Discounting his debut on the schlocky Piranha II: The Spawning, which the filmmaker himself leaves off his résumé, 1989’s The Abyss remains the only box office failure James Cameron has directed to date. Since emerging with The Terminator in 1984, Cameron has helmed one blockbuster hit after another, including two (Titanic and Avatar) that respectively claimed the title of highest-grossing movie of all time. Right in the middle of that winning streak, The Abyss was one of his most challenging and ambitious productions, yet landed as a big misfire upon release.
The film’s reputation was greatly redeemed by the creation of a longer Special Edition version for home video in 1993, which has mostly supplanted the original theatrical cut as just about everyone’s preferred method of watching the movie. However, even for all the tremendous strengths it has, and for all the improvements in that Special Edition, I’m still not sure that The Abyss is really the masterpiece James Cameron so desperately wants it to be.
| Title: | The Abyss |
| Year of Release: | 1989 |
| Director: | James Cameron |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Available On: | DVD Blu-ray (bundled with the 4K UHD) Paramount+ Various VOD platforms |
In a weird happenstance, 1989 turned out to be a big year for deep-sea underwater thrillers at the multiplex. Prior to The Abyss opening in July, it had already been preceded by Deepstar Six in January, Leviathan in March, and Lords of the Deep in April. Of that group, Cameron’s film was by far the most expensive, technically accomplished, and artistically minded. I’d say it’s the best of the lot by most criteria. Nonetheless, by the time it came out, the setting and theme had already started to feel played-out.
The Abyss opens with a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine crashing into a trench on the ocean floor. In response, the Navy commandeers a nearby underwater oil-drilling platform and sends a small team of S.E.A.L.s to use it as a staging area for a recovery mission. This doesn’t sit too well with the crew working there, but they don’t have much choice in the matter. Tensions soon flare between the pragmatic foreman, Bud Brigman (Ed Harris), and the lead S.E.A.L., Lt. Coffey (Michael Biehn), when what was originally supposed to be a rescue operation instead turns out to really be an excuse to retrieve one of the nuclear warheads. Matters only get worse when the increasingly-paranoid Coffey learns that the submarine disaster was neither an accident nor (as he believed) a Russian military strike, but interference from something… not of our world.
Combining the filmmaker’s passions for sci-fi action-adventure and deep-sea exploration, The Abyss was essentially Cameron’s attempt to make his very own 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or The Day the Earth Stood Still. Those influences weigh heavily upon this tale of humanity’s first contact with a superior alien intelligence, enough so that the film’s climax feels like a mash-up of parts from each of them.
The movie has number of great things working in its favor, including a pair of excellent lead performances from Ed Harris as Bud and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as his estranged wife, Lindsey. Their relationship is complicated and messy, and very compelling. The incredible scene where Bud has to resuscitate Lindsey from drowning is one of the few moments of genuine emotional truth and power in all of Cameron’s filmography, and may still be the best thing he’s ever directed.
As a James Cameron production, it should go without saying that the visual effects are all first-rate (well, aside from some of those tacked-on in the Special Edition ending). This is of course the movie that won an Oscar for introducing the world to CGI morphing, but the model and miniature work of the underwater submersibles and the drilling platform are tremendous as well. The action set-pieces are all well-done, and Bud’s climactic descent into the title abyss is suspenseful as hell.
When the movie works, it really works, and can almost convince you it’s leading right to the cusp of greatness. All throughout, you can feel James Cameron striving for it to be his signature statement piece, the lasting mark he intends to leave upon the science fiction genre, the way that Kubrick and Spielberg and Wise had with their films.
Unfortunately, The Abyss just doesn’t quite get there. While I could nit-pick some things from the early parts of the movie, such as the overly-caricatured blue-collar depictions of most of the supporting cast or Coffey’s breakdown into cartoonish villainy, the biggest problems are directly tied to the story’s ending – and they all go straight to Cameron’s original conception for it. Even though the longer Special Edition version does fix some of the incomprehensible mess made of the theatrical cut, the ending instead turns super-preachy and derivative and over-explanatory. Frankly, neither ending is at all satisfying. That’s especially frustrating given that the Special Edition takes just under three hours to get to it.
I like The Abyss enough that I’m happy to finally own a decently watchable copy of it on home video, and of the two versions I’ll surely always pick the Special Edition, but the film also leaves me feeling let-down in the end every time.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Along with True Lies, James Cameron largely abandoned The Abyss on home video for many years. The reasons for this are unclear. Back in 1993, Cameron actually exerted a considerable amount of effort preparing deluxe Laserdisc box sets for the longer Special Edition version of the film, available in separate widescreen or so-called “Director’s Pan & Scan” options. The widescreen transfer later made its way to DVD in non-anamorphic letterbox format in 2000, and until now, that disc or reissues of it stood as the best available method for owning the film. The director resisted efforts by the studio to remaster the movie for high-definition, and refused to sign-off on any new video transfers struck without his participation. Nevertheless, an HD master for The Abyss was created in the early 2000s, and appeared on cable broadcast or streaming in brief intervals from time to time over the years, presumably against Cameron’s wishes.
Finally, two decades later, the filmmaker has broken through whatever ennui or inertia held him back from taking care of his back catalog, and authorized new 4K remasters for both The Abyss and True Lies (as well as Aliens and Titanic – plus The Terminator coming soon). The new master for The Abyss premiered first with a one-day-only theatrical re-release in December 2023, followed by streaming VOD soon after and physical media later in March 2024.
The latter comes as a three-disc set with the 1989 theatrical and 1993 Special Edition versions of the movie seamlessly branched on both 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and regular Blu-ray, plus an additional disc of bonus features. Frustratingly, two of the discs come stacked on top of each other in the case. At the time of this writing, the regular Blu-ray is only available in this combo package, not sold on its own. I’m not aware of any SteelBook or other special packaging options.
Controversially, for this round of remasters, James Cameron employed the services of New Zealand visual effects firm Park Road Post, which used new A.I. processing tools to enhance detail and strip almost all grain out of the image. Especially in the cases of Aliens and True Lies, this leaves the movies looking more like they were photographed with modern digital cameras rather than film. For someone who knows what they originally looked like, or just generally what 35mm photography is supposed to look like, the effect is often disconcerting. As what was reportedly the first title to go through the process, True Lies in particular turned out kind of a mess.
Of the three James Cameron A.I. remasters I’ve watched so far, The Abyss looks the best of them. That may be because it was done last and benefited from a learning curve, but I also suspect that this one had the most human oversight to ensure it would hold up to a theatrical release. None of this is to say that it has no issues or would even be my preference for how to remaster the movie, but the 4K version is very watchable overall and its appearance is rarely distracting.
The opening title and first shot of the movie are even somewhat grainy! Of course, the grain almost entirely disappears after that. The 2.39:1 image is very sharp, often quite impressively so. I don’t know whether the underlying film scan really started as 4K or not (I don’t entirely believe some of the information the studio has provided about that), but the A.I. detail enhancement works well enough with this source to fool the eye into believing it could be 4K most of the time. Although the processing sometimes leaves the actors’ faces looking a little softened or smoothed-over (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio most prominently), that issue isn’t too bothersome in general. Dare I say it, even without the grain, the movie still looks more film-like than digital.
What this transfer doesn’t have is any sense of HDR, despite technically being authored in that format. Like True Lies, this is clearly another SDR Rec. 709 encode mapped inside an HDR container. Bright highlights occasionally clip, and colors lack the depth or vibrancy a true HDR and Wide Color Gamut master would provide. This is especially evident with the alien phantasmagoria at the end of of the movie. Regardless, the transfer has good clarity even in the darkest environments, which is important to following the story.
Unsurprisingly for James Cameron, the new color grading is heavily biased toward teal-and-orange, more so teal than orange in this case. Just about all the “steely blue” Cameron used to be famous for (and was evident in the previous Laserdisc and DVD editions) has been shifted to teal. Whether that annoys you will come down to personal tolerance. Some of the rushed visual effects at the end of Special Edition are also very low-resolution and look more terrible than ever upscaled to 4K.
Available on the 4K disc, the movie’s soundtrack has been remixed into Dolby Atmos format. The film has a pretty cool and immersive sound design, with lots of interesting effects like sonar pings, creaking, echoes, steam hissing, reverberating footsteps on metal catwalks, and so forth all over the listening space. In Atmos, a few of them even get directed overhead every once in a while. Disappointingly, the mix has very weak bass and dynamic range, which becomes frustrating when you get to important things like submersibles imploding or the big brassy horns that come out in the Alan Silvestri score at the climax of the movie.
An alternate DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that I suppose is meant to represent the original 1989 theatrical mix is also available, and the standard Blu-ray in the package swaps the Atmos for a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track instead, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to compare every option.
Neither the 4K disc nor the first Blu-ray with the feature have any supplements. All extras are found on the third disc. Brand new are a half-hour interview with James Cameron that’s mostly technical talk and significantly downplays the many stories of tension on the set (Ed Harris reportedly still refuses to talk about what a miserable experience he had working with Cameron), and another half-hour retrospective featurette that focuses heavily on the visual effects. Carried over all way back from the old Laserdisc and DVD are the hour-long Under Pressure: Making The Abyss documentary and a lengthy still-frame archive of production notes, storyboards, still photos, and a copy of the screenplay. For some reason, no trailers have been provided.
Related
Other Awesome Movies of 1989
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.
The Video File Blog 
I was familiar with the benefits of anamorphic widescreen DVDs when I first got a player, so I’m pretty sure the best copy of this film that I ever had was the widescreen VHS edition, which I recall was in a black plastic clamshell case. I think I’ve only ever seen it once, and I recall that I really liked it.
I’m still gonna pass on these remasters. God help us if we get yet another Terminator release that fails to get a proper restoration and release.
LikeLike
A new edition of the original The Terminator is known to be in the pipeline for this Park Road Post 4K A.I. remastering, so that’s definitely happening. Some rumors have circulated that Cameron is going to redo T2 as well, but I don’t know if that’s really confirmed. Even for as poorly as the last 4K edition was received, it might be difficult for the studio to justify putting out another one so soon. The market for physical media just isn’t large enough to support that anymore.
LikeLike
I can guarantee for most collectors, would easily and gladly double dip on any Cameron remaster that turns out like film with no AI, DNR, or whatever other processing. I’m already prepared for what The Terminator is going to look like later this year and made peace with it but will always be open for better options.
LikeLike
That’s the thing, we’d just be trading one heavily-DNR’ed edition of T2 for a new version that’s still DNR’ed, just using a new technique. “Film-like” isn’t in James Cameron’s vocabulary anymore. I think that’s likely to split the collector base.
LikeLike