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OPERATION UNDERSEA: Science fiction dealing with life under the sea—most notably, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea—set the standard for James Cameron’s reinvention of this subgenre. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio plays the awestruck diver who discovers E.T.-like creatures. Courtesy: Richard Foreman, photographer/20th Century Fox.
CREDITS
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Lightstorm Entertainment; James Cameron, dir.; Cameron, scr.; Gale Anne Hurd, Van Ling, pro.; Alan Silvestri, mus.; Mikael Salomon, cin.; Conrad Buff IV, Joel Goodman, ed.; Leslie Dilley, prod. design; Peter Childs, art dir.; Ron Cobb, conceptual designer; Jean Giraud, conceptual artist; Thomas D. Krausz, Joseph A. Unsinn, F/X; Jon Alexander, visual effects; Ken Allen, matte artist; 139 min. (original theatrical print), 171 min. (special edition); Color; 2.20:1.
CAST
Ed Harris (“Bud” Brigman); Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Lindsey Brigman); Michael Biehn (Lt. Hiram Coffey); Leo Burmester (Catfish De Vries); Todd Graff (Alan “Hippy” Carnes); John Bedford Lloyd (Jammer Willis); J. C. Quinn (“Sonny” Dawson); Kimberly Scott (Lisa Standing); Captain Kidd Brewer Jr. (Finler); George Robert Klek (Wilhite); Christopher Murphy (Schoenick); Adam Nelson (Ensign Monk).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
We all see what we want to see.
LINDSEY, ON THE POSSIBLE EXISTENCE OF UNDERWATER ALIENS
BACKGROUND
Born in Ontario, Canada, James Cameron had always been fascinated with special effects. This interest developed further when his family moved to California. Though he worked as a truck driver, he would visit the University of Southern California on his time off to study on his own the remarkable worlds created by design artists. He also happened to attend a lecture on deep-sea diving and, while listening, conceived of a scenario about a group of undersea scientists.
After seeing Star Wars, Cameron decided that he had to find a way into the movie business. He became a miniature-maker for Roger Corman. Even after making a breakthrough into major movies, he continued to mull over that early inspiration, realizing that a crew of ordinary guys would be more interesting than the great brains he’d planned for his characters. The success of the Spielberg films, Close Encounters (1977) and E.T. (1982), influenced the decision to make his aliens appealing rather than menacing.
THE PLOT
Bud is foreman of “Deep Core,” an underwater oil platform, leading the search for new sources of energy. Without warning, a call comes in: the USS Montana, a submarine carrying nuclear missiles with Trident warheads has inexplicably gone down. As the Russians have already dispatched their crafts, the U.S. government doesn’t have enough time to send forces into the area. So a special team of Navy SEALS, commanded by hard-edged warrior Coffey, and the oil platform’s designer, Lindsey, will join the civilians to rescue survivors and protect the cargo. All this occurs even as a hurricane tears through the area. That Lindsey and Bud were once married complicates the situation further. While diving, Lindsey discovers something unexpected: underwater life forms she nicknames “N.T.I.”—short for “non-terrestrial intelligence.”
THE FILM
As with Aliens, Cameron broke new ground in terms of drastically redefining the genre. The Abyss is another one of those 1980s action-oriented films with a science-fiction twist, but this film also has the earmarks of a Cold War sea thriller such as The Hunt for Red October (1990). In the case of Cameron’s film, however, the heroes must deal with underwater aliens, as well as Soviets. However, the theatrical print—edited by Cameron, who had final cut—employs those fantasy elements sparingly. The longer cut of the film explains, via inclusion of those originally missing sequences, why the Montana sank, why the aliens are playfully encountered by the female lead at mid-movie, and why they appear again to assist the seemingly doomed hero. Throughout much of the narrative, they are absent and, in fact, have been forgotten, by characters as well as by the audience, when Coffey becomes the antagonist. In previous films, once a sci-fi element has entered into the fantastique, it dominates; intriguingly, this movie does not divert from its realistic story line, but rather incorporates aliens into it.
The Abyss broke new ground not only within the genre but also in moviemaking. No film had previously been released with the THX LaserDisc format, and no feature film had prior to this featured any effects work achieved by Adobe Photoshop. Though some Hollywood films had included computer-generated imagery for fantasy imaging, the process was considered crude, suitable only for lower-echelon projects. CGI had just reached a new level of sophistication, convincing Cameron that such effects could appear convincing. Their success here helped prove to Spielberg that for his upcoming Jurassic Park, CGI, rather than old-fashioned Ray Harryhausen tabletop models, could be used for the dinosaurs.
THEME
Antiwar in orientation, Cameron had been concerned that audiences had taken Aliens as a gleeful celebration of combat. The Abyss might be considered a corrective. The militaristic SEALs are portrayed here in a negative light. This decision to portray warriors, even America’s own elite corps, in an unflattering manner set the stage for Cameron’s upcoming Avatar.
TRIVIA
The studio insisted that Cameron’s original three-hour print be cut. Current events had an impact on his decision-making. The film was to have included violent conflict between the U.S. military and the Soviets. It was precisely then that the first cracks, symbolic as well as literal, in the Berlin Wall appeared as the Cold War melted down. Realizing that such a battle might date his film, Cameron deleted those sequences.