FAQ for
The Abyss (1989) More at IMDbPro »

Yes, it does. The set was build inside the containment building of an abandoned nuclear power project in Gaffney, S.C., and left behind after filming. You can actually spot it on "Google Earth" by entering the coordinates 35° 2' 13.2" N, 81° 30' 43.2" W . The Wikipedia has an article on the abandoned Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant and its use as a film set (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nuclear_Power_Plant), including links to reports and photos of recent visits to the site. Safety advice: Do not try this, kids! :-)

Just like Bud says, swimming in freezing cold water can slow the body's metabolism drastically. This is called cold water drowning. There are rare but documented accounts of people surviving drowning for extreme lengths of time. One 18 year old man survived for 38 minutes under water.

Deep Hypothermia is used in medicine, especially during surgeries which require stopping circulation for repairs, such as Aortic Arch reconstruction and giant cerebral aneurysm clippings. The body is cooled to less than 18 degrees Celsius and the heart is stopped. Studies have shown this can be done up to 45 minutes without neurologic damage.

A very elaborate ending was indeed scripted and filmed for the Theatrical Version of The Abyss. It starts off after Bud is saved by the aliens. They show him the news on a giant video wall about the imminent war between the USA and the Sovjet Union. This changes into a special report about giant tidal waves that appear everywhere around the globe, which threaten all mankind. Bud instantly understands that the aliens are responsible for these tsunamis, and he asks why they want to destroy mankind. They respond by showing him images of the many wars and atrocities committed by humans in their seemingly never-ending route to self-destruction. But, as the waves are about to hit the land, they stop and retreat; the aliens stopped them. Bud's sacrifice has showed them that humanity may have the strength and wisdom to make it after all. The movie then ends with the spaceship rising up towards the ocean surface.

This ending, together with many other deleted scenes, was restored in the Special Edition of The Abyss. The reason that these scenes were deleted from the earlier version is that they would have made the movie almost 3 hours long. In those days, a running time that long was generally considered a big commercial risk, especially for big-budget, action-packed, special effects-heavy blockbusters that have to earn a lot of money to break even, let alone make a profit. Audiences are generally not very enthusiastic to remain focussed for such a long time, or that is at least the theory that many studio executives cling to; there are many fine examples of 3 hour-plus movies that became huge box-office hits, e.g. James Cameron's own Titanic.

A general rule is that movies make the most money in the first week(s) or weekend after the premiere. A long running time has the additional disadvantage that cinemas can do fewer screenings per day, which also diminishes the box-office per day of showing. So director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd decided (or were required) to cut the movie back to under 2,5 hours. Rather than trimming shots and parts of scenes away from the entire line of the movie, Cameron decided to remove a entire subplot. He felt that the former would make the movie feel thinned out and lacking in development. So the tidal wave scenes were never completely finished during post-production.

However, a favourable response to the Special Edition of Cameron's Aliens in 1991 prompted him to revisit The Abyss in 1993 and restore the deleted scenes with fully finished special effects and a slightly re-recorded soundtrack.