This week marks the 30th anniversary of James Cameron‘s “The Abyss,” the blockbuster maestro’s 1989 underwater alien epic. The film was famously nightmarish to shoot, including near-death experiences for star Ed Harris and other cast members walking off the abandoned nuclear plant the crew had filled with 7.5 million gallons of water to create Cameron’s oceanic universe. In retrospect, the film, while not the huge financial success of “The Terminator,” “Avatar” or “Titanic,” represented both a climax and the inevitable downturn of practical effects filmmaking while ushering in the digital effects that run rampant in 2019’s tentpoles. But 30 years later, is the technical prowess still the main takeaway from “The Abyss”?
Let’s not forget that 1989 also saw the release of two other strikingly similar underwater alien movies: “DeepStar Six” and “Leviathan.” All three films somehow tell the same story: a ragtag group of blue-collar miners/engineers can’t complete their initial mission after a run-in with a sea beast. And they all have some connection to James Cameron, funny enough. Essentially Be Reel catnip, this begs the question: What was happening in 1989 that led to this hyperspecific brand of mostly unsuccessful science fiction? Was it the end of the Cold War? The heralding of Taylor Swift’s birth? The execution of Ted Bundy? Chance and Noah review and contextualize this very damp albeit pressurized Be Reel genre.
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