3-D goggles fail to save titanic disappointment

By Nicole Rodriguez

When you first walk into a screening of "Ghosts of the Abyss" you are handed a pair of high-tech looking 3-D goggles. Be forewarned: this will be the coolest part of your movie-going experience.

Playing off the popularity of 1997's blockbuster "Titanic," director James Cameron ("Terminator") voyages once more to the historic ship below the ocean, this time with a team of scientists and two newly designed camera/robot hybrids in tow to help him photograph the tragic wreckage in a way never filmed before: in 3-D.

Although Cameron attempts to tell some of the stories of the ship's more notable passengers through a series of superimposed images, the movie fails to provide any new information the viewers didn't already get from the first film. More than that, Cameron seems to work off the assumption that all the viewers have seen and remember the original "Titanic" film clearly. If you don't, don't bother going to this film because you'll be lost the entire time.

For example, Cameron incorporates a sequence in which he finds a bronze bed that was slept in by Molly Brown. After a good ten to fifteen minutes obsessing over the fact that this was indeed the bed Mrs. Brown occupied during her stay on the ship, he moves on to the next subject without so much as explaining who Molly Brown is and why we should even care that this is her bed. (For the record, Molly Brown is noted for being one of the bravest survivors of the disaster).

In the midst of a hammy sequence that finds his two robots swimming through the wreckage to the soundtrack of "Just the Two of Us" (yes, it is just as cheesy as it sounds), the crew emerges from the waters to find that the United States has just been attacked in what actor Bill Paxton ("Frailty") calls "the worst act of terror on American soil."

Does this devastating event deter them from their mission? Of course not. Once again showcasing his infamous "I'm the king of the world" attitude, Cameron fails to see why the rescue mission of one of his robots should be less important than paying homage to our country's greatest loss.

After a less-than-brief discussion about whether or not to return to the ghost ship, Cameron and crew are back in the water marveling over bacteria and an intact water glass, tuning out the horrific events as though Sept. 11 had never even happened at all. If only the rest of our country had had that luxury.

This lapse in judgment aside, it must be admitted that the technology Cameron developed for the underwater 3-Dimensional photography is incredibly impressive, albeit in need of some fine tuning (there are a few instances in which figures appear to be doubled rather than 3-D).

However, not even Cameron's technical advances can make turn this focus-less work successful. After all, the purpose of a documentary film should be, primarily, to inform and, secondly, to entertain, and "Ghosts" fails to achieve either of these objectives. Narrated by Cameron's buddy and "Titanic" star Bill Paxton, the seventy minute final product seems more like a 3-D home video of Cameron's oceanic vacation than the documentary it claims to be.

While Cameron and his buddies may find it entertaining to watch themselves marvel over a bowler hat they find in the wreckage, they fail to ask themselves why their viewing audience should care. And since movies have become 10 bucks a pop, it is the opinion of this critic that filmmakers should be going out of their way to make a product a good portion of the viewing audience will care about.