater cinematographer Mike deGruy were killed in a helicopter crash during filming.
When Cameron actually gets into the sub, we get some harrowing footage of the drops; the vessel is, of course, outfitted with top-of-the-line cameras. One test-dive encounter with a curious deep-sea octopus is enchanting, giving us a taste of what compels the director to keep pushing further. And a sequence in which he hears a startling crack is anxiety-inducing, despite Cameron’s rationale that if you’re still alive to ponder what the noise is, odds are you’ll live.
But when he actually hits bottom at seven miles down, the view is anticlimactic: Little survives at this depth. On the whole, the film would probably be more at home on cable and at a reduced running time. I’d like to see a competition series of the same name, in which rival engineers compete to see who can endure having the hard-driving Cameron for a boss.