t's the 22nd century. Emergency Medical Rescue Vessel Nightingale
229 receives a distress signal from a distant, uncharted section of the
galaxy. The Nightingale's crew includes Captain
Marley (Forster), a gruff man who enjoys watching cartoons; co-pilot
Nick Vanzant (Spader), a recovering drug addict; medical officer Kaela
Evers (Bassett); a passionately dating pair of medical technicians
(Phillips and Tunney); and an engineer who seems to be in
love with the ship's computer, "Sweetie." Committed to help, they dimension-jump light years across
time and space to rescue the lone survivor of a supposed space station catastrophe: a suspicious fellow named Troy
Larson (Facinelli). Unbeknownst to the crew of the Nightingale, Troy
has smuggled aboard a dangerous alien artifact, which looks sort of like an irradiated lava lamp.
And if that weren't bad enough, the ship and its crew find themselves
caught in the gravitational pull of a giant star about to go supernova--the
most massive explosion in the universe. They lost most of their fuel and
poor Captain Marley in the dimension jump. And with Marley dead, the
less experienced Vanzant finds himself in charge of this ragtag team, with
only hours to devise their escape.
To make matters much worse, they soon discover that Troy's alien
artifact contains some sort of material from the "ninth dimension" that is turning him into a monster. (His physical
changes take place with the aid of computer-enhanced morphing
techniques and some very Lost Boys-style special effects makeup,
complete with scary contact lenses.) As Troy's strength becomes
superhuman, he becomes more evil. From
then on, it's a horrific game of cat-and-mouse as
the crew struggles to stay alive and get the heck out of there before the
whole quadrant blows.
Going down with the ship
Watching this movie, it quickly becomes clear that
supernovas aren't the only things in the galaxy that blow big-time! A
confused and muddled film from the get-go, Supernova quickly devolves
into a monster-chase, Alien rip-off that will make the audience glad it runs less
than an hour and a half.
Though the film is credited as being directed by Thomas Lee, there really
is no such person. Action director Walter Hill (48 Hours) actually
called the shots during most of production. That was after he
replaced the original director, and before he left himself. Can anyone say
abandon ship?
The fact that there was not really anyone in charge of
Supernova is readily apparent. But what's more surprising is the
fact that a major studio would commit over $60 million to film a
story that is so unoriginal, uninspired and unconvincing to begin with; or
that someone along the way didn't have the good sense to pull the plug. To be fair to the production personnel, the technical aspects of the
film--lighting, sound, etc.--are fine. And the special effects are okay,
though nothing that hasn't been seen before.
It's agonizing to watch this group of usually competent actors spout
inane dialogue and jockey to have sex with each other while the predictable
plot unfolds. And even the sex isn't very good, since the studio re-edited the originally
R-rated film to a PG-13 just before release in a desperate attempt
to squeeze every last dime out of even the youngest moviegoers.
Unfortunately for MGM, a few dimes are about all this Superturkey will
collect at the box-office.
