A love story. A meeting with extra-terrestrial intelligence. A thriller pitting peaceful civilians against military intolerance. Twenty years before releasing Avatar, James Cameron embarked on this equally ambitious and visionary project that explores the mysteries of the deep ocean.
Cameron's idea goes all the way back to his teenage years after hearing of advances in underwater diving, and became a long-gestating personal project that only became financially viable after his successful films The Terminator and Aliens. The story involves a mining crew headed by an estranged husband and wife that is asked to come to the rescue of a sunken nuclear submarine. Working in tandem with a team of Navy SEALs, they soon discover strange creatures whose identity and purpose cause friction between the crews and threaten the lives of all involved.
One of the many noteworthy elements of The Abyss is the sheer volume of underwater photography, which makes up roughly 40% of the film. Because of this, Cameron was unable to rely on the standard practice of using stunt divers in place of his actors. Therefore, the main cast (which includes Academy Award nominees Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and crew were all trained and certified as SCUBA divers, and spent six months in a very tense, grueling, and troubled shoot. An abandoned nuclear power plant in South Carolina was used to create two separate tanks for filming, the larger one containing over seven million gallons of water. Special microphones enabled Cameron to record his actors' dialogue live as it was being spoken underwater, a movie first.
In addition to these live action production challenges, effects company Industrial Light and Magic were called in to create a variety of creatures, and features groundbreaking computer generated imagery that predates and paved the way for their work on Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. Ultimately seven different companies provided effects material for the film. Cameron and his producing partner Gale Anne Hurd were married and divorced between the writing and eventual release of the film, and the story's central relationship appears inspired by and to have inspired real-life events, which gives it not just an air of authenticity, but an emotional resonance.
The critical response was mixed-to-positive, many observers pointing out the film's apparent abrupt conclusion, a result of having to cut the running time considerably to assuage the studio's fears. Box office was decent but had a lot of competition and was not the hit the studio was hoping for. A special edition was completed in 1993 which restored most of those missing scenes, contained new, additional effects, and was widely praised as a vast improvement on the theatrical version. The Abyss won an Academy Award for visual effects, and also received nominations for cinematography, art direction, and sound.
Film runs approx. 2 hrs, 10 min.
(CLICK on pictures to enlarge)
No comments:
Post a Comment