STARRING: Ed Harris, Mary Mastrantonio,
Michael Biehn, Leo Burmeister, Todd Graff, Kimberly Scott
1992, 164 minutes, Directed by: James Cameron
Description: Ed Harris and Mary
Elizabeth Mastrantonio, as formerly married petroleum engineers who still have
some "issues" to work out, are drafted to assist a gung-ho Navy SEAL (Michael
Biehn) with a top-secret recovery operation: a nuclear sub has been ambushed and
sunk, under mysterious circumstances, in some of the deepest waters on earth,
and the petro-techies have the only submersible craft capable of diving down
that far. -
Amazon.com
Perhaps the only thing that counts against
The Abyss is its ending. But that was maybe the price the
movie had to pay for its own success: the film was brilliant at sustaining
tension and interest until the last ten minutes or so in which alien creatures
in true deus ex machina-style appeared to solve the story. Audiences felt cheated:
imagine James Bond or Indiana Jones being saved from certain death by UFOs that
happened to be passing by and you get the idea . . .
It was as if the writers has
written themselves into corner very much like those Greek plays of old and
literally needed a god in a box to sort out the various plot entanglements at
the end (hence the term deus ex machina -
literally, god from a machine, i.e., the stage machinery used to lower said
deity unto the stage.)
Many visitors to this site have told me that I should watch the special edition
version of
The Abyss because it includes almost half an hour's extra
running time mostly concerned with the end of the movie.
"Still not the ending the movie deserved, but The Abyss
definitely stands improved . . ."
So I checked it out. Well, to be honest, the aliens still happen to save the
day - the closing shot is the same, but the extra footage does clarify
some issues. No doubt the footage was dropped so that the film would fit
into the normal two hours’ screening time at cinemas without necessitating
fewer screenings per day or unusual screening times which would have translated
into smaller revenues. This was before director Cameron's three hour long
Titanic became the biggest hit movie of all time - ironic when
you think about it . . .
Now, half an hour's extra footage may seem
like a lot, but The Abyss remains pretty much the same movie.
All that is new is a subplot explaining the aliens’ motivations,
some extravagant special effects sequences (that reminded me of Deep Impact) involving giant waves and well, the movie’s
underlying message.
The movie’s message? That’s not much? I
can hear you exclaim. Well, its message - that we should be nicer to
one another for a change - is hardly new, and to be honest was handled
more cleverly in director Cameron’s own Terminator 2. Aliens coming to save us
is as old as The Day The Earth Stood Still - made
back in 1951! And it feels a bit odd tucked in at the end of the end of
the movie - pretty much the same as a similar sequence in The
Fifth Element.
Does that mean that The Abyss - Special Edition isn’t worth
checking out? Not in the least: the added sequences clarify a lot of plot
holes and issues and the ending no longer seems as abrupt.
Description: Ed Harris and Mary
Elizabeth Mastrantonio, as formerly married petroleum engineers who still have
some "issues" to work out, are drafted to assist a gung-ho Navy SEAL (Michael
Biehn) with a top-secret recovery operation: a nuclear sub has been ambushed and
sunk, under mysterious circumstances, in some of the deepest waters on earth,
and the petro-techies have the only submersible craft capable of diving down
that far. -