Plus the movie is its beauty. In all the colors, everywhere hypnotizing the eye technology: flying on a beam of dark energy, lubricating people along with all other matter on hyperdrive, a robot in a jumper, beautiful actors, an artifact that, as befits artifacts, does not understand what. All this is gorgeous... it would be, if not for one thing that crosses everything – the plot of the film is tiny, it is just about how a single maniac drains one crew member. It's a tracing from "Alien," but instead of someone else, we have a man. It looks like a standard space series, and I would even watch it, with average interest, if it had 10 to 20 episodes. But the movie! With some budget. To the movies! I just don't understand how you can invest money and countonium in the story "And then the evil man stabbed everyone." Pity. There could have been more. Some of the situation was saved only by entourage and beautiful dialogue.
The plot strongly resembles "Alien", but shot much weaker. Despite this, it looks quite acceptable, especially against the background of modern masterpieces. A solid seven.
No film wants to wish for a story like the one that occurred during the creation of a fantastic thriller in 1999 called Supernova. And after all, everything was fine at first, they found the right cast, and Walter Hill was responsible for directing. The footage Hill caused only negative emotions among the bosses of the company MGM, which led to the change of director (according to rumors, Walter Hill himself renounced his creation), reshooting almost the entire picture. It is not even scary that Francis Ford Coppola became the second director, perhaps finance became the decisive factor - the budget became more and more every minute, reaching the final bill - $ 90 million. The result was, unsurprisingly, a resounding failure (both from critics and finance, where Supernova’s fees failed to reach 1/3 of the total budget). What is the reason for this failure?
The future. The six-member interstellar ambulance ship Nightingale receives a distress call from a starship in a distant star system. Having decided on a bold, responsible jet jump, problems begin with one of the crew members. A little later, the distressed shuttle finally joins Nightingale. Of the few people expected to see, only one appears. The stranger is confident, extremely strong and clearly up to something. It turns out that he brought with him a mysterious artifact that allows anyone to become different. In every sense of the word. So, the owners of the situation abruptly become uninvited guests, empty, consumable material for the traveler. For rescuers, there is only one task - to survive and find out the fate of an unknown artifact.
The big mistake was the decision to reshoot most of the film's moments. To begin with, I’d like to see that very draft version of Walter Hill (to find out who is to blame), then decide the fate of the project. While viewing the picture clearly visible internal lack of understanding of both directors (even, each of them has a different vision, each perceives everything in his own way) – that’s the viewer feels the growing atmosphere of one director, then there is a sharp reset to get a new – already another. Simply put, the two directors are hurting each other by turning Supernova into something you don’t know. Perhaps, in order to avoid discussion, one director could be trusted to shoot the Thriller stage (mostly the second half), and the second one to shoot the first half, where everything is calm. But since it is not known what a particular director is responsible for, it is better to say about the work as a whole - bad. Funny, the last 30 minutes, which is a thriller, is quite interesting to watch. David S. Wilson’s script is also far from perfect, much like the tempo of Alien and Through the Horizon. The pace is not particularly important, here the content is an important point, but the film begins not with explanations, without introducing the viewer to the course of things, but immediately with action. Another interesting fact here is the jet jump. In many fantastic tapes, the jet jump was a peaceful process where the crew was not injured or injured. Here, someone's smart head decided to make an innovation - a jet jump for the crew occurs without suits, that is, in what the mother gave birth. That doesn’t add much to the script either. In addition, there is no intrigue at all, the inserted “unexpected turn” is revealed in a few seconds at the beginning. You don’t really have to talk about the characters – you don’t have any emotions for them (as well as for the whole film), you don’t worry about them, they will survive or die anyway. The scenario is too one-sided, predictable and uninteresting. Extremely weak. Lloyd Ahern's camera work raises no questions, everything is done on the case, the picture is well-chosen, several scenes, including the last 30 minutes, leading out of stasis, are made interestingly. Special effects specialists did not work badly - the space itself, the spacecraft, the artifact - all this is done well. The music from composer David S. Williams is also not bad, sometimes not where it should be. Several compositions occasionally hit the point, making one moment slightly more beautiful than another, not attaching much importance when viewing.
The cast includes James Spader, Angela Bassett, Robin Tunney, Wilson Cruz, Lou Diamond Phillips, Robert Forster and Peter Facinelli. You can immediately throw Forster out of this basket, because his character, despite the formidable title of chief pilot, appears in two scenes. Peter Facinelli is well-received as the "survivor" and most of the scenes with him have succeeded (including the last 30, where the real hunt begins). As for the more main characters - Spade and Bassett - they play quite well, quite tolerantly. The cast is good, that's only sometimes slips the playfulness.
Total:
Frankly, “Supernova” is one of the most powerful failures of MGM, where the blame is not only on the side of the director, but also on themselves. Expecting sensational success and not giving Walter Hill a chance, the guys from the studio signed themselves a death sentence, making it even worse - to make one film for two directors. This resulted in a similar split in the form of misunderstanding. If MGM liked this version of the film, then there is nothing to say - Hill's original source would have come out better. However, we will never know what was on the original source, but for comparison, we could release a version on DVD media. You can recommend the picture only to a few, since the project clearly failed, namely, fans of the cast or only for personal interest. The rest of us may not waste time.
The budget for this film is as big as my disappointment with this creation. Maybe in 2010 I would even like it, because I loved then low-quality horror films and disaster films (from the last, those shown on TV3, I remember watching Polar Storm and Clash, and I liked it), and in this film I would definitely be impressed by expensive special effects and stylish scenery, but now that I understand more in the movies, this film seemed just boring. I found out about him on Wikipedia, looking through the list of films of the hated studio “Asylum”, whose films I watch only for “spitting”, and only after watching the blockbusters for which their films are faked. In this list I saw the film 2012. Supernova", which was indicated that this is a fake for the film by Roland Emmerich "2012", dedicated to the theme of the end of the world. I was already familiar with this super-blockbuster, so I immediately realized that there was a mistake in Wikipedia, because this mockbuster was on a completely different topic. Then I learned that there was such a movie as Supernova 1999 (or, according to other sources, 2000), as well as a TV movie of the same name in 2005. I was 100% sure that I would like the first version, and the two cheaper versions would have to be criticized, but in the end I did not like either version, but to my unpleasant surprise, it was the original high-budget film that I found even less interesting than the television version, and even than the low-budget version from the studio Asylum!
Any film-disaster, however, like any film of another genre, should please first of all with an interesting plot and high-quality dialogue. There is neither the first nor the second. And special effects, which for me is not in the first place, with such a "fairy budget" , there is not so much, although there are moments with quite high-quality graphics and very beautiful scenery of the spacecraft. The film is not in any way comparable to the previously released "Fifth Element" and even with the recently described "Independence Day", which I, although not very fond, but it looks quite cheerful. With roughly the same budgets, these two super hits featured not only great action, which is much more varied there than here, but also interesting plots with many surprises, especially in The Fifth Element. There is no need to talk about all the beloved Star Wars movies: comparing them with this sub-film is the same as comparing God’s gift to scrambled eggs. Here, too, like scenes with interstellar flights, superhumans, but a minimum of interesting actions, no soulfulness, but only computer graphics in blue tones. In the TV version of 2005, there were more interesting dialogues with a cheap picture, although it is also not a fountain of cinema, and in the 9-year-late mockbuster 2012. Supernova, surprisingly, was also something interesting, but in fact the rating you could think that there is an absolute bottom. In general, all three films on the theme of a supernova were failures, especially this one.
3 out of 10
From time to time, from the edge of the lifeless planet, in the orbit of which the rescue spacecraft "Nightingale" is located, a giant blue sun rises, spreading on half a galaxy cooling tentacles-prominents. The spectacle of a slowly dying star, torn apart by the incredible gravity of the spent core, delights with its mind-blowing beauty. Unfortunately, the heroes of this sad story have no time to admire the views behind the window: in their shapeless, rotating all parts of the body machine, there is fear and horror from the invulnerable man-monster, previously picked up from the half-abandoned colony “Titan” somewhere on the far reaches of explored space. This insidious and immortal crook, as it turns out, his name is Karl, found on the Titan some phallo-like artifact that gives fearlessness, youth, strength (including male, of course), and decided for an unexplained reason to send this alien substance into our native system to shatter it with the shock power of nine-dimensional space. Something seems to be in his head, fists endowed with superpower, itch; crew members inevitably die, and even the artificial intelligence of the ship is not able to stop him.
The writers who read Zelazny and Lema obviously sought to create an atmospheric thriller, close in spirit to “Alien” or “Through the Horizon”, and gave out a product where in each scene the element borrowed from more successful examples of film fiction protrudes. Not the late Verhoeven with inappropriate erotomania in the genre, or the early Ridley Scott; something we saw in Cameron a dozen years before, and the ship itself in profile is so similar to the upgrade of the unfinished “Star Destroyer” from “Odyssey 2010”, that in combination with faded images of characters, including the main villain, incidentally, results in a rather deplorable and secondary, rather than an example of high-quality Sy-Fai. By the way, a year later, the annals of the genre with the scene “far, far from the Earth” were replenished with the action movie “Red Planet”, whose catastrophic failure at the box office is comparable to the crack of “Supernova”, both works buried the careers of their creators, and even the finals of both cosmodromes, which is to say, almost copy each other.
Probably, in the life of every great director there should be his “Interstellar” or “Space Odyssey 2001”. It is possible that Walter Hill thought in a similar way, taking on a clumsy and long-suffering project called “Supernova”. However, the problem was that he was not the first director of the film, because he was forced against the will of the previous director, fired by the studio, and in addition, Hill’s vision did not coincide with what the studio bosses wanted to see in the final editing. This unequal opposition ended with the invitation of a third director, already a living classic of cinema, which is strange, in his track record there were still no fantastic films with a cosmic theme. Coppola and edited the film from the filmed material an hour and a half, throwing into a black vacuum everything that violated the straightforward and banal, but at least such, the course of history. But for Coppola, Supernova did not become Stargate or Solaris. As a result, both Sholder, Hill, and Coppola disowned the negligent child, and under the inscription of the director at the end of the viewing there is a non-existent surname.
However, one cannot be categorically strict to this picture: despite everything, events develop, though boring, but logically, and what is not interesting, Lloyd Ahern is to blame: this is his swaying camera from side to side (where did you see a swing in a spaceship with artificial gravity?) lulls the attention of the beholder. And the monotonous diagonal middle plans turn a potential blockbuster into some cheap TV soap opera. Well, and the scenes of sex in zero gravity and the mandatory exposure of heroes for a hyperdimensional jump, designed to bring a pinch of erotic sharpness into the narrative, look somewhat ridiculous. Well, nudity, there is no dispute, piquant, but when actors are shown only on the shoulders, its whole essence turns into a deception of audience expectations. And physical intimacy without attraction? I wonder if it doesn't hurt?
- Dad, are there aliens in Svenova? - No, son, it's fantastic!
A movie about the fact that you should not grab everything that is bad (or well hidden) on alien planets.
Rescue spacecraft on duty "somewhere far, far away..." The members of the shift crew are irreconcilably struggling with everyday routine to the best of their abilities and fantasies - who is unrestrained sex, who is writing a scientific dissertation, and who is light flirting with artificial intelligence. But the SOS signal from a very distant star system, bypassing the dispatch service, reaches the location of our spacecraft. After some reflection, in fulfillment of duty, the captain decides to jump through the hyperdrive to the distant distance towards the unknown. From that moment on, as you can guess, everything turned out...
I must admit that something new in the plot of the film will not be found. But this film should not be forgotten. The film, in my opinion, was shot very well and make any claims to the actors’ play, special effects, design, directing and editing personally I will not raise my hand. Within the framework of the plot, elements of visualization, musical accompaniment and acting work out for all 100. Yes, of course, it was possible to come up with a more intriguing story and slightly increase the dramaturgy, but
After the main material was shot, even the editing of Coppola was not able to bring the already implemented plot to a new qualitative level.
It should also be noted that in the film there are quite a lot of dialogues on the correctness of understanding (translation) of which the general perception of the film by a non-English-speaking viewer depends. Therefore, if you can not watch this work in the original language, then the search for a copy with a high-quality translation should pay close attention.
7 out of 10
In recent years, films whose action unfolds in outer space come out well if four pieces a year, or even less, but fortunately it was not always so and at the turn of the century there were many paintings devoted to this topic, and which are loved by many. In memory immediately come “Space truckers”, “Star landing” and “Aliens”. Oh, don't tell me, it was a wonderful time. And today, I'm going to talk about a film that came out fourteen years ago that tells the story of astronauts facing the unknown. So this is a supernova.
The distant future. A medical ship is plying a sick theater ... er, I mean, outer space. At the same time, the crew of the medical ship does not pursue any specific goal and they sail through the endless ocean of stars just because they want to. What a great job! I also want to spend all day spitting on the ceiling and get a solid jackpot for it. But as they say to want is not harmful, it is harmful not to want. So on board the spacecraft are six slackers, five people with medical education and one unsociable military who suffers from drug addiction. Oh! Could he be the patient to be taken to Ganymede? Noah, the military, despite his love for hard drugs (the film does not show how the hero of James Spader takes “magic pills”, but the viewer is a gullible person, so let’s take his word for it) is the deputy captain of this wonderful ship. What? Excuse me, what? The deputy captain on the medical ship is a military dummy, unable to get along with people and suffering from drug addiction? What other story will the writers of this film tell me? Maybe somewhere there is a small artifact that once on a habitable planet is able to destroy this very planet, and in its place to build something new? Hey! I was just thinking!
And yes, this movie reminded me from the beginning of a house of cards ready to collapse at the slightest blow of wind. And I could still blame a lot on the fact that the director of this picture would be a person with little experience or it would be his debut in a big movie, but the fact is that this picture had as many as three directors, two of whom are rightfully considered masters of their craft. And since the film was shot by professionals, then the demand for it should be appropriate.
Well, let's start from afar, namely from the engine of the ship. First, the viewer does not even try to explain how this thing works, and how people were able to move at the speed of light. And no, I'm not asking the characters to spend an hour and a half talking about the engines and how it works. I don't need this. I just want to hear the characters say with confidence that these engines were built on technology provided by friendly aliens. All. Because when in works of art, it does not matter whether it is a book or a film, people are confident in the technologies they use, then the viewer himself is confident in them, and if there is no, even a little clear explanation of what is happening, then how can one feel the atmosphere of the picture? Second, this engine is dangerous and uses its crew to play Russian roulette. In other words, everything can go well, or it may happen that all the crew members will imprint on the wall ... *trying to contain the laughter * Lord and lady, imagine this picture - a spaceship with fifteen thousand colonists on board enters into a hyperjump and upon arrival at the destination, it turns out that half of the passengers were imprinted into the walls or into each other. And you know, this is a clever way to solve the problem of overpopulation, yes.
The next problem with this film is that I haven’t been able to define the genre. This is not a drama, because all that worries the characters of the picture is with whom to fuck and the death of team members our heroes take for granted. This is not a horror film, since there are no scenes of agonizing anticipation and the characters themselves are devoid of both characters and any distinctive features, and therefore you do not worry about their fate. This is not a fantastic action movie, since there is actually no action in the picture, and the one that is staged is completely primitive. This is not a black comedy, because everything that happens in the film is presented with done seriousness and none of the characters will even try to joke along the way. This is a film outside genres and categories. A film in which the very idea is frank nonsense, and the actors do not even try to play. It’s a movie in which the ship’s AI has emotions in its voice, and that’s all there is to say about it. This is a film that can only take up your time and leave a feeling of deep bewilderment, so I strongly recommend watching another, good movie.
3 out of 10
Three directors, two of whom during their lifetime are listed as classics (Walter Hill and Francis Ford Coppola), huge as in the 2000th year 90 million budget, actors, staying at that time almost at the peak of popularity and popular plot, which both before ("Through the horizon") and after ("Pandorium") enjoyed considerable popularity among fans of fiction - all this was to make the project the most successful corporation through the beginning of the new year. The main problem of the picture is that it is shot completely without a soul. As you know, the main work on the project was led by Walter Hill (producer of the series about “Aliens”), but apparently he was not at all interested in working on a fantastic plot that develops not in the universe of his franchise. The studio threw to finalize the project of the brilliant, but lost the former ardor Coppola, as well as Jack Sholder, who once noted the direction of “Nightmare on Elm Street 2” (it is worth admitting – not the best in the series, but gained popularity). But neither the refinement of many scenes, nor re-editing, nor special effects could interest the viewer with a potentially intriguing plot. The picture turned out fresh and only. And all the mysteries revealed in the finale cause only a feeling of dissatisfaction.
So, the plot describes the last expedition of the rescue spacecraft Nightingale. This old ship scours the universe in search of distressed shuttles. The crew includes Captain Marley (Robert Forster), Senior Physician Evers (Angella Bassett), computer specialist Benge (Wilson Cruz), as well as medical technicians Danica (Robin Tanney) and Yuzy (Lou Diamond Phillips). Also at the last minute, security specialist Nick Vanzant (James Spader) arrives on the ship, who will later become the lead crew member. Carrying its usual watch, the ship receives a distress signal from an abandoned lunar mine located near the Blue Star, which in the near future should absorb all space and time around it. Due to the remoteness of the colony, the captain decides to be transported to his destination using teleports, which are incredibly dangerous if improperly operated. Arriving at the scene, the heroes take on board the only surviving inhabitant of the mines, Larson (Peter Facinelli), who causes the members of Nightingale fear of his defiant behavior. However, the greatest danger is still not Larson, but an unknown cargo that was with him: an unknown artifact that emits inexplicable radiation and affects people in the most extraordinary way. But what is it and does it harm humanity? You will know this when you look at it.
... But only solving the mystery of the artifact after watching the whole film is not surprising. The problem with this film is that it is not interesting. The authors, of course, tried to reveal the characters of each crew member a little wider and revealed to us the difficulties of the development of the society of the future (for the birth of a child you need official permission from the authorities), but in the framework of a fantastic thriller we are offered rather scant material. The picture clearly looms one negative character, Larson, with the problem of which the characters are trying to figure out. But we do not feel the real tension of the relationship, we do not want to believe in the real danger of the villain, who looks like an arrogant young man, and not a genius of evil. Also, visual effects can be attributed to the minus, which, despite the large production budget, were outdated even at the time of the film’s release in 2000. For lovers of eroticism, I note the fact that there are quite a lot of shots with naked actors (especially with the participation of Robin Tunney). Of course, the scenes are erotic (in the best sense of the word), beautiful, and they do not even get out of the general narrative, but in our free age, it is quite difficult to surprise such people.
In the end, I want to say that “Supernova” was really born in agony and this resulted in such an ambiguous result. I can not say that the result is a failure, but it is absolutely impossible to admire the picture. For fans of fantastic thrillers, it is still worth getting acquainted with "Supernova", for everyone else it is better to miss it.
I watched this film as part of the series Prometheus (2012), Event Horizon (1997), Sunshine (2007), and Pandorum (2007). Of all the named "Supernova" was the most pleasant.
We are not shown a team of idiots and hysterics, which flew to nowhere and commits some random actions. On the contrary, the characters have logic - which is rare in Hollywood movies. This one raises the picture above other similar films.
It should be noted a very pleasant performance of the actors. And a solid, not losing the presence of spirit captain, and a charming bastard-marauder, and a girl-doctor with a dark past – all succeeded, it is pleasant to look at the characters. Especially successful image Sweetie - the program of the ship, whose voice adds a fair share of the atmosphere (probably in translation spoiled - I do not know).
The third is the environment. There are no beasts jumping out from around the corner, endless darkness, inappropriate special effects. The ship turned out to be extremely aesthetic, the same applies to space, combat scenes, erotic elements.
“Supernova” is definitely not a masterpiece and does not have to see, but leaves a pleasant aftertaste and “holds” throughout the viewing.
6 out of 10