The Abyssmal

[Funk, E]

There is a name for my pain and it is “The Abyss”

God I hate that f**kin’ movie! Never in my life have I had the misfortune of being exposed to such a travesty of storytelling. There are so many plot holes and inconsistencies they might as well have preambled the mess with a disclaimer to the effect of: “Do not attempt to exercise any sense of logic whilst watching this film, it will result in an inoperable brain tumor.”

Now as a die hard Star Trek fan I’ve had to accept many a creative license with the physical universe and as a matter of practice a certain degree of suspension of disbelief is essential to any form of entertainment, however when most movies or TV shows want you to accept rules of non-reality they will do one of two things or both:

1) They will place the story in such a non-reality based environment that it is tacitly understood by all involved that the standard rules of engagement do not apply in this context. An example of this is far future SciFi and Fantasy genre stuff

2) They will tell you what laws of physics are being voided and if anything is being used in its stead. For example Superman or Vampire movies.

It is especially important that when one bases a movie on earth in the relative present (the time in the film is concurrent with that of the making of the film) that careful attention be paid to basic physical realities. Sure the hero is always a crack shot while the villain is incapable of hitting the broadside of a barn, sure people can survive a 15 minute fist fight and walk away fully functional, but when mortal people start gleefully prancing through space without a pressure suit it’s time to call the film to task.

The Abyss would seem to think such things are irrelevant… entirely. Quite frankly I don’t even know why they bothered with the rig or situating the story underwater because it certainly didn’t seem to constitute an inconvenience. Let us briefly wallow in the blatant breaches of underwater reality this film flagrantly flaunts before us shall we?

Okay lets start with the kicker… The whole catalyst for this non-sense was that a US nuclear submarine is rendered inoperable by a close encounter and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. A distance specifically stated as being in excess of a mile under water (remember the entire movie essentially occurs at this depth). Okay a military submarine can dive to a maximum depth of 2,950 feet. That’s just over Half… okay HALF of a mile. This bad boy is twice that depth! Even a bathysphere can’t reach that depth yet we have a ground moveable oil exploration rig cruising the bottom of the ocean at over a mile underwater! It gets worse!

During the course of the headfu… movie we get or nominal heroes stranded in an isolated section of the rig and the only way to get to the other part is to swim through the outside water to get to an always open diving bay. Okay first off the Diving bay is exposes the bottom of the rig to the ocean water. There isn’t enough air pressure in the world that could make that work, but who cares. What’s really fun is watch two people IN STREET CLOTHS swimming through mile deep water! Yipee! And then they revive one of them from DEEP hypothermia to the point of being cryogenically inanimate with virtually no special equipment. Its like they p**sed on our brains and then told us to wait for the shake!

[Lee]

Logic can be a strange beast in a movie. Personally I like movies that aren't affraid to go over-the-top but there is a point where even I go,"OH COME ON!!!!"