The Abyss - VFX review

Movie - The Abyss
Year - 1989
Director - James cameron
Cinematography - Mikael Salomon
VFX - ILM

A US submarine detects an unknown object in the deeps of the ocean and is sunk by the fast moving un identified underwater object. US navy does not have the time to move in with their equipment to the area as they fear russian submarines will dig for the nuclear weapons it went down with. so the navy teams up with an underwater oil rig platform operators to get what they want. 

the movie starts with what seems like practical effects for the underwater submarine shots and keeps the viewer to it by the story and the great acting involved. the interior of the submarine command center too is very well made and the computer screens have very well planned out animations playing on them, given the year this was made, even the screens in the background display animations that make you think they have some details that's worth looking at.

the underwater oil rig platform and the small drones with thier deep water effect complete with high powered light beams make a fantastic show of its own. My guess is that james cameron did this with a underwater setup.

This shot of the team of divers getting the warhead out of the submarine has a lot of details, the water bubbles, the reflections on the glass helmets lighting and that bluish underwater atmostphere adds up to the realism of it.

This part of the Alien in closeups show a mix of CGI and animatronics, the head & the arm of this creature show it's mechanical movements but still is quit cool with all the translucent effect with lighting. 

the most breathtaking moment for CGI comes in the second half of the movie with the light emitting alien entity trying to sneak into the underwater compartment by forming water into a tentacle like structure. as the heroin of the movie touch the tentacle it forms her face on the end of its tentacle. this effect is one of the very few visual effects shots for the time which involved a transparent subject like water. the water has both the transparency & transcluency that is hard to get right even by todays CG artists.

this shot was originally planned as a stop- motion animation by james cameron but was taken to ILM to be created with CGI. the ILM team photographed the entire set in every angle so that they can recreate the set in the computer, and the interesting fact is that this 75 second scene took 6 months to create! Wow, now that's just unbelievable! 

And then Tsunami shots which i don't have any explanation on how they did it. the thing is, the water stays like a wall as the aliens control it. If it was a wave rushing in a quick, I would have had an explanation, but this still effect must be a drawing or something.

The alien ship at the end got to be a miniature shot and then the human actors imposed on it. but still there are some shots where the actors walk on it, so some parts must have been made.

If you need a slight hint on what the video cameras looked at the time, the movie shows a news reporter carrying the camera to cover the tsunami, so you got the size of it.

Here goes a Bonus, If you watch closely you will see the Extras playing fool on set. watch the guy on the left gets his pants pulled, not a very good thing to do when you run away from a tsunami! If james cameron sees this, it would be a fun thing to get his idea on how this passed on to the final movie.