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Why Was The Abyss a Flop?
Critics and audiences rejected James Cameron’s underwater “nightmare” in 1989. But its imperfections only add to its deranged grandeur.
That continuing sense of menace also helps sell, to some extent, the growing paranoia of Lieutenant Hiram Coffey (Biehn), the leader of a team of Navy SEALs who have been sent to the undersea drilling platform Deep Core to retrieve some warheads from the wreckage of an American nuclear sub that’s crashed near the 25,000-foot-deep Cayman Trench. After descending (heroically, magnificently) to the lowest depth of the ocean in order to disable a nuclear warhead, Bud comes face-to-face with a race of glowing purple aliens who have built a huge civilization under the sea. Cameron had built up a lot of goodwill in the studio system after Terminator and Aliens to make a statement film, a dream project, but he was still operating in an industry where hope usually meant swoony, sunlit shots of people gazing bright-eyed into the distance.
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