The Abyss

[Backdating this entry from 4/2/12. Purchased 4/1/12 to add to the blog.]

James Cameron's The Abyss is not his best film — not even close. For a guy with two of the most successful sequels in two of the most successful film franchises of all time, The Abyss seems like a curious outlier rather than a career point. But it's still great.

You can't discount the special effects in The Abyss, which to this day hold up rather well, all things considered. Say what you will about how special effects have evolved in 20+ years — The Abyss still contains some excellent work that looked amazing in 1989 and still looks pretty good.

Typically, my beef with effects-heavy films is pretty simple: Yeah, they look fine, but in 5 years, they look ridiculous, and their lack of plot — usually a result of prioritizing style over substance — doesn't help. Dumb ideas bleed through when the effects lose their luster. Somehow, The Abyss avoids most — but not all — of that criticism.

The Abyss is somehow a different breed of effects-driven film — one that doesn't fall prey to the aging that seems to eat up even the most cutting edge films. Look at The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — especially the outdoor CG work — and you'll see how those effects are starting to show their age only a few years later. (It's a good thing the LOTR films have great stories behind them, to hold them up when the effects turn quaint.)

Yes, The Abyss has aged, but it's certainly aged a lot slower than most of its contemporaries — and many films that followed it. Is that to Cameron's credit for telling a compelling story?

Well, look at the contemporaries of The Abyss. Two that spring to mind immediately are Leviathan and Deep Star Six, which are basically the same film with minor tweaks in plot. Paper thin, formulaic tripe — the stuff of Saturday matinees on basic cable —and somehow, the kind I can't turn away from because I'm usually doing nothing on a Saturday afternoon except recovering from Friday. But compared to The Abyss, both of those films, released in the same year, are awful.

The Abyss still has plot holes big enough for a submarine, and the writing, in many cases, contains the pretty bald-faced exposition. Too many scenes feature characters explaining technology or medical concepts to each other in an obvious way rather than finding a more organic way to convey details. Too much tech talk, not enough action and exploration of our humanity. Too many scenes of compartments filling with water and people yelling, "Gogogogogo!"

Thing is, the film is so pretty, who cares? When I saw the film at age 15, I didn't care, and even now, I don't. Somehow, James Cameron always has walked between the critical raindrops that fall around him. He's one of the few directors who can write a plot on a napkin and wrap it in billion dollar effects, and get away with it for years to come. He seems to know how to do the bare minimum storyline and make gazillions of dollars. I can't begrudge him. Much.

Sound familiar? People were saying the same thing about Cameron's Avatar a few years back. Avatar featured a story that was paper thin, but was so pretty, people forgave it and sat mesmerized anyway. I've never seen a film that so obviously said, "Writers are unnecessary." The Abyss seems to sit on a clear trajectory in Cameron's career, when he continued to minimize story in favor of familiar formulas and unfamiliar effects. Thing is, that's what makes Cameron's work so interesting to me. How does this guy get away with it?

I don't know, and most days, I don't even care. Leave me alone, I'm watching a movie!