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