Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
Any cinephile worth their salt is going to have a soft spot for epic pictures. The grandest tales told on the biggest screens with the hugest visuals conceivable to mankind, and the runtimes to match. This month’s “Epics Revisited” programming highlights the Cinapse team’s curated list of some of our top films that were significantly altered (and improved) by their Director’s Cuts. Often these are titles that are drastically different than what was initially released theatrically.
The Pick: The Abyss (Special Edition)
Featured Guest
Nathan Flynn
James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989) is a haunting epic that functions as both a high-stakes sci-fi thriller and a deeply personal film for the director. Released during a period of personal turmoil—namely his divorce—it feels like a cinematic attempt at self-actualization, where Cameron channels his emotional struggles into a grand narrative about human connection, the unknown, and the future of the world. This underlying tension gives The Abyss a distinct gravity, setting it apart from his more action-driven films.
In many ways, The Abyss serves as a precursor to other films that explore extraterrestrial life as a means of emotional expression and communication, such as Robert Zemeckis’s Contact (1997) and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016). Much like those films, The Abyss uses the discovery of otherworldly beings to push its characters—often emotionally closed-off or withdrawn—to confront their feelings and vulnerabilities. In The Abyss, the interaction with these beings catalyzes the characters’ emotional transformations, forcing them to connect with each other in ways they previously avoided.
The ensemble cast of The Abyss is one of its strongest elements. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio both deliver emotionally grounded performances, but it’s Michael Biehn who truly stands out, giving what is arguably his best performance in a Cameron film. His portrayal of Lt. Coffey, a man unraveling under the pressure of isolation and paranoia, is intense and chilling, adding to the film’s underlying psychological tension.
Despite its strengths, The Abyss is often overlooked in Cameron’s filmography. While it may not rank among my favorite of his works, it remains one of his most mature and serious efforts. It’s certainly his saddest film, focusing on themes of loss, regret, and reconciliation. The emotional weight of The Abyss distinguishes it from his more action-oriented projects like Aliens or Terminator 2: Judgment Day, making it a unique entry in his career.
Behind the scenes, The Abyss is also infamous for its troubled production, which was as grueling as the story it told. Cast and crew were subjected to intense physical demands, working in a massive underwater set that left many with lasting grievances. This dedication to realism in underwater filmmaking marked the beginning of Cameron’s obsession with water and deep-sea exploration, which would later culminate in films like Titanic (1997) and his documentary work on the deep ocean.
At its core, The Abyss is Cameron’s divorced dad movie. It’s both a technical marvel and a deeply personal film, capturing the emotional turbulence of its creator while also delivering breathtaking visuals. Like many of Cameron’s films, The Abyss strikes a balance between moments of eye-rolling melodrama and moments of pure, awe-inspiring beauty. This tension—between the deeply personal and the visually epic—is what makes The Abyss such a fascinating entry in his career, even if it’s one of the few times a movie of his didn’t break box office records.
(@NathanFlynn on Twitter)
The Team
Ed Travis
“DONT CRY BABY. KNEW THIS WAS ONE WAY TICKET BUT YOU KNOW I HAD TO COME LOVE YOU WIFE” – with these deepsea proto-text messages, Virgil “Bud” Brigman (Ed Harris) single handedly saved mankind from a tsunami destruction at the hands of advanced alien observers who had been convinced we were beyond redemption but for Bud’s sacrificial love. I’m sorry, but this Jesus guy can’t help but weep every time I watch The Abyss and thank Bud Brigman for sacrificing himself for our (and Michael Biehn’s) sins.
The Abyss has always meant a lot to me. I don’t know when I first experienced it or even understood it as a part of James Cameron’s larger body of work. But I know I owned a clamshell case VHS of the film that I watched often through childhood and deeply felt the lack of an HD version of the film and wept in theaters earlier this year when the 4K re-release of the film hit theaters for one night only and I was able to bring my wife and daughter to experience it with me. (My daughters review? She thinks the 3-fingered aliens are very cute).
Cameron isn’t exactly an underdog, what with being the unqualified most successful commercial filmmaker of all time and all. He doesn’t need defenders. But it’s only been in my time as a parent over the last decade in which I’ve now shared both Avatar films and The Abyss in theaters with my impressionable child, that I have realized James Cameron is an important voice in my life and, basic as it may be, one of my most favorite story tellers. I used to always believe it was his impeccable visuals and jaw-dropping world building and aesthetic that truly kept me coming back. But it’s not. It’s the heart. I see you, James Cameron.
The Abyss is wildly ahead of its time with genre-defining gci work even before Terminator 2, boundary-pushing model work, and genuine underwater photography that stuns and delights even today. The ambition, the scope, the cast, the stakes… they’re all larger than life and represent one of the greatest sci-fi epics ever told on film. Then James Cameron spent the next several decades “topping” what he accomplished here. That said, this might be my actual favorite James Cameron film, and it’s going to come back to Bud Brigman and Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and their frosty romance being rekindled amidst underwater nuclear threats and first contact with achingly beautiful alien creatures.
I adore everything about The Abyss from top to bottom. The Seal “underwater breathing” tech sequences, the CGI tentacle, the crazy nuke marines, the optimism of Lindsey’s experience of the NTI’s (“we have to see with better eyes”), the CPR sequence, and most of all, the redemptive and self-sacrifical journey of one of cinema’s most underappreciated action protagonists of all time: we salute you Bud Brigman. Your love saved us all.
Austin Vashaw
What a powerhouse of a movie! James Cameron’s underwater epic was probably most known for its arduous production and pioneering use of CGI effects, which is sort of a disservice because it’s such a deeply human story of love and sacrifice, ultimately bridging the cosmic to the intimate with a stunning third act that proposes that there’s still hope for the human race, leaving this viewer a teary mess.
I’m not sure if there’s anything so hardwired into the human brain as the instinct to panic when drowning, and the film milks that instinct in its nightmare scenarios. Most interestingly, the concept of an oxygenated breathable liquid is compared to amniotic fluid – taking this analogy to its conclusion, Ed Harris’s emergence isn’t just survival. It’s a rebirth.
Funnily enough, this might sound like the ravings of a first-time viewer but I’ve seen The Abyss before. It didn’t particularly resonate with me in 2013, especially compared to Cameron favorites like the Terminator films, Aliens, or even True Lies. Unlike those bangers, I hadn’t first seen it at a younger age and when I finally caught up with it, it didn’t particularly click.
This rewatch felt revelatory, a completely different experience. The rote and obvious answer would be that I’m now viewing it through married eyes, but I don’t think that’s entirely it either. More likely I just wasn’t in the right headspace the last time and got lost in picking up what the movie’s throwing down. (The way the NTIs/aliens infrequently weave into the narrative can be disorienting, especially if you go in expecting them to be the “A” plot). Evidently having some understanding of the film’s strange narrative structure helped to make it more enjoyable the second time around.
I love hard science fiction (with emphasis on the science), and while it’s a bit more blockbustery, The Abyss may have just joined The Andromeda Strain and Silent Running among my favorites in that arena.
(@vforvashaw on Twitter)
Brendan Agnew
Few directors can boast a career as successful as James Cameron, but as much as I enjoy his box office behemoths, it’s his lone financial failure that has always resonated deepest with me. The Abyss was infamous in both its ambition and friction during filming as well as its late-in-coming appreciation by audiences that discovered it long after its theatrical run. I was one of those, falling in love with Bud and Lindsey’s adventure after becoming fast friends with Cameron’s other memorable characters and being genuinely won over by the director’s clear affection for the aquatic. With the newly remastered 4k edition finally on disc after having screened in cinemas last year, the director’s cut of this underwater epic is now more widely available than ever. And while I’ve loved this since I first caught it more than 20 years ago, seeing it on the big screen only reaffirmed how much I appreciate this sweeping romantic sci-fi that’s also an accidental harbinger of Cameron’s future endeavors.
There’s a ton of The Abyss that looks like something of a dry run for everything from the fractious marriage in True Lies to the disaster sequences of Titanic and Avatar: The Way of Water, but Cameron’s ambitious story keeps it all tied coherently together even as it blurs genre lines. The intimate character drama crashing into a sci-fi cold war thriller turns what could almost be a rom-com plot into a nail-biting pressure cooker that still maintains tension even when you know how it’s all going to play out. Cameron’s gift for narrative and emotional clarity is working on truly Spielbergian levels here, not accidentally as this could easily (and only somewhat reductively) be called his version of Close Encounters. But for all that it’s tied to the time it was made, most of it holds up spectacularly. The Director’s Cut features several sequences and effects that were never mastered for anything beyond standard definition presentation, and that’s the only place where the film has seriously aged in terms of visuals. The floating grace and bio-luminescence of the NTIs presages the flora and fauna of Pandora, and still makes for some of the most genuinely awe-inspiring filmmaking Cameron’s managed when he truly pulls back the curtain in Act 3.
The Abyss isn’t just a technical marvel or a taut thriller, it’s a deeply personal and 100% earnest argument that tiny moments of humanity and acts of selflessness are what make us worth fighting for the future of our species in spite of ourselves. As someone who grew up loving nature documentaries just as much as movies as a kid, it felt tailor-made for me when I saw it the first time. From the performances to the gorgeous photography to the slow-burn pacing, it still knocks me flat to this day.
Julian Singleton
The Abyss sets itself up as another exciting blockbuster from the man behind Aliens and The Terminator franchise, immediately grabbing audiences with the hook of a salvage team diving to retrieve a massive US nuclear arsenal trapped in deep-sea waters between the US and Cuba. But in choosing to begin with the Nietzsche quote that inspires the film’s title, James Cameron drills in his audience that his aims are once again set at ambitious heights. It’s a riveting, reflective parable about trust in human goodness–and our universal potential to be better than the environments and emotions that threaten to limit our progress.
If there’s one maxim about directors I’ve learned in life, it’s to never bet against James Cameron. With the production histories of movies like this, Titanic, and more, the man has a preternatural ability to use the latest tech in mind-boggling ways that seem to only cohere once the theater lights dim, and convert skeptics as soon as the lights go back up. With this in mind, what I love so much about The Abyss is how it sits in such a unique place in Cameron’s filmography between his later boundary-pushing experiments with CGI and the inventive practical effects he made a name with in films like Carpenter’s Escape From New York. You have full-on submarine rover wars that blend seamlessly between sets in actual underwater tanks and models with small experimental screens playing actor footage inside them. In some of the film’s most touching moments, Cameron plays into the uncanny valley of early CGI graphics in realizing The Abyss’ water-based NTIs. All of these sights, caught between intensely real and fantastically alien, play with a sense of awe and majesty befitting the natural mystery of the deep, a longtime fascination of Cameron’s.
No matter what tech is being used, though, Cameron uses these individual technical magic tricks in service of the larger emotional story he’s trying to tell. These people, trapped at the bottom of the ocean with these mysterious forces and with the fate of humanity suddenly on the line, must decide whether to give into impulsive, destructive distrust or take a leap of faith into the unknown. This wide-eyed third act sees Cameron shift from his most claustrophobic to his most cosmic with grace, using his blockbuster prowess to issue a call for sanity at the closure of the Cold War. As such, there’s an immense curiosity pervading every sequence of The Abyss about how we use the latest advancements in any tech, coupled with a reserved sense of responsibility in doing so. In exploring the unknown, he seems to urge, set your eyes to the stars–but never lose sight of what’s within.
The Abyss, by all accounts, was a traumatizing shoot for all involved; the end results, rich with chaos and compassion, are an effective testament to their efforts.
(@Gambit1138 on Xitter)
CINAPSE REVISITS OUR BEST FORGOTTEN EPICS
In September, dive into epic films in their directors’ uncut, definitive forms. These bold visions by our favorite filmmakers use every minute of runtime to immerse us in vast worlds and compelling stories. Join us by contacting our team or emailing [email protected]!
September 30th – Kingdom of Heaven: Roadshow Director’s Cut (3 hours, 9 minutes)
OCTOBER: Found Footage Horror Curated by Julian Singleton in Honor of His NOROI Commentary Track
We couldn’t be more proud that our friend and colleague Julian Singleton had the opportunity to record a commentary track on his favorite horror film Noroi: the Curse for a major upcoming home video release from Arrow Video: J-Horror Rising! In celebration of Julian’s passion we’re dedicating spooky month to exploring some of his top found footage recommendations.
And We’re Out.
