This is nuts. I remember reading that Hollywood gave up on underwater filming after near death accidents on sets of The Abyss and especially Waterworld making such productions too risky and expensive so they resorted to VFX faking long underwater scenes after that. Obliviously Cameron didn't get the memo.
James Cameron, maker of The Abyss, probably got the memo. But the memo read “You’re going to need to make much more successful movies before they let you do that again.”
James Cameron has done a huge number of truly amazing things, but he and Ed Harris both nearly drowned during filming of The Abyss. Hopefully he learned from his mistakes.
Yeah not to say some of his knowledge isn’t hard won. Niels Bohr approved.
Looks like in Cameron’s case it was a double fault situation. No alarm on the primary, and the safety person didn’t check his emergency gear. That guy shouldn’t have been punched he should have been fired. And had his license suspended.
What a great movie that is! Who can forget that rat breathing liquid oxygen (or whatever they called it), and the water creature making her face to say hello. It seems sort of forgotten now (perhaps it's just me?) compared to other good films from the same era.
> Who can forget that rat breathing liquid oxygen (or whatever they called it)
I remember seeing the movie as a child with my parents and I was quite appaled by that scene (I hate seeing animal abuse). My father ensured me that was just some kind of effect trickery (I think he believed so himself). Later I found out that it was indeed real.
Whoever wrote the production portion of the wikipedia page for the Abyss did a really good job capturing the sort of bleak "the best way out of this situation is forward" circumstances that arise from taking on a project at the limit of your capability like that.
That is crazy. It seems Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise's old record while filming Avatar 2; over 7 minutes(!) in her case:
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/kate-winslet-beat...