Details

Release year: 1997

Storyline

A rescue crew is tasked with investigating the mysterious reappearance of a spaceship that had been lost for seven years.

Top credits

Directors

Paul W.S. Anderson

Writers

Philip Eisner

Cast

Laurence Fishburne — Miller
Sam Neill — Weir
Kathleen Quinlan — Peters
Joely Richardson — Starck

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Did you know

• Jason Isaacs stated that for his character's death scene, the special effects crew created "an extraordinary latex model of me with every broken vein, every hair, mole, eye colour and stuff. My whole naked body hung up by hooks, gutted from neck to navel with all my organs pulled out." The plan was originally for DJ's entrails to be still dangling out of his suspended body, after which he was supposed to raise his head, showing that he was still alive, prompting Laurence Fishburne's character to shoot him in the head to put him out of his misery. "The shot when I was dead started inside my stomach, pulled out and pulled back. I think it was so disgusting [that test] audiences were either throwing up or swallowing down their sick, so instead the shot starts wide."

• (at around 5 mins) The shot where Sir Sam Neill stares out of a window which then pulls back to reveal he's on the deck of a space station orbiting Earth took the digital special effects house Cinesite 10 weeks to achieve. The shot lasts for 45 seconds and took nearly a third of the film's visual effects budget, because it was filmed using separate scale models of different size that had to match up perfectly. Director Paul W.S. Anderson said that the shot had to be re-done over 20 times before he was satisfied with it, and half-jokingly claimed that the man working on it had to take a year-long sabbatical afterwards to recuperate.

• Paul W.S. Anderson's initial cut of the film ran 130 minutes, and was so violent that both test audiences and the studio baulked at the finished product. Paramount ordered him to cut the film by 30 minutes and tone down some of the violence. Anderson has said he didn't have enough time for a proper re-edit, and believes he cut out 10 minutes too much. Although it was announced in 2012 that producer Lloyd Levin had found a VHS tape that might contain a full version of the film, Anderson revealed in 2017 that neither he nor Levin had seen it yet, as they have both been too busy to be in the same country with a VHS player. Although he believes that the condition of the copy will be too poor to use, Anderson has stated that he is still excited to see what's on it.