James Cameron’s forgotten masterpiece is coming back to cinemas
20th Century StudiosJames Cameron is the king of the movie world – and one of his greatest, most criminally under-seen movies is making a long-awaited return to cinemas in 4K.
He made your heart pound with The Terminator. Then he stopped it with Aliens. Now, writer-director James Cameron is about to represent one of the most original deep-sea, sci-fi adventures of the past 35 years.
Even before he was consumed by Pandora’s post-millennium, billion-busting wonders, the filmmaker’s grasp of spectacle was still second to none; The Terminator’s self-surgery scene and Judgment Day’s never-before-seen dynamic VFX, True Lies’ jaw-dropping stunts, all of Titanic.
But one movie – one brilliant, emotional, immersive banger – has often fallen by the wayside when recounting Cameron’s big-screen legacy, and it’s finally getting the remaster and release it deserves.
James Cameron’s The Abyss is coming back to cinemas in 4K
The Abyss, first released in 1989, will return to cinemas nationwide on December 6, 2023.
The movie follows the everyday crew of an oil rig who are tasked with an important mission: racing against the Soviets in a deeper-than-deep recovery mission to find a downed US nuclear submarine. In those uncharted waters, they encounter an extraordinary, other-worldly force that could be the end of humanity – or its savior.
Underrated wouldn’t be an appropriate way to describe the reception upon its original release: it was by and large embraced by critics, who lauded its ground-breaking effects and knotty, ambitious story, and it was nominated for four Oscars (one of which it won, for Best Visual Effects).
But general audiences weren’t quite as keen, with the film amassing lower-than-expected $90 million. Cameron has described it as a failure – but that’s just the theatrical version, and soon audiences can dive into the Special Edition of his “first ocean film” in pristine, embarrassingly cool 4K glory.
In a video announcing the re-release, he said: “If you haven’t seen the film before, this is the way to experience it. And if you have, you’ll be seeing the film I actually set out to make… with some big surprises not seen in the original release version. I hope you’ll take advantage of seeing The Abyss, back in theaters.”
There’s more good news, too: the same 4K remaster is coming to Ultra HD Blu-ray later this year… hopefully, as a release date has yet to be confirmed.
“All of the mastering is done and I think it drops pretty soon — a couple of months or something like that. There’s a lot of added material that they’re sticking in there, and it will be available on streaming simultaneously. But I didn’t just want to look at the old HD transfer. I wanted to do it right,” he told Beyond Fest earlier this year.
The Abyss will be screening in cinemas on December 6. In the meantime, you can find out more about Avatar 3 here.