The Abyss is James Cameron's most underrated movie

I grew up enjoying every James Cameron that I had seen.
Along with Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I also watched The Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss on a regular basis. You might say that it's kind of strange that a child enjoys both the TTMT and an R-rated film like The Terminator. Heck, the news even made a big deal out of it after those teenagers massacred Columbine. If they were so easily influenced to commit mass murder by a movie, then I think their parents didn't do a very good job. I knew inherently that it wasn't real, that it was make-believe. I would pretend to be The Terminator, but I knew better than to actually go out and kill people. Anyway, that's beside the point of this blog. I'm sorry for rambling on about nothing.

Theatrically, The Abyss ended where Ed Harris's character finds the NTIs (Underwater Flying Objects), says "Howdy" and that was about it. It was a terrible ending to such a powerful, dramatic and intense film. Then me and my family stumbled onto this store, called "Sweets" (a video store). There was a large collection of laserdiscs offered at Sweets. We rummaged through them. They looked like records in a record store. Suddenly we started noticing some of our favorite movies, and among them were The Abyss and Aliens. Both of these movies were in "Special Edition" form. That means that they included 14 to 20 minutes more footage. It was like striking gold.

The director's cut of The Abyss offered so much more depth, so much more feel to the film, we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw the new scenes. They were perfectly spliced into the film. They were jaw-droppingly wonderful. Then came the new, big finale, opening up a whole can of worms, so to speak. I can't say much more, but you'll have to see the Special Edition of The Abyss to understand what I mean.