James Cameron Recalls the ‘Physically Taxing’ Underwater Production of ‘The Abyss’: ‘There Was No Way to Make It Easier … That’s Not My Style’

James Cameron hasn’t made many commercial disappointments, but “The Abyss” is one of them. Released in 1989 after the back-to-back successes of “The Terminator” and “Aliens,” Cameron created his first of many underwater worlds with an adventure about the crew of a drilling rig that encounters “non-terrestrial intelligence” — a fancy phrase for aliens — and learns some lessons about nuclear disarmament along the way.

Both more ambitious and cerebral than his previous work, “The Abyss” was largely shot underwater, forcing cast and crew alike to undergo enough (sometimes life-threatening) hardships that a few of them refused to promote the film at the time — or discuss it since. Yet despite their collective commitment to Cameron’s uncompromising vision, “The Abyss” was met with mixed reviews and a muted box office, even after Cameron truncated his vision to appease test audiences.

But the film has developed a passionate following over the intervening decades, one which is finally being paid off — first with a limited theatrical re-release on Dec. 6, followed by the first-ever release of both cuts of “The Abyss” in 4K UHD. On Dec. 12, the film joins two other Cameron films on digital 4K, “Aliens” and “True Lies,” the latter of which also wasn’t previously upgraded to high definition, ahead of their March 12, 2024 release on physical media. (Other films in this unofficial “Lightstorm Collection,” “Titanic” and both “Avatar” films, come to 4K this month.)

To commemorate “The Abyss” returning to theaters, Cameron spoke to Variety about the film’s complicated legacy — even among the people who made it — as well as the lengthy wait for its hopeful vindication in his filmography.

At Beyond Fest, you told a story about almost drowning on “The Abyss.” Over the years, many of the cast members have been very candid about the challenges shooting this film. Does there tend to be a moment of catharsis or reconciliation among cast and crew that relieves those tensions, or maybe makes them worth it?

For me and Ed Harris, it was when our daughters were going to the same school. We had to drop them off at the bus stop every morning, and we’d kind of stand there, like, “Hey, Ed, how’s it going?” We eventually wound up talking about it. But I think it was tough on the actors — “The Abyss” was tough on everybody. I used to be underwater eight to 10 hours a day, six days a week for 10 straight weeks. If you’re a scuba diver, you know that a two-dive day is a heavy day as a diver. I used to fall asleep at night with my dinner plate on my chest and I’d wake up in the morning and it’s still there — I hadn’t moved all night. So it was physically taxing for me and for them. It was a tough shoot. There was no way for me to make it easier on everybody than what it was, other than to just not do it. And that’s not my style. I mean, I did try to make it as easy as possible. But you see the work. I screened it a week ago, and I was just really struck by how powerful everybody was — right down to the smallest, secondary two-liners.

There have always been these two versions of “The Abyss.” Did you ever consider re-editing the film based on the ways you may have evolved as a storyteller?

No. In the moment, we went out and tested it with the wave, clearly a kind of “Day the Earth Stood Still” sort of moment — the day the wave stood still. We did two screenings back-to-back and the audience didn’t like either one of them. So it wasn’t coming from the studio. It was me saying, “Well, if we have to not be liked, let’s at least be shorter.” But the mistake was the wave sequence — the effects weren’t done. In some shots, it was actually storyboards. People are supposed to feel something from a drawing. It doesn’t work.

We completed the special edition in ’92, so I haven’t looked back since then. A movie should be a snapshot of your state of mind as an artist at that time. It has its greatest validity, and the special edition does have the validity, and it’s what I probably should have just put in the marketplace, for better or worse. But I felt like we were playing a very defensive game. Barry Diller, who ran Fox at the time, said to me, “It’s too much movie for a modern audience,” which I’m still trying to unpack. But he was just full of shit. But when you’re doing your first big studio movie and spending a lot of their money, you tend to be a little more impressionable, or a little more sympathetic to their plight. But I’ve just learned the movie’s not done until it’s done. You can learn what you can learn from the screening experience, but it’s not definitive.

Having gone through this experience, what are your feelings now about keeping your films in print in a physical format?

It’s great. It’s what makes the most sense to me. People were going on for a long time, “Where’s ‘The Abyss’? What’s taking so long?” And my feeling was I made this movie 30-some years ago. It ain’t going anywhere. And it seems to be the right thing at the right time — the strike and not a lot of new product coming out. There’s a gap — a moment to get it back into theaters however many years later. That’s great. And I’m very, very particular in my transfers. I look at every damn pixel. I make sure it’s absolutely optimized for the format that it’s going into. There are little bits of framing that have to be done to massage it into place. And then multiply that out over these six new releases. That’s like six weeks of my life, which I don’t have. If I have four days in a row, I’d go to Tahiti with my family. There’s no six weeks, trust me. Not in the last 10 years. So it had to be done piecemeal over time.

Since “Avatar” first premiered, high frame rates and 3D have vacillated in popularity among filmmakers and studios. How has your opinion on the formats changed?

My position on high frame rate hasn’t changed at all. It serves a role to improve 3D. For 2D, you don’t need it at all. But smooth, involving, immersive 3D requires high frame rate — on a highly selective basis. With “The Way of Water,” we used it in certain shots that had complex subjects and where the camera was panning. We didn’t in others and it smoothed out those shots. We also found that it added value to every single underwater shot because there was an innate feeling of being in a different medium. So we just painted with a broad brush — if it was an underwater shot, it was 48 frames. You’ve got to be very careful about how you apply the technology. To me, it’s an authoring tool, like a sound effect or like music. Now, when you get home, now you have this chip that the set manufacturers put in. You’ve got to turn that right off. Because if I’m going to use it, I don’t want it just applied with a broad brush across the whole film by some downstream display manufacturer.

As a filmmaker who’s always been on the cutting edge of technology, how do you assess what technology will actually help you tell stories better? And also, what will endure as opposed to being a fad?

Well, I was an early champion of high frame rate. Even before Peter Jackson did the “Hobbit” films, I got the studio to pay for some testing. I paid for some of it myself. I took it to ShoWest and I showed the results. I said, “We can do something here that makes it sharper, cleaner, crisper, for 3D.” The subjects that I shot all were improved by it. But I started to see that for relatively mundane subjects, two people talking in a room, it actually made it feel like video. When Peter did the “Hobbit” films, he just applied it as a format, like 70mm or Adobe Vision or something like that. So the selective process has to be subjective and has to be artistically driven.

This release is really giving you and us an opportunity to reflect on your collective body of work. Are there specific films where your feelings may have changed about them over the years?

I was worried about that with “The Abyss.” I thought that film really wore its heart on its sleeve. At the end, Ed Harris is going down the trench. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is an engineer, but she starts talking about before they were married. And I thought, “Is this going to work for me, now?” And it did. I found myself tearing up because that’s what the movie was there to do. There’s so much preamble to it. Him ripping his ring off, throwing it in the toilet and then getting his hand blue from the tidy bowl as a result of it. And the ring saving his hand when the hatch closes on it. It all culminates to that moment. I was worried, but I guess my sensibility hasn’t really changed that much. I’m still kind of a romantic at heart. Guillermo del Toro is a really dear friend of mine. He says, “You don’t understand irony. Your films are very earnest.” And it’s like, “Okay, all right. Sue me. They’re earnest.” So my technique has changed, and I probably know more how to do things. But my sensibility hasn’t really changed.