A meaningful “box office failure”. What did Cameron see in The Abyss?

"The Abyss" synopsis

An American nuclear-powered submarine goes missing near a deep-sea oil exploration base. The crew from the mining base and a team of naval divers head to the Abyss, The Abyss trench that rejects humans with its darkness, cold, and terrifying water pressure. What was waiting for them there was a life form different from humans that lived deep under the sea. .

This is the third of a total of seven feature films directed and written by James Cameron (not including his directorial debut, `` Flying Killer, '' for which he did not write the screenplay and dropped out of the film midway through). ``The Abyss'' (1989) was the second lowest grossing movie in both North America and the world after `` The Terminator '' (1984). However, although ``The Terminator'' was made on a low budget of 6.4 million dollars, it achieved a worldwide box office revenue of over 78 million dollars, more than 10 times that amount, so it can be said to be a huge success in terms of cost-effectiveness.

On the other hand, ``The Abyss '' did not make a ton of money at the North American box office, despite the fact that the production cost increased significantly to approximately $50 million (from the DVD package description of ``The The Abyss Complete Edition'') due to the success of its predecessor, `` Aliens '' (1986). It was a box office failure, grossing about $54 million, almost flat, and worldwide box office revenue of about $90 million, slightly less than twice its budget.

Still, looking back now, with `` Avatar '' (2009) and `` Titanic '' (1997) firmly holding the top and second place in world box office history, we can see that the experience and lessons Cameron gained from ``The Abyss'' and the new It can be seen that this encounter became the foundation for his later success.

Index

• The starting point was ``liquid oxygen'' that I discovered in high school.
• The first full-scale underwater shoot for a marine action movie
• The harsh filming process almost drowned Cameron.
• look into the abyss

The starting point was ``liquid oxygen'' that I discovered in high school.

Cameron grew up in Chippawa, a small Canadian town near Niagara Falls, and was fascinated by Jacques-Yves Cousteau's marine documentaries that aired on TV in the 1960s, and began taking scuba diving classes as a teenager. . Cameron, who achieved excellent grades in science as a high school student, was invited by an American university to give a lecture. One lecture I received there was about an experiment in which divers breathe liquid oxygen.

The experiment was based on the theory that breathing liquid through the lungs rather than gas would help divers adapt to changes in water pressure. The ultimate goal was to make the human body able to withstand the deep sea environment.

Surprised and inspired by this experiment, Cameron wrote the short story ``The Abyss'' the next day. The story is set in a scientific research institute on the edge of the Cayman Trench in the Caribbean, where divers wearing liquid oxygen devices dive into the deep sea one by one.

“The Abyss” (c)Photofest / Getty Images

Time passed, and Cameron, who achieved great success with Aliens, decided to develop the plot of this short story into an underwater action science fiction epic for his next film. The story also incorporates liquid oxygen, which surprised me as a boy. Research on applying it to the human body itself was canceled due to lack of practical application, but Cameron sought advice from the person at the center of the research, and the scene in which a mouse is placed in liquid oxygen dyed pink in the beginning was changed to special effects. (The mouse actually breathed liquid oxygen through its lungs and survived.)

On the other hand, in the final sequence where the main character, Bud (Ed Harris), fills the helmet of his diving suit with liquid oxygen and dives into an ocean trench, water is injected into the helmet, and Harris seems to be breathing in it (actually, he is breathing). ) is acting.

The first full-scale underwater shoot for a marine action movie