#6 - The Abyss

(Continuing the James Cameron Project… # 6 is…)

Intro: If there remained any doubt that James Cameron had fully arrived as a bankable director, the movie posters dispelled it. “He made your heart pound with The Terminator. Then he stopped it with Aliens. Now writer/director James Cameron presents this summer’s most original adventure…” No actors. No pictures. No hints about the plot. Audiences bought The Abyss on just a title and a director.

And why not? Cameron’s success had bought him a truckload of studio goodwill, which he promptly cashed in, securing financing for his very risky and very personal project. While in school, a chance meeting with a commercial diver and a discussion of experimental fluid breathing led Cameron to craft a short story about researchers on the edge of an unknowable underwater chasm. After adapting the short into a mammoth screenplay, Cameron made The Abyss his last film of the 1980’s.

The Particulars: A mysterious watercraft buzzes a US nuclear sub, knocking out its power and sending the sub deep into an ocean trench. With an approaching storm and concerns about Soviet theft, the military commissions a civilian team of undersea oil workers to mount a rescue. Bud Brigman (Ed Harris) and the crew of the oil rig “Deep Core” reluctantly welcome a team of Navy SEALs onto their vessel, only to find that Bud’s estranged wife Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), Deep Core designer and alleged “queen bitch of the universe”, is along for the ride.

The team slogs through this ocean of plotlines to the sub, where all hands are dead but the nukes are blessedly intact. Before the team can call it a day, strange lights appear and dance around the sub, while some members of the crew, including Lindsey, have seriously close encounters. Lt. Coffey (Michael Biehn), suffering from a bout of pressure sickness, decides the lights are communists and that his SEALs have to blow the sub to keep it safe. This plan only succeeds in wrecking the Deep Core and drowning half the crew, while stranding the rest with little oxygen, less heat, and Coffey’s killer ‘stache!

The aliens take exception to Coffey’s political profiling and make contact with a wicked water tentacle. Coffey retorts by going ass over the deep end (figuratively). He straps a warhead to a diving robot, intending to send it down to the Commie aliens before they can, um… well, actually it’s unclear. In his defense he has gone crazy. Bud and Lindsey can’t stop the robot, but they do stop Coffey by sending him ass over the deep end (literally), imploding his craft in the deep pressures of the trench.

An experimental fluid-breathing suit allows Bud to descend three miles into the trench to disarm the bomb and avoid an intergalactic incident. He does so, but doesn’t have air for the trip back. The crew mourns his loss, but the disco-aliens arrive at the dramatically appropriate moment to save him. Inside their underwater city, he watches as they threaten all of humanity with 2,000 foot tidal waves. Turns out they’re mighty displeased at all our shenanigans and nuclear holocaust and what-not. At Bud’s pleading, they let humanity off with a warning and surface their city, to a rousing musical crescendo.

The Scene: The film’s money shot is the water tentacle scene. Dubbed a “pseudopod” in the screenplay, the tentacle rises out of the rig’s moon pool and pokes around, eventually finding and mimicking Lindsey. Interestingly, the scene was intentionally designed to have little impact on the main story, so that it could be removed if the computer effects didn’t pan out. (More below) Left in the film, the scene provides vital proof that Lindsey’s aliens are real, leaving Coffey as the sole voice of insanity against her.

The Line: “Raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water tentacle? Lieutenant? No?” – Lindsey, speaking for all of us who want Coffey to shut up.

The Production: From the shark sinking in Jaws to the set sinking (twice) in Waterworld, the wet stuff is always a challenge when shooting a water-based film. Most of The Abyss was shot in an abandoned nuclear reactor in South Carolina. Crew members spent hours in tanks up to 55 feet deep, long enough to need decompression before coming up. Cameron himself ran out of air once and had to risk an emergency swim to the surface. He was back five minutes later for the next shot. The actors performed most of their dangerous underwater stunts. Ed Harris nearly drowned. Mastrantonio nearly drowned. Both allegedly refuse to work with Cameron again. Conditions were so rough that the film developed unofficial titles amongst the crew, such as “Son of Abyss” and “Life’s Abyss and Then You Die”.

Cameron’s work resulted in a three-hour epic that made studio bosses nervous. Worse, test audiences frowned at it. The complaints focused on the tidal wave sequence at the end of the film, and the heavy political message that came with it. It had to go. Later, when computer technology made it cheap and easy to accomplish, Cameron finished the sequence and reincorporated it into the film as his director’s cut, finally completing the film as he originally saw it.

Interesting note: While the fluid breathing Bud undergoes in the film is mocked up (poor Ed Harris had to hold his breath each take), the scene in which a rat is dunked into the fluid was real. Real rat, real breathing fluid. Not surprisingly, the film received a failing grade from the Humane Society. The rat lived to father 3,500 children.

…A James Cameron Film: The usual suspects are here. Ocean obsession, nuclear holocaust, the theme of technology being both a savior and a destroyer. What I find interestingly un-Cameron is his choice of protagonist. Instead of a strong female lead, Cameron went with an estranged married couple as a co-protagonist. Ed Harris’s Bud is believable as a blue collar guy asked to save the world. Lindsey, on the other hand, is just categorized as a bitch. This could be seen as a sign of strength; she’s willing to push around the male hierarchy to get what she wants. After all, she designed the Deep Core at a young age in a male-dominated industry, so it stands to reason she’s got guts as well as skill.

Mastrantonio, though, never really touches these implied aspects of Lindsey. Instead of taking control, she’s simply grouchy and annoying, reducing her from a strong, vibrant character into simply “Bud’s love interest.” Whether this is Cameron’s direction or the actress’s choice, it undermines the usually strong feminine lead present in Cameron’s work.

Lasting Impact: The film’s biggest contribution is its remarkable water tentacle, a scene that proved the viability of computer effects as believable part of a live-action film. If The Abyss were remade today, at least 90% if its underwater and effects shots would be constructed inside a computer. This is a testament to just how far that little pseudopod has pushed mainstream effects cinema, for better or for worse.

Also, The Abyss was one of the last of another kind of film – the Cold War warning film. Although the aliens saved their Klaatu-like threat for the director’s cut, the theatrical version still strongly runs on Cold War paranoia and escalation. Less than six months after the film’s release, the Berlin Wall fell, ending that sub-genre and allowing the world’s alien observers to focus on more pressing issues, like warming our atmosphere for the eventual meat culling.

Reason for Ranking: While certainly not a bad film, The Abyss is the least engaging of Cameron’s blockbusters. Outside of Bud, the characters never fully develop, the sub-plot with Coffey fails to brew (heh), and the anti-nuke posturing in the special edition is heavy-handed. The Abyss feels like a lot of very good ideas that get lost inside their own ambition, and could only find a way out by breaking down a wall (The aliens surface? Why? Aren’t they scared of our nukes?). I’m sure the film has its fans, but when reaching for a James Cameron film to check out on a Saturday afternoon, there are much better choices to grab for.

The James Cameron Project:

1. ???

2. ???

3. ???

4. ???

5. ???

6. The Abyss

7. Ghosts of the Abyss

8. Piranha II: The Spawning

#7 - Ghosts of the Abyss

Intro: What does a filmmaker do once he’s won The Movies? After his pet epic Titanic trampled box office records on its path to 11 Oscars, James Cameron stared that question in the face. There’s no easy solution. It’s impossible to recreate lightning success, yet invariably that’s exactly what the studio and fans expect. Even the great Italian filmmaker, Frederico Fellini, followed his masterpiece La Dolce Vita with 8 1/2, a semi-autobiographical tale of a director wondering what to do next.

Cameron’s answer was Ghosts of the Abyss, a non-fiction film returning to the Titanic wreck to explore further than anyone had before. The film helped to bring IMAX into the mainstream and defined the new phase in Cameron’s career – his documentary period. In the decade since his biggest success, Cameron has directed docs such as Aliens of the Deep, Expedition: Bismark, and even produced a special claiming to have found the tomb of Jesus.

Of these projects, only Ghosts is eligible for this countdown. For my purposes, I’ll be looking at the extended cut available on the DVD, since that’s now the default version. The theatrical version was much shorter, due to the IMAX limitations of the time.

The Particulars: If Ghosts of the Abyss, deep down, is all about James Cameron, the surface of the film is all about actor Bill Paxton. Paxton serves as the audience’s eyes for the journey, and the film opens with obviously staged footage of Pax boarding a ship and bantering with the Russian crew, stressing about the safety of the Mirs (miniature submarines), and even writing his will. Egghead scientists and Titanic enthusiasts brief the crew (and us) on what we’re going to see, and soon the Mirs are on the first of many descents, bringing along remote diving robots “Jake” and “Elwood” to push into the ship’s narrow hallways.

It takes no time for the ship to give the robots its haunting images -- a bowler hat resting on a bed; intact, leaded windows enclosing the dining hall; a rotting chandelier.

In the cargo hold, the explorers find a collapsed hunk of metal that may be the single car the ship carried (the one Rose and Jack famously defile in Titanic), but there’s no way to tell for sure. This is a recurring problem. The wreck is deteriorating, being literally eaten away by bacteria, and much of the ship looks like exactly what it is -- a rusting pile of garbage. Still, when Cameron pilots a robot into “Unsinkable” Molly Brown’s bedroom and actually finds the brass bed she slept on, he puts a human face on the wreck. People slept here, ate here, danced here, loved here. One scientist describes a lady’s boot laying on a cabin floor, still laced up, its wearer long since washed away.

Oh yeah, the “ghosts.” In an odd touch, Cameron inserts translucent actors over certain locations, recreating events as they happened. While I was momentarily thrilled by the possibility of undead sea ghosts, the acting values are only a notch above those historical dramas you see on the History Channel, or only a notch below the actual Titanic movie, depending on your point of view. Ultimately, I think the wreck should speak for itself without the noisy twats who sunk it constantly getting their close-up. On the other hand, those guys must have been creepy in IMAX 3-D, yo.

A few curious episodes appear near the end of the film. In an extended action sequence, the little robot Elwood malfunctions and sticks itself on the ship’s ceiling. This prompts a complex and desperate rescue attempt that nearly destroys the Jake-bot as well. In a minor miracle, both bots are saved. In the deleted scene in my dreams, the people that paid for those bots are seen buying new pants.

The film ends on an oddly somber note, as the expedition wraps up on a Tuesday – September 11, 2001. As the Mirs return to the surface, Bill Paxton and the entire crew meet Cameron and explain to him that terrorists have just hit New York and Washington. This event puts everything into perspective for the filmmakers – bad events, good people, and the urge to survive.

The Scene: I lean towards the robot rescue as the film’s most interesting scene, but as a staunch Bill Paxton supporter I can’t ignore his first descent to the ship. There is sheer entertainment value in watching Wacky Paxy slowly drop miles beneath the ocean surface in a cramped metal box. He eyes the roof hatch nervously. He grills the Mir operator about the appropriate oxygen levels. He learns the hard way that there’s no toilet on the vessel. He skittishly jokes about walking off the set. Then, finally, he passes out into fitful sleep. And to think, this same trip had to be made dozens of times, both ways, to get all the footage for the film. I’d kill to see that gag reel.

The Line: “Do you see Elwood? Do you see Elwood!?” – A surreal bit repeated constantly by Cameron as they await the fate of their lost little bot.

Alternately, “Aw, dude, that is so cool!” – uttered by Cameron as he gets a look at yet another unrecognizable piece of submerged junk.

The Production: When analyzing James Cameron’s work, there is one moment a person can point to and know that everything changed. During his first visit to the wreck of the Titanic, when the ship’s bow crept into the narrow light of his submersible, he fell in love with that wreck and nothing was ever the same. Even after completing his mega-film about the ship and its tragedy, the wreck would not let him be. He looked for a way to keep it alive.

“Ultimately,” Cameron said of Ghosts, “I wanted to give audiences the same experience that was such a life-changing one for me – to plunge down 2 1/2 miles of water, to experience something as strange and exotic as the wreck of Titanic, to really feel it and see it.” Accomplishing that task required new leaps forward in technology. The technological advances are numerous and a bit complex, but include a system called Reality Camera that allows footage to be compiled from multiple cameras and then played back in almost any format. In addition, new lighting rigs, new cameras, and even the bots Jake and Elwood were designed specifically for the project. This is a film that literally could not have been possible until the Cameron brothers willed it to be. Did I mention how freaked out the crew was about possibly losing one of the bots inside the wreck?

…A James Cameron Film: This film couldn’t be more James Cameron if it grew a beard. It features an ocean setting, an undersea wreck (the mother of all undersea wrecks), new technologies, and Bill Paxton. It even partially stars Cameron.

Lasting Impact: Very little as a documentary. Many people consider it an interesting companion piece to his Oscar-winning epic, but beyond the appeal of its subject matter there isn’t much there. On the other hand, this film is a landmark in Cameron’s career. The technology he developed and used to film Ghosts of the Abyss has convinced Cameron that the film industry’s best weapon against piracy, and thus the industry’s future, lies in digital 3D. Since Ghosts, Cameron has committed all of his future projects to 3D.

Reason for Ranking: While the film is competent and entertaining, Ghosts of the Abyss doesn’t hold up against Cameron’s narrative work. There are directors who have jumped from fiction to non-fiction films and have excelled in both, but Cameron’s effort here is tentative and muddled. It’s as if he lacked confidence that the project would engage his audience and thus fell back on weak and obvious ploys for attention. The staged Paxton scenes, the cheesy 3D ghosts, the late film “rescue” sequence, and even the 9/11 non-sequitur near the end suggest a chef throwing desperate spices into the soup while trying to salvage it. The tragedy is that the soup wasn’t that bad to begin with. The Titanic has compelled the public for almost a century, and a lot of Cameron’s add-ons simply detract from the awe of the ship itself, which I fear is the exact opposite of his intended effect.

On the plus side, no flying piranha.

The James Cameron Project:

1. ???

2. ???

3. ???

4. ???

5. ???

6. ???

7. Ghosts of the Abyss

8. Piranha II: The Spawning