ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

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______________ Lost in Space (1998) - Trailer


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Remake/update of the sixties sci-fi TV show, this starts out promisingly, in the future year of 2058 on Earth, but it fizzles out in the last half.

The Robinson family and their pilot, Don West, gear up to go on a space expedition in the first act, to find greener pastures other than the over-populated, polluted Earth. But they end up on a huge derelict spaceship in deep space, encountering metallic spiders.

As in the TV show, there's a stowaway — the devious Dr. Zachary Smith (top-billed Gary Oldman).

This all is not that bad if perhaps pedestrian as far as space adventures go. Then the film tries to be ambitious, presenting some kind of time anomaly problem. There are these bubbles of time which contain different time periods, so we see future, older versions of Will Robinson and Dr. Smith.

Smith, in this future version, has turned into a manlike spider, so the film veers towards horrific story elements. The film doesn't really go anywhere and seems pointless in these later scenes.

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I was surprised at the serious tone of the film — I'm guessing it tried to emulate the earliest episodes of the TV series, when it was straightforward and without the camp. But it becomes dreary and even depressing by the conclusion.

William Hurt & Mimi Rogers play the parents, with Matt LeBlanc (of Friends fame) as Major Don West. Heather Graham and Lacey Chabert play the daughters, with Jack Johnson & Jared Harris as the two versions of Will.

The filmmakers blew a great chance by declining Bill Mumy for the role of the older Will, and this sort of spells out the overall lackluster tone of the whole film, a lack of energy and imaginative spirit. The robot, of course, is an upgraded, nineties version of the famous TV robot, though a version of the old one does show up sort of in a cameo (see pic above; for other cameos, see Trivia).

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Lost Trivia: Cameos by several cast members of the original TV series: June Lockhart as a holographic school principal, Marta Kristen & Angela Cartwright as reporters, and Mark Goddard as a high-ranking military man — Major West's commander. Though this was not a huge grosser, ending as the 30th-highest grossing film of 1998, it is famous for being the first film to knock Titanic out of the #1 weekend spot, where it had been for several months.

BoG's Score: 6 out of 10

_________ sedition raiders attack the hypergate


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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Pow]

The producers didn't decline Bill Mumy's offer to appear in the LIS film. In an interview he said that both he & Jonathan Harris refused to participate in the movie.

This film had awesome special/visual FX. The updated design for the Jupiter II was excellent. And I like the homage to the TV show's JII by having it serve as the lift-off craft encasing the newer iteration.Likable cast was put together for the movie.

The sets were terrific as were the crew's spacesuits.

The updated robot was very sharp looking...until they decided it would be cute to have its damaged headpiece replaced with the one used on the TV show. The holographic interface that Will uses to operate the robot was brilliant.

The alien creature that joins the crew should have been a concept left on the pages of the script.

They had the germ of an intriguing story idea within the script but it was not executed well at all.

The scenes dealing with the nasty spider-like life forms was truly creepy.

And the finale of watching the JII navigate through the imploding planet was a rip-roaring roller coaster of a ride.

One of those films that could have been great but missed the target.

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ Dick Tufeld reprises his role from Lost in Space (1965) as the voice of the Robot.

Note from me: Mr. Tufeld turned out to be an even better "robot voice" than we thought. His movie version sounds so commanding and impressive!

~ All principal actors were contracted to a three-picture option. The film failed to recoup its budget in North America, so plans for a new franchise were scrapped.

Note from me: We all know about the problems with the film which torpedo its success, but if those problems hadn't existed, I'd love to see a sequel with the same fine cast.

This next item reveals details about the unmade sequel.

~ According to the screenwriter, if this movie did receive a sequel it would have been about the Robinson family making it to Alpha Prime.

However, they'd discover that Alpha Prime is already populated with humans because they previously went through a wormhole in the first movie that sends them into the future.

There would also have been a sub-plot with Judy Robinson creating a cure for Dr. Smith to prevent the spider infection from turning him into Spider Smith and Penny ending up receiving the same color-changing abilities as Blarp has.

Note from me: The concept sounds ambitious and interesting, but I don't see how Judy could cure Dr. Smith, because he was devoured by the baby spiders.

~ Blarp was originally going to be an animatronic puppet in the film, except the puppet didn't look real enough so it was replaced with a CG puppet.

Note from me: Wait . . . what? They didn't use the puppet because it didn't look real enough?

Geez, did they actually think the CGI piece of crap looked the least bit real . . . much less appealing in any way whatsoever?

~ Ib Melchior was given screen credit and worked as special advisor to Mark W. Koch in Lost in Space (1998) because he was the creator of the original "Space Family Robinson" (1960) - a screenplay, which became Irwin Allen's Lost in Space (1965) TV series.

Melchior was never credited for the creation, until the details were exposed in Ed Shifres' "Space Family Robinson: The True Story" (Windsor House - 1996) and re-published as "Lost in Space: The True Story" (Windsor House - 1998).

The book was extremely controversial and earned Melchior a monetary settlement and recognition as the creator of what became Lost in Space. The book was critically acclaimed with excellent reviews from Hollywood notable writers.

Note from me: This is a picture of Pow's home library — and I'm sure he has that wonderful book somewhere in there so he can share its info with us!





~ William Hurt and Mimi Rogers were 47 & 41 respectively at the time of production. The actors who played Will & Penny were 10 & 15 respectively.

However, the actress who played Judy was too old for her role. She was 27, making her only 14 years younger than her mother and 12 years older than her oldest sibling.

Note from me: Seriously? Heather Graham was TOO OLD for her role!

Dear lord, even though her actual age was 27, she looked just fine as the daughter of Mimi Rogers — whose actual age of 41 is equally irrelevant! If Mrs. Robinson was supposed to be older than 41, does that mean she was TOO YOUNG for her role?

Whoever wrote the above IMDB trivia item doesn't seem to realize that the actual age of an actor doesn't matter if he-or-she looks remotely like the right age for the role. And even when they don't, the audience is very forgiving.

I'm sure the folks who loved Grease back in 1978 weren't terribly annoyed by the fact that the entire cast was a full decade passed high school age (and looked it). The audience still managed to enjoy this blockbuster hit!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I just love my library!!!

"Lost In Space" had a $80,000,000 budget.

Filming began on March 3, 1997 at London's Shepperton Studios.

Industrial Light & Magic & Jim Henson's Creature Shop provided the special & visual effects.

Given all the astonishing looking tech in this film. I don't think we'll have it by 2058. The writer should have set this movie much farther ahead in time.

The Jim Henson Company must have created the audio~animatronic alien Blarp for the film.

Apparently it wasn't deemed realistic enough so they replaced it with CGI. Lol, because the CGI Blarp was SO much more lifelike!?!

Given the awesome puppets that the Henson Company has created for film and TV over the years, I would at least like to have seen the Blarp they came up with for LIS.

On opening weekend, LIS debuted at number one at the box office which usurped James Cameron's "Titanic" that had held the number one spot for 15 weeks.

LIS was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award but lost, in a three-way-tie, to Godzilla, Psycho, The Avengers ( the British TV espionage series adapted to the silver screen).

The production company had hoped to begin a LIS film franchise with this movie. Later on there were plans to then do a live-action television show, as well as an animated series.

Those plans all vanished when the feature film did not live up to its promise at the all important box office.

FOX made a LIS TV/pilot-movie, wasn't very good.

The Netflix LIS series is outstanding!

[Krel]

There are photos of the puppet Blarp in scenes with the cast, I always assumed is was used as a guide for the CGI Blarp which gave the cast something to hold and interact with.

The Fox pilot was never finished. It was originally going to go to series, but then the Producer dropped out and they couldn't find another. I find the Netflix LIS storyline to be closer to the Fox pilot than the TV series, but with robots instead of aliens.

The Fox pilot used to be on youtube, and may still be.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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I loved the first season of Netflix's Lost in Space, but I was less enthusiast about the second one.

I haven't seen the third one yet, so any advice the members of All Sci-Fi can give me on the subject would be greatly appreciated.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)