He might be known for directing some absolute bangers throughout his career (three of which are the most successful movies of all time), but on the odd occasion, James Cameron just penned movie scripts and let someone else take the reins. In 1995, he created and co-wrote “Strange Days,” a sci-fi film starring Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett, directed by his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow. Set in the not-too-distant future, the film follows Fiennes as Lenny, a former cop pushing a new fix everyone wants a piece of — SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device). These nifty little gizmos that sound like variations of Elon Musk’s Neuralink record memories, allowing the user to relive them. However, when Lenny obtains a memory chronicling a murder, it draws him and Bassett’s character into a conspiracy he fights to uncover.
In a film about grasping onto the past and the memories we hold dear, there’s a bittersweet irony in “Strange Days” that it’s so hard to get hold of. That’s probably because the film didn’t achieve the same level of success as Cameron’s other works. Earning just shy of $8 million at the box-office against a budget of $42 million, it was a box-office failure, becoming a cult classic now unavailable on any streaming service. But while you might not have come across this forgotten Cameron-penned project, you might likely have heard a fragment of it in one of the biggest songs of the late ’90s.
Strange Days got a second life in a Fatboy Slim song
Four years after “Strange Days” faded into cinema history but was kept alive by a select batch of fans, Bigelow and Cameron’s collaborative effort got some time to shine in 1999 with Fatboy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now.” Not only the title but a sample from the song is taken from “Strange Days,” where Bassett’s Mace is arguing with Lenny that his life isn’t in the past, but it’s “Right here, right now.” The song would gain popularity, being used in ad campaigns for Adidas, as well as appearing in trailers for films like “Crank” and “The Virgin Suicides.”
Besides that brilliant earworm, though, “Strange Days” is a forgotten sci-fi cult classic that you should absolutely hunt down, which is a futuristic flash in the pan for all kinds of reasons. Besides being a brilliant concept from Cameron that’s well handled by Bigelow (who would go on to beat her husband at the Oscars when “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” were nominated for Best Film), it’s also one of the few times Voldemort has ever been this cool. With all that said, though, we just hope that SQUIDs don’t become a reality like so much other fantasy devices that are now alarmingly real.
