James Cameron: The Abyss (1989)

What drives a person to go further and deeper than anyone else? What might you find at the limits of human experience? James Cameron’s 1989 film The Abyss is an especially paradigmatic film in the director’s career, even if it is often lost in the discussion of the director’s many other accomplishments. As a production, The Abyss pushed the limits of existing special effects and filming techniques forward. Filmed and set almost entirely underwater, The Abyss deals with concepts as varied as the specter of nuclear war, the existence of Non-Terrestrial Intelligences (NTIs), and marital drama. These are each treated thematically in many of Cameron’s other films, but in The Abyss they come together in the pressure cooker of the experimental underwater drilling platform Deep Core, perched on the edge of Cayman Trough, the deepest point in the Caribbean Sea. Perhaps his most idiosyncratic film, The Abyss is a master text for many of Cameron’s thematic obsessions: it is vast in scope and interest, bringing together elements one wouldn’t necessarily expect, but also a highly focused and personal film about the challenges of working with someone you are married to in a tense environment.

Cameron was always fascinated by water; his childhood growing up near Niagara Falls and devouring Jacques Cousteau documentaries on television certainly contributed to this fascination. At age sixteen he wrote a short story that would become the genesis of The Abyss, involving an underwater science lab perched on the edge of the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean Sea where scientists test a new fluid breathing system that would enable the divers to go deeper and deeper. As a top science student in high school, Cameron had been invited to a science lecture where he first encountered the concept of the fluid breathing apparatus, and he included this intriguing technology into his story, which also included a dramatic conflict spurred on by one character’s depth-induced psychosis. All these elements would be incorporated into Cameron’s treatment for The Abyss many years later, as he was writing his follow-up to Aliens on an early Macintosh computer in 1987. This was his first screenplay written on a computer rather than long-form. This pioneering use of a computer in the writing process in some way anticipates computer technology’s larger impact on the film, particularly in its use of digital visual effects, and on the filmmaking landscape.

As a master text for Cameron, The Abyss particularly explores his obsession with the ocean, which would dominate his later work from Titanic to his underwater documentaries to this year’s Avatar: The Way of Water. The Abyss is Cameron’s least populist film, a film in which he delved more deeply into his own personal interests and concerns than he had before. This is not to say that The Abyss isn't firmly grounded in genre and geared toward entertainment, like all of Cameron’s films; this isn’t an art film, The Abyss is a mainstream science fiction film through and through. But compared to his previous action films, The Terminator or Aliens, The Abyss is slower paced and has smaller action sequences, if just as technically impressive for being underwater. However, it more than makes up for the lack of action with tense scenes as well as a rousing faith in the strength of the human spirit.

During production, The Abyss also functioned as a further proving ground for Cameron, where his reputation as a difficult and demanding director was pushed to its limits. The film’s shoot went both over budget and over schedule. No one had ever filmed a movie at this scale entirely underwater. No movie studio had a tank large enough to accommodate the requirements for this shoot. His quest for realism led him to film the bulk of the underwater scenes in the unused Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant outside Gaffney, South Carolina. It would be the largest underwater set ever constructed to that point. It required the crew to learn to dive. It also required Cameron and his crew to develop new techniques for filming underwater as well as specialized diving suits with domed helmets to allow the characters to talk to each other and have their faces lit. Cameron himself nearly died during the filming, due to his penchant for pushing himself to the limits of his oxygen tanks and ignoring the guidelines for time spent underwater; at one point the director found himself without oxygen in his tank, forced to perform an emergency “free ascent,” discharging air from his lungs to avoid having his lungs explode in the process! His cast and crew were at times aggravated with him; none of them, save for Biehn, would ever work for him again. It was an emotional and troubled production, to say the least.

The troubles on set are mirrored in the film’s story. As Rebecca Kagan aptly puts it in The Futurist, “At the heart of The Abyss is a relationship rare to find in any studio movie, an absolute curio in the action genre, and, in the late 1980s, the last thing anybody expected from a sci-fi technician like Cameron: a realistically troubled marriage.” The Abyss is, as I argue is true about The Terminator as well, fundamentally a romance, in this case an examination of a romance that has been pushed to the breaking point. It is, as Cameron himself puts it, about how working with your partner can breed “both respect and contempt.” It’s also about human beings as a species writ large confronting our own breaking points and coming to the brink of annihilation and destruction.

The Abyss begins with the American nuclear sub, the USS Montana, encountering a fast moving underwater object that results in its sinking near the above mentioned Cayman Trough. After the disaster, both the Soviets and the Americans move ships into the area, ostensibly to examine the cause of the accident, all while a tropical storm is bearing down on the Caribbean. To facilitate the investigation, the U.S. government commandeers Deep Core, an experimental civilian underwater oil-drilling rig to use as a base of operations for their SEALs in the operation, so that they can continue to operate during the storm.

Deep Core is commanded by Virgil “Bud” Brigman (Ed Harris), a no-nonsense blue collar technician, but the rig’s designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who is also Bud’s estranged wife, insists on being present too. Both Bud and Lindsey are strong, determined individuals, used to being in charge. It makes sense why they would have been attracted to each other working on Deep Core, but also explains why their personalities have led to the fracturing of their marriage. The casting of the more seasoned-looking Harris against the younger and brasher Mastrantonio certainly helps sell the relational dynamic, but both come across as experienced and professional in their own domains.

As in Aliens and its examination of the uneasy relationship between Ripley and the Space Marines, The Abyss is also to a great degree concerned with the relationship between civilian and military experts and the negotiation of various spheres of expertise and oversight. As Anton mentions in his review of Aliens, Cameron clearly admires the professionalism of military people. However, his films consistently frame their admiration uneasily, reinforcing Cameron’s admiration in competence and professionalism rather than in the legitimacy of rank, class, or nation. In this respect, Cameron’s approach anticipates that of another director whose approach to the military is deeply ambivalent, though more gung-ho: Michael Bay. As Aren wrote about Bay’s treatment of the military in his review of The Rock — a film which features The Abyss veterans Ed Harris and Michael Biehn — Bay “believes in exceptionalism and militarism and the need for strong men to use big weapons to save the day, but he is not trusting of institutions and the blind loyalty they demand. He believes that a few extraordinary individuals will save the day and that institutions like the military and government are (at-best) embraced with caution.” 

Likewise, as a person fascinated with technology and professionalism, Cameron also recognizes the role that military personnel can play. He enjoys weapons (as noted in the recent GQ profile of the director, this vegan environmentalist is also a top marksman), ships, and submarines; more importantly, Cameron has an almost ruthless respect for people who do their jobs well and respects the training military personnel go through. His heroes, from Kyle Reese in The Terminator to Harry Tasker in True Lies to Jake Sully in Avatar, are often military men, but his protagonists are also driven by, or discover, that there is something more important than their orders. More so than Bay’s do, Cameron’s films portray the military in unflattering ways: the Space Marines of Aliens are a mix of competent and cowardly and, like the military forces in Avatar, are particularly prone to being enlisted to serve corrupt and greedy corporations. 

In The Abyss, we get to spend even more time with the military, and their role is even more ambiguous, and ultimately villainous, than in Aliens. The SEAL team deployed to Deep Core is led by Lt. Hiram Coffey, played by Michael Biehn, who returns once again as a military man after Aliens and The Terminator, though now with a cowboy mustache that we could read as telegraphing his villainous black hat turn (Cameron is a lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them). Coffey has little patience or respect for the expertise of his civilian counterparts. He immediately clashes with Bud over command and with Lindsey over the technical uses of their rig. It is soon revealed that Coffey has been tasked with recovering the Trident nuclear missiles from the Montana. But, hiding it in his overconfidence and secretiveness, Coffey is also suffering from pressure induced paranoia, drawing on that element that Cameron had included in his original story as a teenager as well. The film’s central conflict revolves around the question of whether Coffey, in his paranoid state and sense of duty, will jeopardize the mission, or worse, trigger a nuclear conflict with the Soviets.

Thus, thematically, the film puts questions of trust and the ability to work together front and centre. Expanding on Aliens' juxtaposition of the Marines and Ripley, The Abyss puts together two teams, not just one outsider: we have the SEALs and the civilian crew of Deep Core. The film sets them up as a diverse mix of characters who are competent in their work while also highlighting their blue collar camaraderie, such as singing along to Linda Ronstadt and poking fun at each other. For instance, we have “Hippy” (Todd Graff), the nerdy, conspiracy theory believing technician with a pet rat, and “One Night” (Kimberly Scott), a no-nonsense submarine operator with a way of cutting through bullshit. The crew of Deep Core resent the way the SEALs fail to respect the professionalism and expertise they have with their experimental rig. But just as Bud and Lindsey must ultimately put their troubled past aside to complete the mission, and perhaps discover the depths of their relationship, civilian and military members of the mission will have to set aside their reservations if they — and the world — are going to survive this mission. 

The other main plot line, that runs alongside the SEAL mission, until it takes centre stage at the film’s climax, is the exploration and mystery of the abyss itself. What lies at the bottom of the trench that both Deep Core and the Montana are perched above? The Montana runs aground after spotting a “fast-moving object,” but the nature of that object is never clarified. On the initial exploration of the wreck of the Montana, in the film’s first major underwater set piece, Lindsey and another crew member see a strange light, which Lindsey believes to be what she later dubs an NTI, or “Non-Terrestrial Intelligence.” At the bottom of the abyss of the Cayman Trough might lie the future of humanity, not only because of the threat of the nuclear weapons, but the mysterious intelligence that is sending its own exploratory units to Deep Core.

The special edition of The Abyss, which adds nearly 30 minutes to the film’s runtime, opens with a version of the famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “… when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” I said that Cameron was on the nose. The longer context of Nietzsche’s quote begins with the warning: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” The obvious idea is that overwhelming, sublime objects like an abyss or a force like a monster tell us something about ourselves and what we might become. Cameron confirmed this idea, that the heart of the story is, as noted in Keegan’s book, that the characters “go to the deepest, darkest part of the ocean to confront a monster, and find out that the monster was them.” 

The irony of The Abyss is multiple, in the way that it inverts the expectations in its high concept description: we have Non-Terrestrial Intelligence, but it’s coming from the bottom of the sea, not from above. Furthermore, what we discover is that the NTIs are not hostile, but peaceful. It’s human beings who are the threat.

The opening quote is especially appropriate in the special edition, which places greater emphasis on the larger geopolitical context of the film. Cameron has long been concerned about humanity’s capacity to destroy ourselves through technology, particularly nuclear weapons. The Abyss is literally about the pursuit of nuclear weapons and the potential high-stakes game of chicken that the United States and Soviet Union played throughout the Cold War. But the NTIs, as Cameron imagines them, are mostly benevolent; the encounter with them at the end of the film is about the transformation of humanity, the re-discovery of the best parts of us in our capacity to love one another.

Aside from Aliens, which was a sequel to someone else’s film, in Cameron’s original films, it’s notable that aliens are never villains. This is the case both in The Abyss and Avatar : the villains are the military, our own rogue technology, our hubris toward that technology, our greed. In this way, The Abyss is similar to another classic science fiction film about aliens and nuclear war, Robert Wise’s 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still. In that film, the alien Klaatu brings a warning for the earth: “Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.” Likewise, in the special edition of The Abyss, at the climax of the film, the NTIs generate massive super-tsunami waves that threaten to obliterate the USA and USSR because of the threat of nuclear weapons. The finale of the film has Bud travelling to the bottom of the abyss using the liquid breathing technology, and in the special edition, the NTIs show him images of human conflict and war, implying that this has made humans a threat. It is only the capacity to love, embodied in Bud and Lindsey, that saves us and influences the NTIs to stop the waves. 

Once again, Cameron elegantly draws two elements of his science fiction epic together thematically, linking the resolution of the marital conflict with the resolution of the global one. It is Bud and Lindsey’s rediscovery of their love and what they admire about each other—their discovery that they might actually “need” each other—that ends up saving humanity. But early in the film, Bud and Lindsey show genuine hostility to each other. As I said above, it’s understandable how their actual personalities and actions have alienated them and threatened their marriage. But, as for many Cameron protagonists, their love is sealed in action, in the need to band together to survive.

The emotional centre of the film comes just prior to the climax, around the two hour mark of the special edition, in what might be the film’s tensest sequence—this is in a film filled with claustrophobia and narrow escapes. After pursuing and stopping Coffey from escaping in a mini-sub with an armed nuclear warhead, Bud and Lindsey’s sub is damaged and taking on water and they are forced to make a free dive back to Deep Core, but without enough oxygen for both. Because Bud is the stronger swimmer, he brings Lindsey back in a state of semi-drowned coma. Bringing her cold and blue body up onto the deck, Bud and the rest of the crew attempt to revive her with a defibrillator and CPR. There’s no response from Lindsey, and the crew tries to tell Bud “It’s over.” But Bud won’t give up on Lindsey. He refuses to accept it. “She has a strong heart! She wants to live!” Bud keeps on. He pounds on her, demanding her to respond. “Goddammit, you bitch! You never backed away from anything in your life, now fight!” he yells and cries, as he slaps her lifeless body. It’s disturbing. It’s desperate. It pushes the life and death stakes as far as they can go. But Bud’s faith in her is rewarded as she takes a breath, her eyes open, and she returns. The rest of the crew, and by extension the audience, having experienced this moment of extreme tension, is granted release in an expression of tears and smiles. It’s the film’s greatest moment of emotional catharsis, and also the moment of Bud and Lindsey’s full reunion.

It's notable that this scene is followed by Bud’s decision to descend two miles down into the trench to disarm the warhead that Coffey had attempted to remotely send down to destroy the NTIs. Bud must use the aforementioned liquid breathing apparatus, mirroring the water that Lindsey just swallowed. This time it is Lindsey whose words of comfort to him as he descends deeper and deeper make reference to the loneliness that one might feel so far under the water. She says:

I know how alone you feel... alone in all that cold blackness... but I'm there in the dark with you. Oh, Bud you're not alone. You remember that time, you were pretty drunk, you probably don't remember... but the power went out at the old apartment, the one on Orange Street... and we were staring at that one little candle, and I said something really dumb like that candle is me, like every one of us is out there alone in the dark in this life... and you just lit up another candle and put it beside mine and said "No, see? That's me. That's me..." And we stared at the two candles, and then we...well, if you remember any of it, I'm sure you remember the next part. Bud, there are two candles in the dark. I'm with you. I'll always be with you, Bud, I promise that.

The question of whether we are alone is then resolved in multiple ways. Obviously, we are not alone. We have other human beings with us, even if only in spirit as Lindsey is with Bud in this, his darkest moment. But in a very literal sense, Bud is not alone in the abyss either. The NTIs are there also. As his oxygen runs out, Bud sees the bioluminescent being, winged and swimming, like an angel coming to save him. The NTI takes him to their ship at the bottom of the trench, and there it is Bud’s love for Lindsey that convinces them that humanity is worth sparing. 

The image of the NTI reaching out and taking Bud’s hand is one of transcendence, of reaching out and embracing that we are not alone. The NTIs are curious, reaching out to us in the darkness. Earlier in the film’s most famous scene, they first attempt to reach out and explore Deep Core by creating a water tentacle that can look around. The camera takes the perspective of the so-called Pseudopod as it looks around the enclosed space of the rig. And from its watery POV, we witness the fear of the crew turn to fascination and delight at the discovery that they’re not alone in the universe. Thematically, it shows the bond between humans and the NTIs as creatures seeking to make contact and explore.

The Pseudopod, an image included in many a special effects documentary, was one of the most difficult special effects to create in the film. Cameron considered stop-motion animation and mechanical effects before considering a digital option. The Abyss would play a significant role in the development and mainstreaming of digital visual effects. For one, it was one of the first films to divide its VFX work among multiple vendors, something which has become de rigueur for effects intensive films today. But the biggest leap forward came from the folks at Industrial Light and Magic, the company pioneered by George Lucas for making the Star Wars films, particularly lead artist, Denis Muren, who believed that the effects that Cameron required for the Pseudopod could be accomplished with computer effects. Computer generated imagery (CGI) was still in its infancy then, and while hard edged or shiny elements were doable, organic and liquid elements were considered a long shot. But when Cameron saw the tests of the Pseudopod mirroring his lead-actress' face, he was convinced. The Abyss became a landmark in the utilization of CGI to create realistic visions of organic creatures, and led to the work on the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Muren’s work on Jurassic Park in 1993.

Thus, when we take into account the film’s production history, The Abyss is about how technology and humanity can work together, both as a fictional narrative and as a technical Hollywood production. Whether it was shooting underwater or testing new computer visual effects, The Abyss showed Cameron that he could push the filmmaking technology to its limit in telling a story that didn’t lose its humanity. Experimentation and heart need not be compromised.

Cameron has become known as a director who defies the odds, against the predictions of Hollywood’s so-called insiders and experts who expected films like Titanic and Avatar to be massive failures. But earlier in his career, Cameron didn’t always feel he could completely defy the conventional wisdom of the day. During test screenings of the film, Cameron learned a lesson in compromise that would ultimately make him the uncompromising director he is today. The studio and test audiences found the end of the film off-putting, particularly the waves (which at the time were not yet finished in VFX form). The film was also very long, approaching three hours, at a time when most summer tentpole films were not that long. Despite having the final cut, Cameron ultimately elected to cut sequences from the film that emphasized the overarching danger of nuclear apocalypse and, in my mind, a significant theme of the film. Regardless of the cuts, the film didn’t do as well at the box office as was hoped, grossing $54 million domestic and only $90 million worldwide. It remains Cameron’s lowest grossing film since The Terminator, but with a much bigger budget than that initial feature. After the mammoth success of T2, Cameron was eventually able to finish his film the way he originally intended in 1993 for a new theatrical release, DVD, and laserdisc. This special edition remains much better received than the original, and I would argue it takes the film from good to great. For Cameron, a lesson had been learned on trusting his initial instincts, one that he would hold to for the rest of his career even when studio executives and the critical public became skeptical. As he notes, “I made cuts to the film that I shouldn’t have made… And I also know, never, ever preview a movie with unfinished effects.”

Ultimately, The Abyss remains a uniquely engrossing and moving vision of science fiction and human-scale storytelling that pushes filmmaking technology forward, even as it tries to move our hearts. That combination of technological prowess and human emotion remains the gold standard for Cameron’s best films to this day, and the reason that films like Titanic and Avatar would become the world-spanning hits they are. It’s rare to find such earnestness of feeling, clarity of purpose, and technical wonder in Hollywood cinema. While it’s difficult to pick a favourite out of Cameron’s astounding run of films, The Abyss remains a film where Cameron solidified his instinct for emotionally gratifying science fiction. It’s a film that leaves me simultaneously exhilarated and gratified at the mysteries of the world and of other people. For all those reasons, it is a film that I enjoy revisiting, returning to its depths.

10 out of 10

The Abyss (1989, USA)

Written and directed by James Cameron; starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn, Leo Burmester, Todd Graff, Kimberly Scott.

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