Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Wordiezett So much average

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Xenogenesis" is a 12-minute live action short film from over 35 years ago written and directed by James Cameron and Randall Frakes. And while one of them went on to become one of the most defining filmmakers of the last decades, the other quickly disappeared and did not manage a great career. This does not mean, however, I am a big fan of Cameron. Actually, I am not. I found "Terminator" and "Avatar" okay, but never really liked "Titanic". Anyway, one of the actors in this short film here went on to write parts of several later Cameron films. Still "Xenogenesis" looks a lot like style over substance for me, like Cameron's other films as well. It's all about great special effects and the story and character development clearly suffers from Cameron's focus on technical aspects. I can forgive him here as he was in his early 20s when he made this one, but I cannot forgive him for most of his other works. Not recommended.

Natenbox64 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

dominickneedname Im not a fan of James Cameron because he seems more like and fx show then an artist. However i kind of liked this short film.James was inspired to make this short film after watching star wars in theaters. Its pretty clear in this film that he loved star wars so much that he learned how to do the same effects which are pretty good for the time. The acting from the boy (Dont think they have names) was pretty good but the girl was terrible. One thing this short needed really bad was music. I know this was made just to show off what he could do, but come on. There's is NO MUSIC AT ALL! While the fight scenes are good they become boring fast because of the slowness of them and the bad sound fx and they just really needed music to make them more enjoyable. Overall i think it showed that Cameron was very good with modeling which this film got him a job. If your a fan of his you may get more out of it then i did but i feel like it was a little incomplete. Hope one day it becomes a feature...

Cihan "Sean Victorydawn" Vercan (CihanVercan) This film is a very odd example of a sci-fi short. It's hard to classify it, but best to say it's only experimental; which only means don't try to evaluate this work within cinema concepts. There's a very weak screenplay and a shallow plot. The story takes place in a machine-made starship coming from an uninhabitable planet which is being ruled by machines. In this environment our heroine Laurie, has been raised by one of those machines, which apparently have minds and lives just like human-beings. From my point of view the mood has been created as if it's the last episode of Terminator, where machines are in charge of our galaxy and humankind is stuck to live in spaceships.Through the opening narration we get to understand that the last hope of humankind is depending on Laurie and her cyborg boyfriend's journey of exploring the Xenogenesis, the galactic adventure of exploring the outer space "Xeno-" thus finding a way to the rebirth of human civilizations "-genesis". The co-writer Randall Frakes's comic book art work brings that galactic adventure to life.Laurie sends Raj into the starship to explore the nature of it. While he is walking over a bridge, a tank robot detects Raj's motions and attacks him. Raj tumbles down due to the laser fire of the robot, but holds onto the edge of the bridge. The digital celestial sphere of the starship appears to be very deep. Contacting each other via two-way radio signals, Laurie comes to rescue Raj with a giant spider robot. She begins to fight with the tank robot. But the tank defeats her. Starting to come towards Raj, it gives no chance to him to escape.The modelling of both the robots are utterly fascinating. Action simulations are also very futuristic. With such a low budget, there is nothing seems cheap at all. There are distracting issues on all sounds and especially on all sound effects, but visuals are highly accomplished. Background music is established appropriately and it saves the mood. The talent voice should have been revised; Raj appears very tiny inside the starship but his voice level is being heard same with a wide-angle shot and the close-up shots of him. Probably they didn't have a bigger studio to let the sound waves travel in air longer. If it has been filmed for a silent picture, no-sound, it would have been so much better and effective.James Cameron's beginner sci-fi work is fairly well in overall. For 12 minutes long, it's tolerable. Considering that all the inspirations of it are depleted in Terminator, Aliens, Abyss and even in Avatar; Xenogenesis doesn't have much to offer interesting. But looking at the year 1978, the beginner era of robotics and space adventures in cinema; Xenogenesis is used to be considered inspirational. If you're interested in the history of Sci-Fi; you should check this out.