James Cameron was at Beyond Fest to talk about his “first really big, kind of mega-budget movie,” 1989’s The Abyss. He described it as a film that “wasn’t kind of a slam dunk in the way Aliens was.” (via IndieWire).
Cameron admitted he “didn’t know exactly how it was going to work,” and felt “pulled in different directions” by the story. “It all made sense to me at the time, that’s all I can say,” he shrugged.
The filmmaker also revealed that showing the film to its first audience was a chore. He experienced his first test screening with “The Abyss”, but “I didn’t know how to read the cards. I didn’t know how to interpret the data,” he explained. “The studio wasn’t terribly helpful.”
“The Abyss” is definitely not a film that stands out in Cameron’s filmography, especially when it includes the likes of “Terminator,” “Aliens,” “Titanic” and “Avatar,” and its existence has always been marred by Cameron’s unsatisfying reaction to the finished product.
Cameron wanted to release his 3-hour cut of the film, only to have his hands tied up by 20th century — they told Cameron that he could get final cut as long as the film was no longer than 2 hours 15 minutes. A big chunk of the originally envisioned third act was left on the cutting room floor.
In 1993, Cameron went back in the editing room and released a special edition. Fans will soon be able to see Cameron’s cut in a 4K restoration of the film:
All of the mastering is done and I think it drops pretty soon—a couple of months or something like that. There’s a lot of added material that they’re sticking in there, and it will be available on streaming simultaneously. But I didn’t just want to look at the old HD transfer. I wanted to do it right.
Back in 1989, “The Abyss” was met with, mostly, positive reviews. It grossed $89 million worldwide and, in ensuing years, spawned a cultish fanbase.
The release of the Special Edition in 1993 garnered better reviews. Gene Siskel had proclaimed, "The Abyss has been improved," and Roger Ebert added, "It makes the film seem more well rounded."
