Ghosts of the Abyss

2003 Documentary

Filmmaker James Cameron has long been fascinated with the ill-fated maiden voyage of the great ship the Titanic, and he used the story as the backdrop for his most famous and successful movie. In the summer of 2001, Cameron and his good friend Bill Paxton (who appeared in Titanic) joined a group of scientists, maritime historians, archaeologists, and deep sea explorers for a daring experiment -- to find and document the Titanic's final resting place at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Cameron brought along a film crew equipped with state-of-the-art 3-D cameras to document the voyage and utilized the Mir-1 and Mir-2, Russian deep sea submersible vessels capable of voyaging to a depth of around 6500 kilometers. Ghosts of the Abyss offers a detailed look at the team's search for the Titanic, as well as imagining what the final hours for the crew and passengers must have been like. The initial release of Ghosts of the Abyss was limited to big-screen IMAX theaters and movie houses specially equipped to show 3-D features. more..

Director: James Cameron

Reviews

  • It's a unique trip that flirts with hokeyness at the surface but that grows more compelling, awe-inspiring, and tragic the deeper you go.

    Ty Burr - The Boston Globe

    26 April 2013

  • Despite over-ripe narration and an understandable urge to cram too much in, Ghosts of the Abyss is a thrilling documentary.

    Peter Travers - Rolling Stone

    26 April 2013

  • An enthralling 3-D IMAX documentary.

    Lou Lumenick - New York Post

    26 April 2013

  • Cameron wants to take the audience ''back to 'Titanic,''' but the journey's magic is hemmed in, paradoxically, by the transcendence of his previous effort; surely he must know that a lot of us never left.

    Owen Gleiberman - Entertainment Weekly

    26 April 2013

  • If Cameron wants to be a pioneer instead of a retro hobbyist, he should obviously use Maxivision 48, which provides a picture of such startling clarity that it appears to be 3-D in the sense that the screen seems to open a transparent window on reality. Ghosts of the Abyss would have been incomparably more powerful in the process.

    Roger Ebert - The Chicago Sun-Times

    26 April 2013

Awards

  • Best Documentary

    Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards (2004)