James Cameron's Deepsea Challenge 3D

This reminded me of those situations where you start telling a story in front of people and then you notice that everyone is listening to you rapt right as you realize with horror that the story isn't actually very good or interesting. So you start flooding it with all sorts of minor details, sub-plots, and jumping out of your seat instead of delaying as much as possible the moment when you close with "...well, that's pretty much it." Here an American billionaire takes a bathyscape into the depths to a place where, simply stated, there is simply nothing. So he tries to litter it with all sorts of "dramatic sequences" with "dramatic music", 3D, self-doubt, constantly naming all of it, and jumping from descriptions of the technical aspects of the entire challenge to descriptions of the importance of discovery in general. And Cameron himself, an unsympathetic pragmatist, is certainly not a good guide. (11.12.2022)