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ivyficThis weekend I watched The Abyss, which has been on my to-watch list for...twenty years. Though, I have a real phobia of deep water, so I don't think I'd have been able to handle it before college, so I'm glad I waited.
Liked it a lot better than Aliens (the supporting characters didn't annoy the crap out of me!), but Abyss has some Problems, capital P.
+ It passes the Bechdel test! Barely. If Lindsey saying hello and One Night making a gagging sound counts. But I'll take it.
+ The black woman did not die! I really expected her to get squished by the crane, what with being a macho woman and black, both death sentences in sci fi/action films.
+ The disaster sequences were quite compelling. The whole bit where they yank the crane off the surface ship and it falls, really good.
+ The suspense sequences were quite compelling. The exploration of the sunk submarine was tense enough I had to check my email, and he didn't even really on jump startles. Just the claustrophobia of a character hearing his own breath speed up.
+ I have to give him credit for the scene where Bud watches Lindsey drown. It reminded me of the final sequence in Titanic, where Kate Winslet lets Leo fall into the sea, but this one had a much greater emotional punch, to me. The idea of holding someone as they drown, but separated by the cold metal of a suit--wow. And the way she fought against her own death makes me think her "plan" wasn't so much a plan to be resuscitated later as a way to get Bud to save himself and let her die, since if he'd tried to swap the suit, they would probably have both drowned.
For emotional powerful cinematic drowning scenes, I'd have to put this second only to The Prestige.
- The scene where Bud resuscitates Lindsey was approximately ten years too long. I'm an angst bunny, yeah, but I got bored.
- I could have done without everyone calling Lindsey a bitch for the whole film. She is stubborn, competent, and outranks the men. She doesn't do anything bitchy anywhere in the movie. So having her strength make her a bitch to everyone around her--*teeth grinding*
- The aliens didn't need to be there. At all. They were only tangential to the plot. They're not mentioned for most of the action of the movie. And the ending is asinine. It could have been a perfectly good claustrophobic disaster movie with no aliens at all. Why do I hear complaints about the aliens in Signs but not in this? At least Signs was about the aliens.
I know that's why this movie holds the place it does in cinematic history--the morphing of the water. I'd seen that scene before. But imagine my surprise when I get to that scene and realize it has nothing to do with anything. The movie isn't about their encounter with a new life form--it's about the conflict between the Navy SEALs and the blue-collar oil rig workers.
- Part of the stupidity of the ending is that it hand waves away every narrative constraint of the rest of the film. When I was watching it, I was thinking, "Then they all get the bends and die!" There's also the fact that there are still 192 warheads on the ocean floor, 191 of which are salvagable. There's also that, they only have 12 hours of oxygen if they close off all the unused parts of the rig thing that is never brought up again. And they don't seem to have any problem running around the rig and using up oxygen.
- And can I just say--what the fuck was this plan the SEALs had to just blow up the whole sub? I don't think anyone would have ever thought exploding bombs the equivalent of 960 Hiroshimas just off the coast of Cuba was a good thing. I mean, you'd destroy all the ships in the vicinity, probably cause a tsunami, and do wide-ranging irreparable ecological damage with the fallout. This is such a stupid idea.
- It was also unnecessary for the lead SEAL to go crazy. His orders were in conflict with the rig workers enough as it is. Him going psycho just makes it all hand wavy.
In conclusion, some really great stuff, but a lack of focus. I'm also grateful that, other than the plot creatures, they encountered no other deep sea life forms of any sort. Cause what really wigs me is large creatures underwater. The scene with the whales in Castaway freaked me the fuck out and I don't think it was even meant to be scary. If they'd actually had any of the creatures that live that deep in the film, I think I'd have had to turn it off.
Next up, Das Boot.
Liked it a lot better than Aliens (the supporting characters didn't annoy the crap out of me!), but Abyss has some Problems, capital P.
+ It passes the Bechdel test! Barely. If Lindsey saying hello and One Night making a gagging sound counts. But I'll take it.
+ The black woman did not die! I really expected her to get squished by the crane, what with being a macho woman and black, both death sentences in sci fi/action films.
+ The disaster sequences were quite compelling. The whole bit where they yank the crane off the surface ship and it falls, really good.
+ The suspense sequences were quite compelling. The exploration of the sunk submarine was tense enough I had to check my email, and he didn't even really on jump startles. Just the claustrophobia of a character hearing his own breath speed up.
+ I have to give him credit for the scene where Bud watches Lindsey drown. It reminded me of the final sequence in Titanic, where Kate Winslet lets Leo fall into the sea, but this one had a much greater emotional punch, to me. The idea of holding someone as they drown, but separated by the cold metal of a suit--wow. And the way she fought against her own death makes me think her "plan" wasn't so much a plan to be resuscitated later as a way to get Bud to save himself and let her die, since if he'd tried to swap the suit, they would probably have both drowned.
For emotional powerful cinematic drowning scenes, I'd have to put this second only to The Prestige.
- The scene where Bud resuscitates Lindsey was approximately ten years too long. I'm an angst bunny, yeah, but I got bored.
- I could have done without everyone calling Lindsey a bitch for the whole film. She is stubborn, competent, and outranks the men. She doesn't do anything bitchy anywhere in the movie. So having her strength make her a bitch to everyone around her--*teeth grinding*
- The aliens didn't need to be there. At all. They were only tangential to the plot. They're not mentioned for most of the action of the movie. And the ending is asinine. It could have been a perfectly good claustrophobic disaster movie with no aliens at all. Why do I hear complaints about the aliens in Signs but not in this? At least Signs was about the aliens.
I know that's why this movie holds the place it does in cinematic history--the morphing of the water. I'd seen that scene before. But imagine my surprise when I get to that scene and realize it has nothing to do with anything. The movie isn't about their encounter with a new life form--it's about the conflict between the Navy SEALs and the blue-collar oil rig workers.
- Part of the stupidity of the ending is that it hand waves away every narrative constraint of the rest of the film. When I was watching it, I was thinking, "Then they all get the bends and die!" There's also the fact that there are still 192 warheads on the ocean floor, 191 of which are salvagable. There's also that, they only have 12 hours of oxygen if they close off all the unused parts of the rig thing that is never brought up again. And they don't seem to have any problem running around the rig and using up oxygen.
- And can I just say--what the fuck was this plan the SEALs had to just blow up the whole sub? I don't think anyone would have ever thought exploding bombs the equivalent of 960 Hiroshimas just off the coast of Cuba was a good thing. I mean, you'd destroy all the ships in the vicinity, probably cause a tsunami, and do wide-ranging irreparable ecological damage with the fallout. This is such a stupid idea.
- It was also unnecessary for the lead SEAL to go crazy. His orders were in conflict with the rig workers enough as it is. Him going psycho just makes it all hand wavy.
In conclusion, some really great stuff, but a lack of focus. I'm also grateful that, other than the plot creatures, they encountered no other deep sea life forms of any sort. Cause what really wigs me is large creatures underwater. The scene with the whales in Castaway freaked me the fuck out and I don't think it was even meant to be scary. If they'd actually had any of the creatures that live that deep in the film, I think I'd have had to turn it off.
Next up, Das Boot.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 08:23 pm (UTC)And nowhere is there any discussion of the potential ecological damage of even setting off the one warhead. There's the--we won't be at a safe distance, but I feel that "safe distance" is kind of hand wavy when you're talking about an underwater atomic bomb. Have we ever tested an H-bomb underwater? I think it would at the very least damage the vessels on the surface.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 08:35 pm (UTC)Maybe he told the SEALs that their mission was to retrieve one warhead, he just didn't tell them why, and they obeyed because CLASSIFIED.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 08:43 pm (UTC)I was amused by the one guy saying, we won't have time to get to a safe distance! I was like, yes, BECAUSE YOU ARE TRAPPED. You can't get to a safe distance because YOU WILL HAVE SUFFOCATED. Least of your problems, dude.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 09:17 pm (UTC)Because fuck decompression sickness and osteonecrosis!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 09:24 pm (UTC)Honestly, I think what happens right after the credits roll on this is the Russians go WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??? and bomb the hell out of it.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 08:19 pm (UTC)But you're right, he's just crazy. Which is really lazy writing, if you ask me. Especially since there was plenty of conflict between the factions before he went crazy.