"Supernova" - It's Better Than "Wing Commander."
SPOILERS AHEADBEWARE!
As the only member of DFFQI that has seen the new
film "Supernova", and will probably remain so until it
comes out on video, I feel I should do my duty as a
writer and as a devotee of film and offer a fair and
relatively unbiased critique of this latest effort of
regular folks trying to create science fiction for the
masses.
As my title states, "Supernova" is better than "Wing
Commander". If you have spent any time around DFFQI
or for that matter have seen the film "Wing
Commander", you will immediately recognize that
statement as a profound compliment for "Supernova".
If you were lucky enough not to see "Wing Commander",
suffice to say it was the most horrid perversion of
two hours ever captured on celluloid. DFFQI saw it
last year in each other's company which, I'm
convinced, was the only thing keeping us from gouging
our eyes out with dull sticks. There had been
persistent rumors that the Episode I Trailer B was
going to be in front of itand we had free passes.
Anyway, back to "Supernova".
This movie had a lot of bad press floating around it
even before it was released. There were no fewer than
three screenwriters and two directors called in to
rework this movie on several separate occasions,
including the near-infallible Francis Ford Coppola,
whose worst mistake to date was letting his attractive
but hopelessly wooden daughter Sofia act in "The
Godfather Part III". Despite the promise of Coppola's
touch, I took all this negative press as a bad sign.
Adding to that, "Supernova" was the only film of the
recent batch of releases that was not pre-screened for
critics - a sign that the filmmakers themselves were
not happy with their product. I caught a midnight
show and hoped for the best.
The plot of the film is extremely simple (a good sign
that this is science fiction for the masses): A
medical rescue vessel - small, fast, and lightly
staffed - intercepts a far-off distress signal and
zooms to the rescue, recovering a mysterious stranger
from an abandoned moon mine near a collapsing star.
The stranger initially comes off as a get-rich-quick
flyboy with big ambitions and an ambivalent past, but
soon is revealed to be a vicious killer possessed by
an alien artifact he had in tow. Terror ensues. The
psycho must be stopped before the artifact can be used
for its sinister purpose: to detonate a bomb powered
by ninth-dimensional energy, capable of destroying our
pathetic third-dimensional universe.
Heading the brave crew is James Spader who is almost
unrecognizable with his pitch black hair and
muscled-up body. It is a giant departure for an actor
who has made career out of playing bespectacled sex
fiends and wimpy child molesters. At least he retains
one fragment of his other characters: he is a
recovering drug addict. Angela Basset seconds as the
tough-as-nails doctor who carries the jaded, "I've
been in space too damn long" routine. Lou Diamond
Phillips (just try to think of him without laughing)
and Robin Tunney are medical technicians who pass
their time with zero-g sex and dreams of one day
having a purebred child without he aid of genetic
engineering. Rounding out the crew is a relative
unknown who plays the increasingly common stock
character of the effeminate computer expert.
Before the outer space S.O.S. is received, the crew
engages in the kind of meaningless, rapid-fire banter
often found among groups of people who spend long
periods of time together in a cramped space, well
represented in movies like "Alien". Unfortunately,
this particular vintage of banter is stunted by the
film's PG-13 rating and, without the occasional
vulgarity, comes off as pretty silly and unrealistic.
What it does do is provide at least a hint of
character development for each of the crew, and give
the viewer an idea of what each of these guys wants
out of life. Again, these facts do not engage the
viewer at all, nor does the cast's acting. Spader
sounds and acts like the lost love child of Lance
Henrikson, Basset is so overly intense it's laughable,
and Phillips, Tunney, and the other guy are all fairly
slack-jawed and forgettable. The one good thing is
that there is hope that the characters will blossom
and become more engaging as the film continues.
Sadly, this is not to be. The crew uses the
interdimensional drive to propel themselves several
hundred lightyears across the cosmos after receiving
the distress signal, but the ship is struck by an
errant meteor on its way to this distant moon and
manages to create a delicate orbit, but with fuel
supplies rapidly dwindling. It seems the only way they
can escape a horrible burning death from the
collapsing star is by using their ID drive again,
which won't recharge for another 17 hours - too long,
unless they acquire more fuel. Lucky for all, hotshot
space heartthrob is reeled in by the crew, deadly
alien artifact under his arm (not literally) and a
promise of ample fuel supplies on the moon he just
escaped from. This is where just about all hope of
further character development is abandoned and the
film becomes a mish-mash. Spader leaves the rest of
the crew to go down to the moon alone (how realistic
is that?) and retrieve the needed fuel, while Basset
and the others care for Mr. Hotshot Flyboy. Flyboy,
it seems, is the son of a sadistic loony Basset's
character encountered years ago. Flyboy assures
Basset that his father is long dead and that he is
nothing like his father, despite having an uncanny
physical resemblance to him. Though injured at first,
Flyboy recovers at an inhumanly fast rate. From this
point forward, all attention is focused on Flyboy and
the crew's occasional suspicious looks in his
direction. All other characters are completely
abandoned, aborting whatever development and nurturing
there might have been I favor of more suspicious looks
and menacing scowls.
As a result of the utter lack of character
development, you don't care about anything that
happens to the crew. Lou Diamond Phillips spends the
whole rest of the movie grimacing and furrowing his
browbut later finds himself obsessed with touching
this glowing artifact Flyboy brought on board. No one
cares. Tunney and Flyboy have zero-g sex while
Phillips back is turned. No one cares. The one
consolation is that all these things happen quickly.
Indeed, the film's pace is not just fast - it's
absolutely relentless (a big reason why it's better
than "Wing Commander"). Before you know it, it's Act
Three. Time for people to die.
Basset performs an exam on Phillips following his
exposure to the artifact and discovers that he has
increased in body density and overall physical health,
making him 10-15 years younger for all intents and
purposes. Instantly we know what we already knew:
that Flyboy is in fact the sadistic loony Basset
described as "the worst nightmare I ever met", and
that his prolonged exposure to the artifact has only
made him appear younger. What's more, the artifact
has given him enhanced strength and regenerative
capabilities. This is also where we discover that the
artifact is a bomb that could potentially wipe out the
universe. Again, we don't care. Once his secret is
out, Flyboy starts to bump off the crew, one by one.
He throws Tunney out an airlock. I think she had
maybe twenty lines total. He clobbers Phillips and
tosses him out another airlock, his fifteen years of
youth obviously worth jack shit. Oddly enough, the
effeminate computer guy takes the longest to die, but
he does, in time, get beaten to death by Mr.
Sadist/Flyboy. So it goes until only Basset is left
on board, with Spader, having discovered no fuel on
the moon, racing back to save the day. Together they
trick Flyboy into a dead-end of the ship, where they
blow him to smithereens. With less than ten minutes
before burning up, the ship's ID drive recharges and
blasts Spader and Basset back to Earth space - but not
before they eject the alien artifact into space, where
it is swallowed up by the collapsing star. Fade out.
The end.
I must repeat: this movie is much better than
"Wing Commander". I compare it to "Wing Commander"
because that was the last effort by a movie studio to
dumb down science fiction and give it more
mass-appeal. While Supernova attempts to do the same
thing, it is far more respectable than "Wing
Commander", and is not altogether horrible. The most
disappointing element of "Supernova" is the utter lack
of character development. More than half the cast is
completely wasted. I kept hoping for a slow,
satisfying build-up of each of the characters, but all
save two are murdered before you even get an inkling
of what they are like. Thus, you don't care. So what
if they all die? No one liked them anyway.
Other elements of the writing are pretty weak,
namely the dialog. Basset belts out lines like
"whoever they are, they are as smart as God and a lot
less nice", for example. Tunney and Phillips have
nothing interesting to say throughout the entire film,
and Mr. Flyboy Heartthrob's villainous epitaphs are
odiously predictable. Fortunately, the extreme fast
pace of "Supernova" prevents the formation of any
large plot holesjust elements of the plot that are
ridiculously obvious.
A word of caution: bring your Dramamine. This
movie is so full of rapid-fire, in-your-face camera
action it makes "Con Air" look like The Beatles first
appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.
Two other tiny things I have beef with: the ship
is also crewed by an android. It doesn't talk, but it
is ludicrous in its design. It is humanoid, bulky,
chrome-covered, and walks like Frankenstein from the
really bad movies. It's like the inbred love child of
TC-14 from TPM and the ED-209 from Robocop. Why? Why
did this have to be? The droid serves no purpose that
can't be easily replaced by one of the expendable crew
and it seems so disgustingly out of place in an
otherwise deadly serious film. Also, the ship has a
talking computer named "Sweetie" who shows signs of
Artificial Intelligence. However, like her human
counterparts, she is grossly unexplored, leaving the
audience to ponder why exactly we have top suffer
through her annoying, sing-song voice.
I said this would be a fair review, so I want to
stress the good points of the film as well, and it
does have a few good points.
The best thing about "Supernova" is its refreshing
and surprising attention to the details of science.
The crew uses an ID drive that bends time and space to
travel the hundreds of lightyears separating the solar
systems. While this is and of itself is just about an
impossibility, it is at least handled in a smart way.
The crew has to strip naked and enter stasis chambers
that isolate themselves from any exterior molecules in
order to prevent foreign substances from melding with
their own bodies and either killing the instantly or
mutating them horribly. While the nudity provides
crowd-pleasing glances at Spader's buffed abs and
Tunney's ample chest, it is also the only
scientifically feasible thing to do. After all, what
good does it do to enter a stasis chamber if you're in
your underwear? You can meld with those molecules,
too, folks. I must also give credit to the design of
the ship. It looks less like a single unit than it
does a collection of several modules, much like our
own future deep space vessels. Some parts of the ship
have gravity, which is provided by our favorite method
of artificial gravity in he universeyup, you guessed
it: A ROTATING HULL. Jeffrey Sinclair would be so
proud.
The visual effects are very good, although they
certainly don't break any new ground. Still, some of
the stand-alone shots are downright impressive, and
the effect of the ship tearing across ID time and
space is really excellent.
Yes, the writing is flabby, but there is the
occasional bright spot. Spader has the best dialog,
and the writers were smart enough to give him the
funniest and most sarcasm-laden lines, where his
deadpan monotone delivery is sure to earn a few
laughs.
So altogether, I would venture to say that "Supernova"
is about one-third delirious yet often smart
enjoyment, one-third sadly unrealized potential, and
one-third crap. Worth a single viewing, though I
would definitely recommend a rental rather than an
excursion to your local theater. And just remember.
Remember "Wing Commander".
---
John Paige
1.28.2000
Dairy Farmers For Quebec's Independence