To me, this movie is perfection.

A Disappointing Continuation

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Yeah, before when James Cameron made The Terminator, his first time of making a sort of film was none other than this one. Let's go to history. Cameron was a truck driver around the mid-late 70s (no kidding, it's true), but he was inspired by Star Wars so much that he wanted to make a short film, with his friends, to enter the movie business. He convinced several local dentists to invest of $20,000, wrote a screenplay with his friend, he make small robots (obviously for the stop motion animation) all by himself, studying how the effects work in Star Wars were and practiced the stop motion shots in his living room. It was that point when they were all finished. He tried to show the short to other studios that if he can make a feature film out of it, but it got backfired. However, he and his friend, Randall Frakes, did got a job to make miniature spaceships for Roger Corman's film Battle Beyond The Stars, and Cameron became one of Corman's visual effects specialists. Now...let's go to the short itself.There were some things that will later on be borrowed from Cameron's other films like a cyborg hero (T2: Judgement Day), a strong female protagonist (any movie he made), camera shot of what's the hero doing in a vehicle or a machine (The Abyss), and bio luminescence (The Abyss and Avatar). I'll say for a short that cost like so cheap to make, the effects were surprisingly good and the way they handled the live action bits and the stop motion bits, together, looked spot on. However, don't expect the quality or the acting to be amazing because the quality is VHS like and the actors aren't professionals, which does kinda show.But that doesn't ruined the short at all. For what it is, it's surprisingly good. You can easily find it on YouTube, so it's not hard to find it on the Internet. This is for the ones if they want to know more about the history of James Cameron and how he became to what he is today. For everyone else, it's at least worth a look.Score: 7/10

Xenogenesis (1978) ** 1/2 (out of 4) I've read reports that this, Cameron's first short, actually cost around $20,000 to produce, which is an extremely large amount for a short film. If it's true then I guess even at an early age the director was willing and able to work with large budgets. The 11-minute film has a pretty simple story as a man and woman are looking for a safe place to continue a new life cycle but soon they find themselves under attack by a robot. It's hard to be too critical of this film and it's certainly important to remember that this was the director's first film. With that in mind it's hard to be anything less than impressed as there's certainly a lot of imagination in this thing and for a short of this nature it looks extremely good. I think the biggest flaw are the performances, which are rather lacking and the dialogue that is really, really bad. With a better screenplay I'm sure this thing could have been even better but at the same time I'm sure people are going to be interested in this thing for the special effects. I found them to be pretty good as the robots look real, which is very important and all of the sets look like something from the future. I think the film also benefits from a curiosity factor by seeing things here that would appear in future Cameron movies. One can't help but not see touches of THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS here.

It's always tragic when a giant cleaning robot mistakes you for a pile of dirt. What's a fellow to do?That was the plot... It's not a comedy at all, and it's pretty good.This short is fantastic for three reasons: 1) For a 1978 film, it's brilliant. 2) For a student film, it's brilliant. It looks like a clip from a real (altough cheap) movie. 3) For a low budget film it's brilliant. The stop-motion technique is great, and camera-work which makes small robot models look giant is perfect.Only one problem. Ending... Not to spoil anything, but the trip is definitely way better then it's destination. Maybe it was budget or lack of ideas but everything else works just fine.Here, you can see the origin of Repley and her lift fork (Aliens 2; battle with the alien mom) or few ideas (concepts really) from Terminator universe and I don't mean the time travel.The short also has a great comic-book style intro that (somewhat unnecessarily) sets up the actual plot and is never referred to again.The budget is on the short side, but it does add some fine camp value and a slight resemblance to (different) J.C.'s Darkstar (btw, which would've been much better if it had a-n-y action to go along with it's snark).For fans of Mr. J.C. this is a necessary viewing.

Xenogenesis is a student film by James Cameron, later in his career known of the Terminator movies and of course Titanic. It's only 12 minutes long and after rather nifty opening narration we get about 10 minutes worth of battling robots.It's rather easy to see, that Cameron is a trained special effects maker as the robots and settings do look rather good despite of the obvious small budget. But as it is special effects don't make up the fact, that there isn't actually much of a plot or purpose in the film other than to test out some film tricks.For James Cameron fans Xenogeniesis is rather interesting treat and a showcase of where he did depart. What is more interesting is the fact, that Cameron hasn't changed much as storyteller: the themes of Xenogenesis are pretty similar to his more bigger budget movies: tough female character, love and machines as in how machines can be either benefit or a threat.Xenogenesis isn't the best, or even a extremely good film as such, debut movie ever, far from it, but it is rather interesting piece of film as a point of origin.