The Abyss: An Ending that Shouldn't Exist
James Cameron's arrogance almost killed us all in 1989.
When I was a gangly, longhaired teen asshole the main activity I and my friends engaged in was going to the movies1. It was one of the few things you could do as a kid that had a whiff of independence about it while being wihtin the general budget of a teen asshole, which is to say cheap as hell2. We went to the movies just about every weekend, sometimes with a specific movie in mind, sometimes just to get out and watch whatever was showing (and that is the story of how I wound up paying money to see Who’s Harry Crumb, possibly the worst film ever made3).
In 1989, I went to see The Abyss, written and directed by James Cameron and starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn, and many others (including Chriss Elliott, who I completely forgot existed until this moment). And the experience was jarring, because I absolutely loved the hell out of this movie for the first two-thirds of its running time. The story (involving a deep-sea rig cut off from the surface by a massive storm just as a bunch of sketchy Navy SEALS arrive to investigate a nuclear submarine mishap, ill-equipped to deal with the pressure [both literal and figurative]) is tense and well-paced, the characters and performances universally terrific, and the special effects incredibly cool for 19894. I was jacked for this movie. I can even remember sitting in the theater and planning out all the smart things I was going to say about how great it was5.
And then the last forty minutes hit. A story has never collapsed in front me the way this one did. It was like that clip of a sad raccoon trying to wash its cotton candy.
FIGHT! FIGHT!
This collapse begins with a scene that is surprisingly popular to this day, which amazes me6. In the course of the story, Bud (Harris) and his estranged wife Lindsey (Mastrantonio) are trapped in a damaged submersible with just one suit supplied with oxygen and too far to swim. Lindsey heroically suggests the only way to survive is to let her drown, because the cold of the water will actually keep her just alive enough to be revived7. So Bud drags her lifeless body back to the rig and he and his crewmates launch a desperate attempt to save her.
Now, the science here may be just to the right side of correct. Yes, hypothermia can slow down the process of death, and people have been known to survive drownings due to extreme cold. And yes, medical professionals will bless (to an extent) the CPR being performed, and will even say that the real secret to resuscitating someone is to keep going long after you want to give up8. And yet, despite not being totally unfactual, this scene is just so terrible, so awful, so infuriatingly bad it sets off a domino effect that ends with me throwing something at the screen and screaming “What the happy hell?”
I can buy Lindsey’s desperate decision. I could even buy that it winds up working. The problem is the execution: In going for tension and huge drama, Cameron spends six excruciating minutes watching Ed Harris appear to literally slap Lindsey back to life9. As if someone intentionally drowning themselves so they can be dragged through frigid water and resuscitated wasn’t dramatic enough. Seriously: If they’d successfully revived Lindsey about a minute or two into this scene just with patient application of CPR and the defibrillator, I would have accepted it. By the time a wild-eye Harris is screaming at Lindsey to fight and she does I hated a movie I’d absolutely loved just six long, long minutes earlier10.
The Damage Done
From that point forward, I am not in a headspace to give The Abyss any leeway. What this scene does is burn down my suspension of disbelief, because once you start doubting something that’s happened in a story, it infects every other part of the story.
To be fair (to me), the rest of the story ain’t great. We know the rig crew and the SEALs are dealing with aliens fairly early on, and it works until the end. Bud volunteers to don an experimental liquid oxygen rebreather suit that will allow him to survive at incredible depths, and goes to disarm the nuclear weapons from the sub. Bud knows this is a suicide mission, but just as he faces death the aliens rescue him, reveal an enormous alien craft, and then surface, taking everyone with them and no one dies of the Bends because of alien magic. Ah, alien magic, a 9.8 on the Unobtanium Scale11.
Would the ending work better if the audience had not just suffered through six minutes of Ed Harris bringing a woman back to life with the power of his love12? Maybe. But there’s a bigger problem here: Lindsey’s sacrifice and resuscitation is really the climax of this story. The rest doesn’t work because it feels tacked-on. The conflict of the story is between the crew of the oil rig and the insane leader of the SEALs, played by Michael Biehn13. When his death costs Lindsey’s life, and then the love and determination of Bud and the others brings her back, as infuriating as that moment is plot-wise it’s the end of the story—or it should be. Ideally, the resolution of the alien plot would have been baked into that ending somehow, tying everything together in one moment14.
Instead, we get what amounts to an extended epilogue. Yes, there are plot points resolved here in the form of errant nuclear weapons, but when the aliens show up gushing alien magic everywhere, it becomes moot. Did Bud really need to disarm the bombs? If the aliens can magic up atmosphere under the water and have a frickin’ spacecraft hidden in one of the deepest trenches in the world, it’s not clear that any of Bud’s pain and suffering was necessary. You can, of course, construct scenarios as to why it might have been necessary—but none of that is on the screen.
Ultimately, that’s why the ending of this movie made me angry: It shouldn’t exist.
Of course, I’m also the guy who shows up at writing conferences looking disheveled and then brags that he often employs “plane crash endings” when a story isn’t working. And then demands that everyone buy him a cocktail and is pretty rude about it15.
Next week: The many levels of “Fresh”
To give you some idea, the hairstyle I sported between the ages of 16 and 25 was called The Fuck It.
My parents were very big believers that all my earnings at any part-time jobs had to be routed through them, thoroughly inspected, and returned to me at a 95% reduction. Capitalism is a hell of a drug.
I’m still scarred by this experience. Every other movie was sold out, and instead of doing the sensible thing and going to drink beers in an abandoned lot somewhere, we opted to see this movie. My life has been on a downward spiral ever since.
Of course, many things seemed cool in 1989 that were not actually cool. For example, my aforementioned Fuck It haircut.
Am I that asshole who sits around thinking up Jerk Store comebacks? You bet your ass I am, because I am also someone whose brain operates at 1/2 speed.
Then again, so many popular things mystify me. Red Bull. Dancing. Invading countries. Nothing makes sense.
Is this theoretically possible? Sure. But as a rule, if you need to direct me to 600 pages of medical documentation in order to justify your plot twist, it’s not a very good plot twist.
And for the record, if you’re performing CPR on me (after, say, I’ve consumed 16 Tequila Fanny Bangers in a sci-fi conference hotel bar and collapsed), for god’s sake keep doing it until I’m literally decomposing. Don’t you give up on me!
Believe me, life in general would be much more entertaining if we could slap people back to life.
How long were those six minutes? I went into the theater a Grogu and emerged as a Yoda.
The writing lesson here? Introduce the possibility of aliens in Chapter 1 of your story, then forget them. Then, if you paint yourself into a plot hole, justunleash ALIEN MAGIC.
N.B.: And fists.
And his glorious pornstache. As a man whose attempts to grow facial hair have always ended in tears and humiliation, I am jealous.
As a writer I can tell you: That sounds suspiciously like work.
And then expects you to perform CPR on him for hours when he inevitably collapses. I’m a delight!
What I'm curious to find out is what form script are you using? It's simply amazing how it shows up as you scroll down and just fades out as you scroll up. Never seen anything like it.
You are a delight.