Samuel Haun on Reels

The Abyss (1989) pushed filmmaking to its breaking point. Actors nearly drowned. Crew members quit. James Cameron himself blacked out underwater. But from all that chaos came innovation — the liquid-water CGI that became the foundation for the T-1000 in Terminator 2 and helped pave the way for the digital revolution that followed. And the deep-sea technology Cameron began developing during this film sparked a decades-long fascination with underwater exploration — eventually leading him to design