If you were asked to guess which James Cameron ‘80s movie the filmmaker is least proud of, you’d probably say Piranha II: The Spawning. The sequel typifies the middle-of-the-range animal attack movies that poured out of Hollywood after the release of Jaws. It holds a 4% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is generally considered a so-bad-it-is-good movie. Thankfully, the director quickly redeemed himself with The Terminator, followed by Aliens. He’d then close the decade with The Abyss, a film he now considers the worst of his career.
During a Q&A session at Beyond Fest, Cameron revealed that he was proud of the production process but disappointed by the final product. “I didn’t quite achieve what I wanted to achieve, what was in my mind,” he said of the film’s theatrical version, which he feels was butchered in an attempt to cater to test-screening reactions. However, Cameron couldn’t be more wrong. The Abyss might have been forgotten by many, but it is a feast for the eyes (it won Best Visual Effects at the Oscars), and it is neatly constructed in all other areas, justifying its 89% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Something Terrifying Lurks in the Ocean in ‘The Abyss’
Directed by Cameron and produced by Gale Anne Hurd (who also funded The Terminator and Aliens), The Abyss covers a rescue operation that plays out when the American nuclear submarine, the USS Montana, sinks. The disaster happens after the vessel encounters a mysterious, unidentified submerged object near the Cayman Trough.
With a hurricane quickly approaching, the U.S. Navy takes over a nearby experimental underwater drilling base, Deep Core, as it tries to remedy the situation. The rig’s foreman, Virgil “Bud” Brigman (Ed Harris), is tasked with coordinating with a team of Navy SEALs led by the tough Lt Hiram Coffey (Michael Biehn). The mission gets intense when the team experiences strange phenomena and sightings of non-terrestrial intelligences (NTIs). Worse still, Lt. Coffey is soon overwhelmed by paranoia, stemming from High-Pressure Nervous Syndrome (HPNS). Will the mission be a success?
The idea for the film came to James Cameron while he was still a teenager. After attending a high school science lecture about deep-sea diving by Francis J. Falejczyk (the first human to breathe liquid through his lungs), the filmmaker wrote a short story about a group of scientists conducting research at the bottom of the ocean. He then modified the story several times over the years.
The urge to make The Abyss grew stronger while Cameron was making Aliens. During a break on set, he saw a National Geographic film about remotely operated vehicles roaming deep in the North Atlantic Ocean. He and producer Gale Anne Hurd thus decided that an underwater film would be their next project. Interestingly, Cameron and Hurd got married before The Abyss, separated during its pre-production, and officially divorced two months after principal photography. Hurd later married Brian De Palma.
James Cameron’s Superior Post-80s Films Owe a Lot to ‘The Abyss’
What is it with this fella and the sea? For years, he has crafted a series of adventures, both oceanographic and landlocked, but he tends to favor the former. The three-time Oscar winner appears both to adore water and to be terrified of it. He has wrung an infinite amount of physical sensations out of his crazy obsession, impressively having something new to say every time. Well, The Abyss is majorly why the super-director has strong aqua leanings.
Cameron shouldn’t regret making the movie, as it lit a fire in him that pushed him to direct superior (mostly water-based) movies like Titanic and Avatar. The filmmaker partly acknowledged this in the Q&A session, saying, “I don’t think I could have done Titanic if I hadn’t been through the process on The Abyss. I’m talking about understanding where the beating heart of a movie lies and not getting distracted by the imagery.”
A few indie films had toyed with wet sets over the years, but there wasn’t much going on. It all felt like kids splashing water on buckets. The sci-fi thriller is what pioneered practical underwater filming on a large scale. In it, Cameron has a dynamic feel for the splash and heave of the currents, the pent-up vigor, the sheer heft and velocity. According to Ian Blair’s Starlog Magazine article, “Underwater in the Abyss,” the cast and crew trained for underwater diving for an entire week in the Cayman Islands. The film was mainly shot in large tanks at an abandoned nuclear plant, an on-set approach that the director maintained for Titanic’s flooding scenes.
The film’s “pseudopod” (a water tentacle that models itself various faces) was also one of Hollywood’s first major uses of CGI in cinema, designed by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). This directly influenced the T-1000’s shape-shifting liquid metal scenes in Terminator 2: Judgement Day and the advanced performance-capture techniques seen in Avatar.
According to Cameron, he and his team had to do 10 hours underwater per day, six days a week, for 10 weeks in a row. This must have left him feeling like a fish as he grew to love the ocean, not just in cinema, but on a personal level. The director would go on to make numerous dives of 11,000 meters and beyond, including 33 trips to the wreckage of the Titanic. And, in 2012, he made a historic solo trek to the Challenger Deep, the presumed deepest point on earth.
‘The Abyss’ Preaches Peace, Making it a Relevant and Timeless Film
It’s easy to see why James Cameron dislikes The Abyss. It required a lot of work to make (cast members grew disgruntled) and only grossed $90 million at the box office. For a man who is now ranked the second-highest-grossing director of all time, this isn’t good enough. When he looks at his resume, he wants to see only billions. However, the film weaves together dark commentary and a curious mélange of themes that gel into a coherent and majestic whole, making it intellectually superior to many of the director’s other works. Additionally, it has a far more visible political edge.
There are no veiled condemnations in the picture. The jabs are forceful and obvious, with the most important one being directed toward military fanaticism and the human tendency to resort to violence as a solution to most problems. Coffey symbolizes the cynical, pugnacious military figure who almost destroys the world because of his limited problem-solving skills, and the military at large is called out for marketing itself as a protective body while still causing plenty of bloodshed.
Ultimately, the aliens decide to spare humans, not because of mere compassion, but because they realize there are lots of good people who don’t deserve to be caught up in blanket punishment. These include the protagonist and his wife.
On the issue, Cameron wrote:
“The original goal of the film was to tell a story of a kind of apocalypse in which we are judged by a superior race…And we are found to be worthy of salvation because of a single average man, an Everyman, who somehow represents that which is good in us: the capacity for love measured by the willingness for self-sacrifice.”
The Abyss reminds us that it isn’t the use of force that makes the world a better place, but rather the love for each other. In the ending of the special edition (considered the superior version), the aliens take Bud to a spaceship and show him various images of war captured by the media. They then create massive megatsunamis that threaten to destroy the world, but stop them short before they hit. When Bud asks why they chose to spare humans, they show him the loving message to Lindsey. Before the crisis, the couple had separated and were engaged in endless squabbles.
The film’s message thus makes it relevant and timeless… arguably Cameron’s most important work. Like the superior original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, it excels via the messaging rather than the drama and action, which are two tools that many of the director’s films often rely on. Cameron, therefore, has no reason to hate it. Instead, he talks about it more in interviews and masterclasses.
- Release Date
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August 9, 1989
- Runtime
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140 minutes
- Producers
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Gale Anne Hurd
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Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Lindsey Brigman
