Watched it yesterday. Great movie. It has cool submersibles, cool aliens, and thrilling scenes of underwater horror. But I'll probably never watch it again because of one fucked up scene that I'm here to complain about.

In order to demonstrate liquid breathing to the audience, one of our heroes---without warning or permission---grabs a pet rat off of his peer's shoulder, throws it into a tiny cage, and submerges the cage in a glass tank filled with oxygenated fluorocarbon. Its owner is horrified and protests but is assuaged by his rat-torturing companion who tells him "he'll be fine."

The camera then stays focused on the rat thrashing around in a desperate panic for what feels like an eternity. Finally the critter accepts its death and stops moving. Its nose is pressed against the tank's corner. A second later it opens its mouth wide and takes several slow, extremely labored breaths. I immediately flashed back to all of my pet rats that I watched die of pneumonia, because it was the exact same expression.

Then the film's hero rescues the animal and drains the fluid from its lungs by holding it upside down by the tail (something you should never do). The rat lives. Cool magic trick, bro.

There was no CGI or puppeteering used. It was a real rat and real oxygenated liquid. The producers lied to the people that oversee animal welfare in Hollywood and earned a condemnation from another org:

The American Humane Association rated this film "unacceptable" [...]

"James Cameron later admitted that four rats had indeed gone through the procedure without problems; the fifth, however, suffered a cardiac arrest. Fortunately, Cameron was able to revive it through careful chest compressions, and later kept it as a pet."

Supposedly, the only purpose for the cuts in the sequence was to avoid showing the rats defecating from panic. And you need only watch the scene to see a rat in enormous distress.

Cameron's assistant fired back in a snarky editorial with an attitude of "what's the big deal, it survived!"

Remember when Christopher Hitchens was voluntarily waterboarded? He lasted two seconds before aborting.

Friendship with James Cameron ended.