The Abyss (1989) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

The James Cameron film The Abyss turns the outer space sci-fi story inside out blending the style of a cold war action thriller with an alien close encounter. His film is based in much reality and science while still probing the depths of the human heart.

First Impressions

After a preface of behind-the-scenes footage and a list of James Cameron’s previous credits, the trailer for The Abyss gets into gear. An underwater adventure, with submarines, divers, and just a hint at something a little more sci-fi. It’s difficult to explain what might be going on, but the trailer does give an intense feeling of impending danger in a deep underwater habitat. Venture into the Abyss, if you dare.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

The submarine USS Montana encounters something near the Cayman Trough, loses power and crashes. Shortly, two Navy helicopters land on the Benthic Explorer, a support ship for the Deep Core underwater drilling platform. The Navy needs the assistance of the crew in order to perform a salvage, and possible rescue, of the submarine before the Russians and Hurricane Frederick arrive. A team of four SEALs, including their Lieutenant–Coffey (Michael Biehn), are ferried down to Deep Core by Lindsay Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), ex-wife of Bud Brigman (Ed Harris), who is in charge of the platform.

Bud and his team ferry the four SEALs into the Cayman Trough on Flat Bed–driven by One-Night (Kimberly Scott), along with Lindsay in Cab 1, and Hippie (Todd Graff) in Cab 3. Inside the sub, Bud, Catfish (Leo Burmester), and Jammer (John Bedford Lloyd) join the SEALs in looking for survivors. Jammer has a hard time seeing the dead bodies so Bud sticks close to him. During a momentary power drain, Jammer sees a glowing object, freaks out and bashes his regulator causing him to go into convulsions. The glowing object passes Lindsay and heads quickly into the abyss.

Back on Deep Core, Jammer is placed, unconscious, in the infirmary and Coffey contacts his superiors, who believe that the object that was seen might have been Russian in origin. Tensions are escalating on the surface between the USSR and the United States, and Coffey is tasked with retrieving a warhead from the Montana, “just in case.” He and his team take Flat Bed to recover a MIRV at the exact moment when Deep Core needs the submersible to detach their umbilical from the surface, due to the onset of a hurricane. Coffey’s team returns too late and the buffeting storm above drags Deep Core to the edge of the abyss causing extensive damage, and killing a number of crewmembers, including one SEAL.

The team recognizes that Coffey is showing signs of HPNS (high-pressure nervous syndrome) which challenges his thinking, leading him to become paranoid. That evening, a water tentacle rises from the moon pool and makes contact with the crew. Lindsay, fascinated, touches it and realizes it’s only seawater held in shape by some alien force. Coffey, seeing the tentacle, feels threatened and closes a bulkhead door, cutting it in two and causing it to retreat. Becoming completely unhinged, Coffey straps the warhead to “Big Geek,” a remote operated vehicle (ROV), that had previously been pre-programmed to descend into the abyss to look for the NTIs (non-terrestrial intelligence), a term coined by Hippie.

Coffey orders Schoenick (Christopher Murphy) to lock the crew up and shoot them if they try to interfere, but Jammer awakens and knocks out the guard. Bud and Catfish exit through one of Deep Core’s hatches and swim, unaided, into the moon pool in an attempt to stop Coffey. The SEAL hops in Cab 3 with the MIRV, but Lindsay, taking Cab 1, plays demolition derby with the submersibles, leading Coffey’s damaged sub to implode, killing him. Unfortunately Big Geek with the MIRV still attached falls into the Trough during the battle.

Bud and Lindsay, who are stuck in the damaged Cab 1 with only one dive suit, decide that the best way to return to Deep Core is to let Lindsay drown in the freezing water, and then revive her back in the station. After a long period where the crew is not sure that she will come back, they manage to revive her. They realize the only way to get to the warhead is to utilize the fluid breathing equipment brought by the SEALs. Ensign Monk (Adam Nelson), an injured Naval diver, instructs Bud on how the system works–allowing him to survive the deep pressure of the chasm by breathing oxygenated fluid.

Bud makes it to the bottom of the trench and cuts the wires on the warhead, rendering it inert, but realizes he does not have enough O2 to return to Deep Core. He suddenly sees the same mysterious lights that Jammer and Lindsay had reported. A glowing alien flies Bud into its ship where it provides an environment he can breathe in. The ship rises up out of the abyss, picking up Deep Core on the way, and surfaces under the Benthic Explorer and a number of Naval warships. Lindsay, afraid she had lost Bud, is ecstatic to see him walk out of the alien submersible. She runs to him and the two embrace and kiss.

“This here’s a bottomless pit, baby. Two and a half miles straight down.” – Catfish

History in the Making

The Abyss marks James Cameron’s third sci-fi film in a row, and his most complex production to date. It makes The Terminator look like a student film, and Aliens look like an easy film to make, by comparison. This was also the first film that helped earn Cameron the reputation of being a difficult director to work with, not just by the crew but by actors as well. His idea for the film was to shoot as much as possible practically, meaning filming underwater. His production company found an abandoned nuclear power plant tank in North Carolina that had been converted for filming, after deciding that filming in a natural water environment would be too difficult. The cast and crew underwent extensive underwater training and spent long days submerged in the water while filming the various sequences. Cameron’s ethos was to create as realistic a film as possible, and often pushed his actors and crew right to the edge of safety and sanity with filming conditions. The conditions aside however, the film does capture a raw and realistic look at the risks and realities of being underwater.

As with principal photography, Cameron also employed a lot of practical model work for the film. Miniatures of Deep Core and the underwater vehicles were created for a majority of the scenes, especially the “demolition derby” moments between Lindsay and Coffey. Miniatures (which were anything but small) of the Benthic Explorer were also built for moments showing the crane collapse and the alien ship rising out of the water. These elements were shot in water tanks, but other elements, like the USS Montana navigating the edge of the trench used the decades old technique of filming dry-for-wet. Like it sounds, this is filming objects in a dry environment and simulating wet conditions. This usually involves extensive lighting and atmospheric effects (like smoke) to simulate the water depth, while filming at a higher frame rate to produce a smoother, and slower motion shot.

But the thing that The Abyss is probably most remembered for is its progression of tools and techniques for computer generated imagery in film. While audiences might assume that the NTIs were digital, they actually ended up being created as practical models with fiber optic lighting. The only digital animation element in the film was the water pseudopod. Industrial Light and Magic developed new software to not only replicate water refraction and motion, but also the necessary tools to allow them to meld the faces of Lindsay and Bud onto the end of the water tentacle. The hard work paid off as members of ILM received the 1990 Oscar for Best Visual Effects for their efforts. It’s amazing to see how far the technology had come in just under 10 years. From Looker and Star Trek II, to the morphing elements in Willow and the liquid tentacle here. Computer animation technology was growing by leaps and bounds. Cameron would tackle a much harder aspect of this effects technology in his next film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Genre-fication

The 1980s started a process that continues today. It began with the reaction of studios to blockbuster sci-fi films (like Star Wars), and making knock-off clones after the fact. In 1989, the studios created their knock-offs prior to the film in question! When high budget and high visibility films went into production at one studio, other studios would often create a similar film in order to capitalize on the public’s interest or in some cases mistaken identity of the film they really want to see. Imagine seeing a trailer for The Abyss and then a few months later an underwater thriller is released. Some audience members might mistake that film for the one they wanted to watch. The Abyss was a late summer release in August of 1989 by 20th Century Fox. Both TriStar Pictures and MGM got the jump on Cameron by releasing similar pictures in January and March. The first film was DeepStar Six, a Sean S. Cunnigham (Friday the 13th) film about “a team of navy personnel stationed at a temporary base at the bottom of the ocean and tasked with setting up nuclear missiles [who] discover a huge underwater cavern which houses a giant prehistoric creature,” according to IMDb. A similar film, Leviathan, starring Peter Weller (Buckaroo Banzai, Robocop) followed in March and sounds like a near clone, about deep sea miners working on a “the hull of a wrecked Soviet freighter” coming “face to face with a mutant creature that’s the product of a failed genetic experiment.” For anyone that’s sat through all three films, there is no contest that The Abyss is the better film, yet the copycat syndrome continues.

While The Abyss is not anything like what audiences might imagine a standard sci-fi film of the time being, it does rely on many of the thematic and philosophical aspects of some of the greatest science-fiction films produced. It takes the familiar concept of humans making a first contact with an alien species, and sets it a new and unexpected locale. Well, new and unexpected if you hadn’t watched the other underwater thrillers released this year. The creatures that The Abyss puts forth are much more benevolent than the creatures from DeepStar Six or Leviathan. Those monsters include a previously unearthed sea critter that likes to dine on humans, and a genetic aberration that has a similar proclivity. The NTI’s of Cameron’s film are actual aliens, and except for events in the Special Edition version of the film–where the beings threaten the lives of the world with tsunami-like waves, actually are interested in helping people. It’s as if Cameron took the typical outer space concept of meeting aliens and turned that inward to the oceans of the world. The Abyss contains similar thematic elements to classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, both which treat mankind’s first encounter with aliens as a positive thing and a moment of growth. Here too, the wonder and magic of the alien encounter is seen in a positive light, at least as far as Lindsay and Bud are concerned.

Societal Commentary

Another big theme that The Abyss touches on is the fear of the unknown. The characters of Coffey, Bud and Lindsay form a spectrum of belief about the existence of extraterrestrials, showcasing their belief, or lack of it. As a Navy SEAL, Coffey has the belief in tangible, real-world, things. His ingrained training prepares him to assess every situation as to its danger. But his indoctrination has also made him narrow-minded in regards to looking at the world in any way except for how he was trained. Everything, to him, is a military threat, looking to do him or his country harm. He can only see the NTI’s as a threat to his mission, rather than what Cameron intends them to be, which is a wondrous moment in human history. Lindsay sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. She is immediately awed and trusting of the visitors, whether as a water pseudopod or a glowing underwater craft. She mocks Coffey’s anger at the intrusion of the water tentacle, wondering if anyone else sees it as a Russian tentacle? She works to convince Bud, the man she once shared a life with, who is on the fence about the existence of aliens, that they are real. He too is a practical man, who knows only what he can see in front of him. He has not made up his mind about what Lindsay may have seen, even though she knows what she saw. His inability to trust her, after many years of hating her, gets in his way of seeing the truth. She tells him that Coffey sees only hate and fear, and eventually reminds him that “you have to look with better eyes than that.”

Her plea is not only to Bud, but also to the audience. The year that this film was released, 1989, was still a time of tense politics between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Cold War was thawing, but had not yet broken, and the film makes use of these tensions between the two major planetary superpowers. Lindsay’s advice is to remind people to look beyond their initial biases and ideals. If you assume that everyone is out to get you, then everyone will be out to get you. But if your mind is open to new possibilities, then there’s a whole new world of amazing experiences that open up. Bud comes to understand this only after his own encounter with the aliens. He had made up his mind that he was going to die on that rocky ledge in the Cayman Trough when a creature shows up to rescue him. The euphoria and wonder that he was presented with, after letting down his guard, exposed him to an experience that few have ever had.

The Science in The Fiction

In order to portray this very human story of an encounter with aliens, Cameron wanted to make sure that the other aspects of the film were altogether accurate. The look of the underwater station, the functionality of the submersibles, and the processes that the crew used all were meant to be as realistic as possible. In the union of SCUBA diving and filmmaking, he even had a new style of helmet designed that would be both functional as well as be able to show off the faces and expressions of his actors in a better way. Face masks were created that would not fog up, and quality microphones were installed in order to get the best audio possible. This benefitted the crew as well since they got to wear the same types of helmets during the long-hours of filming.

The film also contains a very sci-fi seeming plot element with the fluid breathing setup. It is explained that a hyper-oxygenated fluid can be used in deep sea diving scenarios where using pressurized air would be too dangerous. Ensign Monk reminds Bud that his body once “breathed” fluid (in utero), and that his body will remember. This is demonstrated earlier in the film when Hippie’s rat is forced to breathe the fluid, and survives. The scene was an actual moment of the rat breathing the fluid and not a special effect as some may assume. Unfortunately Ed Harris did not actually breathe the fluid, as film trickery and editing was used for those moments. While this is something that exists and is possible, it’s not something that is now (or was then) actively in use by the Navy or any other diving operations. Just an example of more cutting edge science that Cameron likes to use in his films.

The Final Frontier

Four years after the release of The Abyss, James Cameron released a Special Edition laserdisc that contained approximately 30 minutes of never before seen footage. The film was re-edited, with new scenes added and other scenes removed, including a subplot of the aliens sending giant  tidal waves to wipe out major cities, until their encounter with Bud makes them see that humanity has much left to offer. Much like the extended edition of Aliens, this version of The Abyss adds in a number of changes and enhanced special effects that will entertain fans of the film, but show why some of the footage was excised in the first place.

Cameron’s experience making the film led him to continue exploring underwater habitats in a series of documentaries. He produced and directed two films, Ghosts of the Abyss (2003), and Aliens of the Deep (2005) after the success of his biggest blockbuster and one of his only non-sci-fi films, Titanic. He became an accomplished diver, and worked with a number of companies to create better underwater film equipment. Cameron partnered with National Geographic for the above films, and was himself the first human to reach the Challengers Deep, which is the lowest point in the Marianas Trench, approximately 6 and three-quarters miles deep.

For all the films that choose to explore outer space, The Abyss shows that there is an equal amount of mystery and potential exploring inner space. It continued the rise of James Cameron’s career, breaking barriers and advancing numerous filmmaking and underwater specialties that enhanced both disciplines. The Abyss was the last big blockbuster for the 80s, but one that moved the genre into new areas and showcased just how far science-fiction film had come in the last ten years.

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