The Abyss could have been better, says James Cameron
James Cameron nearly died to make The Abyss, but the theatrical release wasn't exactly his vision
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James Cameron appeared at Beyond Fest to talk about his “first really big, kind of mega-budget movie,” The Abyss, a film that “wasn’t kind of a slam dunk in the way Aliens was,” he told the crowd (via IndieWire). Cameron admitted his team “didn’t know exactly how it was going to work,” and felt “pulled in different directions” as far as inspiration. “It all made sense to me at the time, that’s all I can say,” he shrugged (per Variety).
Cameron revealed he actually nearly died while filming underwater during The Abyss, in an incident which required him to punch a safety diver in the face and swim himself to the surface to survive. Delivering the film to audiences was less perilous, but still rocky. He experienced his first test screening with The Abyss, but “I didn’t know how to read the cards. I didn’t know how to interpret the data,” he explained. “The studio wasn’t terribly helpful.”
Test audiences saw one version with storyboards of a wave sequence, and one without, though neither got a particularly positive response. “We kind of went, ‘Well, at least it’s shorter without the wave. At least it won’t cost as much to finish,’” the filmmaker recalled. “I didn’t really know how to interpret the data, and I think we overreacted.”
Among Cameron’s titanic achievements in film, The Abyss is one of his relatively less successful outings, though it did win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. “The pseudopod scene is the moment that certainly caught people’s attention at the time. That scene made an impact and showed people what was possible and I think it kicked in the door to the start of the CG explosion,” he said at Beyond Fest (per Variety).
A few years after its 1989 release, Cameron released a special edition with completed visual effects for that wave sequence. “It’s the film I intended to make, if nothing else,” Cameron reflected (via IndieWire). “But I actually think that you see how a lot of the film came together and how it truly is a proper heir apparent to The Day The Earth Stood Still, which was what my intention was.”
Fans will soon be able to see a 4K restoration of the film: “All of the mastering is done and I think it drops pretty soon—a couple of months or something like that,” Cameron shared. “There’s a lot of added material that they’re sticking in there, and it will be available on streaming simultaneously. But I didn’t just want to look at the old HD transfer. I wanted to do it right.”
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The Abyss is perfect to me. It’s somewhere among my top 3 of Cameron’s.
I loved it. It was one of the set of VHS tapes that I’ve known nearly word for word for 35 years because I lived overseas for a while and had no English TV when I was a kid.I will, though, be checking out the new version with all the bells and whistles, and hoping it doesn’t disappoint like Lucas’ attempt to sell more copies of Star Wars.
Agreed. I think T2 and Titanic are his only superior films.The making-of documentary that came as an extra disc is super interesting, too. And you can tell how much Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was done with Cameron after production wrapped. She conveniently appears nowhere in the extra features interview even though the entire rest of the cast sits down for them.The story is during the scene when her character is temporarily dead and she’s laying there fully exposed, Cameron told Ed Harris to legitimately hit her. She nearly quit the movie.
I saw it. It was Abyssmal.
That would have landed better if it were true.
Yeah, I thought about that and felt guilty afterwards. Me dumb.
Trenchant commentary
LOL, this guy is so full of himself it’s ridiculous. Literally no one not named James Cameron has ever compared this turd to Day The Earth Stood Still.
A great movie that was only augmented by the superior extended edition, which brought a ton of clarity to the proceedings.I’m thrilled we have word on the long-awaited 4K transfer, and I hope that means the extended version will be part of it.I’ve been watching a 480p version for years. So pumped for this.
I still love how my dad and I made fun of The Abyss before it came out. He made a point of pronouncing it the “A-bus.”So. We went to see it, only us, on family vacation that summer it was out. I already knew what was going to happen, but young teenage Rogue just let it happen. “Two for the A-Bus”ticket girl literally stared at my dad and myself and then laughed.“I think he meant two for the Abyss.”Needless to say, we had no idea who James Cameron was at the time, but we loved it. I’m not sure what Cameron could have done better.