Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Abyss

This is topic The Abyss in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 03-26-2002, 10:56 AM:

I bought the DVD of this movie when it first came out and this past Saturday, March 23, was the first time it was viewed. I had some friends over and this was the movie chosen.

By the way, we had two versions of the movie to choose from. We chose the "Theatrical Version" since none of us had seen the movie before.

During the first half of the movie, I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy it much, but during the second half, I liked it a lot more. Part of the first half has the same feeling as several movies I'd seen before, like "The Black Hole" and "Event Horizon" and even the part of "2010" where the entry into a ship or craft that has been abandoned or has been through some sort of catastrophe is causing suspense because the people entering don't know what to expect. Sometimes, everything is OK and sometimes, horrible things start happening. I was hoping it wouldn't turn out to be an "Event Horizon" type of movie. Fortunately, it didn't.

Many scenes from the movie made me think of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" underwater, a thought which came into my mind at least a dozen times.

Back in 1993 when we got a new Silicon Graphics machine, back when they were the size of a refrigerator and having four 33MHz R3000 CPUs was state of the art (or close to it), one of the demos that came with it was a scene from "The Abyss" (the water tentacle). This makes me guess that SGI machines were used for the water tentacle scene. It was a very neat scene, and I wish they'd done more with it in the movie. Who knows, in the other version of the movie, maybe they did.

I haven't read about or studied underwater exploring in a long time, but it seems that I remember from long ago that the pressure as far down as the people were in this movie would be enough to crush someone. These people weren't wearing much to protect them from such pressures. Were what these people doing technically possible? Never mind the "breathing fluid" thing.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 03-26-2002, 01:59 PM:

Be sure and watch the director's version of The Abyss. It's one of the few that I find actually better than the theatrical version.

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 03-26-2002, 02:57 PM:

I'll second Brad's recommendation. The longer version fills out a bunch of the story line that was unfortunately cut in the theatrical release

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/

Posted by Greg Anderson (Member # 235) on 03-26-2002, 07:31 PM:

Less than a year after The Abyss was first released in theatres, I happened to meet one of the editors of the film. He told me about how the original cut of the film was 2 hours and 50 minutes. Cameron knew that the studio would never approve that so he carefully cut it down to about 2 and a half hours before showing it to studio brass. They immediately demanded more cuts, so Cameron basically hacked off the ending and the movie turned out to be about 2 hours and 17 minutes.

This editor then told me that perhaps, someday, they'd do a special edition laserdisc and add some of that footage back into the movie. I waited impatiently for a few years but eventually I was pleased to see that the movie had been restored to the original 2 hour and 50 minute version.

These days, tons of movies are released on DVD as "Special Editions" with bonus, behind-the-scenes material. Even today, few DVDs are packaged as well as the original laserdisc release of The Abyss Special Edition... essentially the same as the DVD release (except the DVD offers just a few features not yet invented in the days of laserdisc).

Whenever I show this movie to anyone, I insist that they watch the "Special Edition" version and that they also watch the one-hour documentary called Under Pressure: Making The Abyss. Without that much, the presentation simply isn't complete.

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 03-26-2002, 11:57 PM:

Yes, the directors version is far and away much better.

As for the pressure thing, is is possible to be that far down without crushing IF you pressurize to the level over a period of time.

As for the breathing liquid thing, it is very real. I do not know if the actor actually did it or if it was a great camera trick, but the navy uses this all the time on deep sea recon dives. As in the movie, it only lasts a short time, just as air does.

Dave

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 03-29-2002, 04:36 PM:

The Abyss had always been in my top ten best films of all time. The 'special edition' just solidified that. When I was working at my first theatre I would always run in at the end of the film each shift I worked so I could hear our subs pack a whallop and hear the audience comment on the bass. Wow, they don't make 'em like they used too.

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"Running through life at 24 frames per second"

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 03-29-2002, 05:05 PM:

This is one of those dvds that's worth the price just for the extras. The "how they made the film" thing is just insane. They should have gotten an oscar just for the shear effort involved.

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/