In one scene, Bud throws his wedding ring into a chemical toilet and then fishes it out again.He gets all this blue stuff on his hands which is still there a few scenes later.Obviously it just doesn't wash off.
And almost any time i watch this film on tv, they cut out the scene where the mouse is put into that breathing liquid.So, apparently, we can watch people drown and suffer horrible deaths, but we can't watch a mouse go through a little discomfort?I hate censors.

How come nobody gets the bends at the very end when they throw open the hatch?

Doesn't somebody make a remark about that at the end? How they should all be dead because they didn't decompress?

anyone wanna gimmie a synopsys? cause I think I saw this film but I'm not sure

They did make a remark about it.One of them says that they didn't decompress and another one says "they musta done something to us"It would have been a pretty boring ending if the ascension took three weeks.

What happened to the aliens after the movie ended?

The part where they were trying to resessitate what's her name. The CPR and was preformed incorrectly. It is a wonder that she revived at all.

Well, if they thought they were gonna get the bends, then why *DID* they throw open the hatch? And Mike Ram, that's a good question... what *DID* happen to the underwater aliens?

cableface: In reguards to the chemical toilits... you're right. That stuff dosen't wash off. It's not a nit, it's a touch of realism. It would be a nit if the blue wasn't there later.

I think they had no choice but to open the hatch, as they were almost out of oxygen. And after all that had just happened - Bud back on air long after he should have suffocated, then the rig being lifted in a way that was just impossible - I reckon they were past thinking sensibly!

As far as "What happened to the aliens?" is concerned, I think the longer version of the movie - the one with the frozen tidal waves - gives more clues. The aliens sent the tsunamis and then stopped them dead just before they crashed onto the land as a way of saying, "Hullo - this is just a demonstration that you don't want to mess with us!" but I get the impression that, with that proviso, they were willing to be friends.

Or was that just in the book?

As Virgil Brigman is attempting to resuscitate his wife, Lindsey Brigman, who had previously drowned, there is a moment at which the camera is focussed on Lindsey Brigman's head from a horizontal angle. During this moment Lindsey Brigman is conspicuously moving her eyes as if she is blinking but with the eyelids closed. However, she is allegedly dead while her husband is struggling to resuscitate her.

Even if they did do the CPR wrong you have to give them credit for remembering that defibuators can only be used on bare skin (not to mention that they don't really "start" hearts really). That is always something they forget on TV and stuff all the time (all though nude female upper bodies would be a problem with the censors).

Does anyone know the name of the music that plays in the special edition just after Bud sees that the aliens have reversed the wave? It also plays on the menu on disc 1 of the dvd set and I'm not sure whether it's on the soundtrack or not. It's a really peaceful haunting piece of music. And yes, the special edition of this film rules, esepecially the additions to the alien sequence at the end.It all makes so much more sense to me now......and twelve years on, the pseudopod still looks amazing.

"It went straight for the warhead........and they think it's cute."

The first time I saw the original edition at the cinema, I liked it, but thought the ending was "tacked on," or more likely edited. Turns out I was right. At least the novel filled in the missing parts.
Then the Special Edition laser disc came out...it was like watching a new movie! Incredible story, even better character development, a reason for the ending... this is one of my favorite sf films of all time.

I, too, noticed the thing with Lindsey's eyes during the CPR scene, but given all that actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had to go through to film that scene, I'm surprised she stayed as still as she did. (At one point, the camera ran out of film, prompting her to angrily leave the set for a while.)

By the way, her drowning scene STILL tenses me up when I see it; the first time I saw it, my hands got cramped from holding onto the chair handles so tightly!

The character drowned right in the beginning with others, but then he was seen later in the story. Support this or not.

Nit 1:
Early on, we see a shot of the storm rocking the Mystic Explorer and it's very dark out; however, a second later, it cuts to an interior shot from the bridge and it's looks rather light outside. The windows look like they're being sprayed with water, but the storm doesn't look really dark like it did a second before.

Nit 2:
If the rig was originally resting on solid horizontal ground, then it shouldn't have started to slide even if the crane went over the edge. Simple statics (summation of forces must equal zero horizontally as well as vertically)

The only way for the rig to move horiztonally is if the crane were more massive than the rig and could enact a horizontal force on the rig, which seems unlikely. The weight of the crane would have to be greater than the weight of the rig times the coefficient of friction of the ground.

Nit 3:
I think the rig's submersibles (sp?) should have cracked a windshield much sooner than or more often than they did in the movie.

Nit 4:
Even if the "aliens" were in fact just swimming, they'd still create a wake/turbulent water flow of some sort if they were traveling that fast. You'd see some form of a trail behind the "aliens."

Possible Nit 1:
Is there any logic to have helmet interior lights shine right into someone's eyes while they're tryng to work in an environment that is very dark? I understand that it's used in film so we can see the actor's face, but it can't be realistic.

Possible Nit 2:
Regarding the other Navy Seals, the ones who didn't go coo coo like Mustache man, they seemed to be supportive/obediant to mustache man despite the obvious signs he had lost it. Commanding Officer or not, if my superior was making obvious self inflicted slices into his arm, was shaking, was impulsive/short fused etc. I'd consider him unfit to command and to be a danger to himself as well as the soldiers under him. Bandana boy seemed to be too trigger happy too.

All in all, I don't think the Navy Seals were represented that well in this movie. Even before the accident happened with the crane, for the rescue mission, they seemed to be more interested in salvaging a nuke than actual rescuing... to say nothing about protecting the lives of the rig workers.

Possible Nit 3:
If the "aliens" can create a energy dampening field around things to knock out power, would it have messed up the breathing equipment? I'm not a scuba person so I don't know if the suit's equipment they had would have required batteries.

Speaking of energy dampening, if power (that it blocks electricty from traveling in a simple flashlight, it should have taken longer to the equipment to come back online. It'd be like shutting down your computer by pulling the plug. Besides the possibility to corrupt things, it'd still take a few minutes to reboot and reload all the system apps.


NANJAO:

It's hard to tell, but it looks like when the nuclear sub runs aground,there's a big chunk of rock that it bumps off that looks fake, like a "model" collision as opposed to a real and massive amount of rock. The rock didn't feel like it had the proper weight to it.


Speaking of drowning rats, well, I think they could have showed the rat for several more minute before any perminant damage came to the rat.


So, these survivors all have first hand knowledge of what the inside of the missile bay looks like... Hope the soviet union doesn't go kidnapping these rig workers.

Nit within Nit #1: Benthic Explorer, not Mystic Explorer.

Sorry, I must have had too much sea water in my ear to hear what they called it. I knew it was explorer, just not the first part. Now if you excuse me, I have to manually detonate one of the nukes to totally destroy any sign of my error.

I just watched the special edition.

Nits

Given that a 1000 foot wave would likely be seen long before it hit the land, I think that there were too many people still on the beach at the end when everyone is running away. I think that people would have been completely cleared off the beach by the time the wave stops.


Are those towers giant TV antennas?
The underwater aliens seem to get some good TV reception down there; 25,000 feet below sea level.


Bud's loud mouth, nose, eyes, and ears might not compress, too bad his brain will.
When bud enters the water, you can see that the pink O2 liquid doesn't actually come all the way up inside his helmet and this forehead is exposed.

btw, what was wrong with the way they did CPR? Is slapping the patient and yelling till your right hand turns blue not part of the process?

Didn't the aliens conjure up the wave in an instant? Isn't that why people were on the beach? Or did dialogue or some other indication imply that it was conjured in the middle of the ocean and took hours to get to shore?

You've got it the way I thought it was too, Luigi.

well, the news reporter mentioned that it was a good ways off still. I'd have to rewatch that scene though to get the exact phrase. I didn't take it to mean that it was several hours away, but I did take it to mean that it was far enough away for more of the beach to have cleared out than what occurred.

One thing that occurs to me is how many people died when that whole thing went down. Either people on islands off of the coast, people in boats off of the coast plus how many heart attacks did people on the beach have.

So the question of the week is...

Did the underwater aliens intentionally try to cause the nuclear missile sub to crash? Afterall, it is a delivery system for those WMD...

I never got the impression that the Sub was crashed on purpose, the dialog in the beginning of the movie suggests that the Alien was trying to get away from them, the Sub Captain kept pressing to increase speed and give the alien chase.

After accepting the fact that Lindsey is going to drown, don't wait for it to happen and THEN start swimming back to the station. Start swimming NOW, she will drown en route, you will save time and significantly improve her chances to be revived.