James Cameron is fully aware that his fans have been asking for the 4k Special Edition of The Abyss for a very, very, very long time.
The wait, however, is nearly over, with this refreshed version of Cameron's first ocean movie first hitting theaters for one day on Wednesday, Dec. 6, and then with a physical 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc release on March 12, 2024 (in addition to 4k Collector's Editions of Aliens and True Lies). It's the culmination of a long road for Cameron and his fans, with the director saying in his video announcing the release that viewers wil "be seeing the film I actually set out to make."
"I think it's remarkable opportunity," he tells IGN in a recent interview. "It’s mean, the film, it wasn't a huge hit. It did okay, but it's never gone away and people continue to connect with it over time. The opportunity to see the special edition in a movie theater is really an unprecedented opportunity."
Cameron needed to cut down The Abyss down from nearly three hours to roughly two hours and 15 minutes for its initial 1989 release. After the tremendous success of 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, however, he secured the funds to finish a special edition of The Abyss, released in 1992. But, as he points out, "it came out on, what, LaserDisc probably at that time, and it's never been in theaters."
Even Cameron reveals that he didn't see The Abyss' special edition in a theater until shortly before our interview - with his grown children, no less. ("They loved it," by the way, he says. "They were very impressed and they're hard to impress. I got some dad points.")
So if the special edition has existed for so long, why has it taken decades to get a proper release in theaters and on 4K? Seriously, as a tweet from 2019 points out, even Rian Johnson and Ryan Reynolds have been wondering about both that and True Lies.
I know guys, I know – it's on my to-do list, promise. @RianJohnson @VancityReynolds pic.twitter.com/eljqtDiOX5
— James Cameron (@JimCameron) March 25, 2019
Cameron knows the question is coming as soon as I start to ask it, completing the thought himself: "what took so long?"
"First of all, it's a very particular process for me," he begins. "It takes about a week of me there all day, supervising the transfer, correcting every shot, every little bit of repositioning and working on every pixel of the image, and I don't want to just phone that in and I don't want to have somebody else do it for me."
"We were quite under the gun making Avatar 2, 3, and parts of 4 in the middle of a pandemic and with an interrupted production, and it was really around the clock," he continues. Therefore, he couldn't get around to either The Abyss or True Lies, and tried to tell fans, "Guys, just wait. Just wait. It's okay. Those movies aren't going anywhere. They're already old. We're not trying to capitalize on some big rush here."
"We did it right and now it's possible to group them all together as almost like a library in a way," he says. "Which was not my plan, it just worked out that way."
It gives him another opportunity, too, to look back at The Abyss with a good amount of distance, and he still feels wildly confident about it. Going back to his recent viewing of the special edition in a theater for the first time, he "was amazed at how well the film does hold up. It's not cringe-worthy."
"I mean, obviously there are things we could have done with CG effects toward the end of the movie in the last six or eight minutes that would be way beyond what we were able to do in the day, but I think the vast majority of the film holds up very well and the performances are amazing," he says. "And I've been away from it for a while so I can speak objectively about that; what Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio does in that film, coming off as this real unlikable person when you first meet her and then by the end you love her."
"You just care so much for her and about her and the way she expresses herself," he continues. "It's just such a powerful performance. And Ed Harris is Ed Harris. He's just great. He's always great."
Spying on True Lies
Obviously, The Abyss isn't the only film Cameron's gotten to revisit, with his 1994 comedy/action film True Lies also being part of the release. And, seeing the library all lined up against each other, it becomes even starker how much the film, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a government agent juggling his life as a spy and a dad with Jamie Lee Curtis playing his wife, stands out in his filmography. Even Cameron admits it was "an anomaly in my career."
Still, it's also become a favorite among his fans, and Cameron credits some of that to its relatability; it's a "very universal, human story if you've ever been married." It just happens to take place against the backdrop of a James Bond-esque spy thriller.
"We jokingly called that film, as we were making it, the domestic epic because at its heart, it's just the story of this married couple and their little misunderstandings with each other," he says.
So, acknowledging that it's no doubt an anomaly, would Cameron ever do a comedy like that again (once he's past Avatars 3, 4, and 5, of course)? It's a question he ponders with real consideration.
"I could imagine doing a film like that," he says. "It was fun to make. I mean, movies are hard but that particular one was fun to make."
"I was terrified the whole time that it wasn't going to be funny enough," he goes on to admit. "But it turned out that Arnold and Tom Arnold got this great chemistry, Jamie Curtis and Arnold got this great chemistry going, and then the humor is very innate to the scenes and the characters."
And his producing partner Jon Landau, who's also in the interview, is quick to interrupt to remind Cameron of another member of the cast: "Bill Paxton, Jim."
"Bill Paxton, oh my god," Cameron responds. "He's hysterical."
Can't say we disagree.
The Abyss 4K Special Edition will be in theaters only on December 6, while the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Collector's Editions of The Abyss, True Lies, and Aliens will be available on March 12, 2024.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
