The Abyss- Special Edition

James Cameron’s follow-up to his celebrated Aliens/Terminator success wasn’t the game-changer hoped for back in 1989; over 30 years later, the underwater adventure film has all but vanished. Like another aquatic beastie, the Loch Ness Monster, rumours of The Abyss popping up for a week on Film 4, Netflix UK or Microsoft in Australia are all unconfirmed; it doesn’t seem to be on Apple tv, itunes or most of the familiar go-to sites. Why has James Cameron’s film vanished, and is it worth delving into the murky depths to salvage it?

Size, of course, matters, and the Special Edition of The Abyss is just nine minutes short of three hours long. Critics at the time derided Cameron’s film as being ‘more interested in machines than people’, but while that comment would seem right for all kinds of blockbuster films, it doesn’t apply here, with Cameron doubling down on one human story at the heart of a drama. A messy divorce is taking place between Virgil Bud Brigman (Ed Harris) and his wife Lindsay (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio); when his work on the Deep Core drilling platform is interrupted by the intervention of a group of navy seals led by Coffey (Michael Biehn), she comes along for the ride; as the platform’s designer, she knows all the tricks. And she’ll need them; a wild storm is brewing, the world is on the edge of a nuclear war, and the SEAL team have orders to retrieve a missing trident nuclear warhead that was on board a stricken submarine. But what caused the submarine disaster, and is there something nasty waiting in the Cayman Trough? Virgil and Lindsay have a mountain of obstacles to overcome if they’re going to save the world before Coffey’s high-pressure nervous syndrome drives him to murder…

The Abyss has a notoriously long and difficult shooting schedule that actors and crew remember without enthusiasm, but arduous shoots can make for great movies. Audiences at the time expected Cameron to create another action shoot-em up in the vein of Aliens or Terminator 2. The Abyss’s mix of 2001 mysticism and The Day The Earth Stood Still eco-messaging weren’t on message with the last years of Reagan-ite thinking, yet Cameron’s heart certainly seems to be in the right place. The Abyss’s message is not just anti nuclear, but specifically a plea for tolerance and mutual understanding, just what we need in 2020. Politically, it feels like a film ahead of its time, and worth reviving if only for the striking attention to detail. To seal the deal, Chris Elliott, the slovenly mayor from Schitt’s Creek has an unexpected cameo as a bonus too.

The Abyss looks simply stunning these days; while there are plenty of not-great effects shots in Aliens and Terminator, The Abyss is remarkably consistent, and the deleted tidal wave sequence in the climax looks pretty dramatic. The tech is, as you’d expect from Cameron, spot on, but it’s the relationship between Virgil and Lindsey that really seal the deal. She castigates him for still wearing their wedding ring, but early on, the ring saves his life when his hand gets caught in a closing door. As the narrative hurdles are cleared, the balance of power shifts between the couple, leading to extended sequences where he fights to revive her from a drowning, and she talks him through a dangerous depressurised descent. All of this pays off as part of the climax when it’s Virgil and Lindsay’s revived passion that proves key to the solution; like Titanic, the love story is the key to the action, and stops the film tipping into Boys Own Adventure territory.

The takeaway; given that half the world is sitting at home, given that Cameron has an extended, largely unseen cut of a pretty fabulous, on message feature that’s just right for 2020, why not re-release The Abyss: Special Edition to streaming? I mean, what do we have to lose? It’s a big action film that’s been almost entirely neglected, and we now have the big-ass tvs and sound systems to finally do it justice. Perhaps Cameron’s divorce from producer Gale Anne Hurd makes it a sore point for the director, but there’s a bigger cause to think about here. In a year where blockbuster films are in short supply, reviving The Abyss would give us all a fix of something cinematic to enjoy…