MOVIE REVIEW: Lost in Space (1998)
When I was younger, I favored The A-Team, Airwolf and Knight Rider over most of the shows of yesteryear. I gave some concessions to old comedies, and approached old sci-fi with an open mind. That’s how I became a closet Trekkie/Trekker. While I did enjoy The Outer Limits and Wild Wild West, one sci-fi show never caught my attention: the 1965 Irwin Allen TV show Lost in Space.
I know the story of the show: a family of astronauts in the future of 1997(!) took a trip to space to do something and they got lost with a gay-coded weirdo hiding in their backseat. Oh, and the little boy astronaut has a robot. They meet aliens and whatnot, and have a general family existence while being… LOST IN SPACE.
Perhaps it was the corny robot talking about DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER all the time and the generally boring stories that filled the scripts of the show, but without the flamboyant Dr. Smith’s alliterations the show “Lost in Space” would have been extremely unbearable. Thanks to such a villain, the memory of the show lasted well into the 1990s and even spawned a dark and gritty FOX reboot pilot in 2004 and a multi-racial Netflix version in 2018. It even remained favorable enough to allow a movie to be made about it in 1998.
The movie shares a similar premise to the show: patriarch Prof. John Robinson (William Hurt, Captain America: Civil War, “Frank Herbert’s Dune” [TV-SyFy]), his wife Dr. Maureen Robinson (Mimi Rogers, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery), his single-minded grown daughter Judy (Heather Graham, Boogie Nights, Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me), troublesome young daughter Penny (Lacey Chabert, “Party of Five” [TV-FOX], Mean Girls, Black Christmas [2006]) and little genius son Will Robinson (Jack Johnson) are out on a mission to find a new world for the people of Earth.
Earthlings polluted the planet to the point of near-ruin, but Prof. Robinson invented a “hypergate” — a device that works like a space wormhole — to shorten the trip to a pristine new planet light-years away called Alpha One. The professor and his family will travel for 10 years in cryo-stasis to Alpha One in the experimental Jupiter 2 starship, piloted by hot-shot fighter pilot Maj. Don West (Matt LeBlanc, “Friends” [TV-NBC]), then build the other hypergate at Alpha One to bridge the distance. While the mission begins to look more like a family outing, all that changes as an unknown entity gets aboard the Jupiter 2 undetected.
Said entity is Dr. Smith (Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour, The Professional, The Fifth Element), tasked by a global seditionist group to turn the onboard robot into a killing machine to wipe out the Robinson family. He doesn’t get very far and has to help the Robinsons and the Major stop the robot. By the time they do that, the ship’s already off course and headed for the sun. They escape the sun’s gravity using the onboard hyperdrive. There’s no way to navigate in hyperdrive, so they roll the dice…and that’s when the movie begins to get interesting.
The scenes and sets up until this point have been great, but from here on out it’s absolutely amazing. Against the backgrounds there’s action, adventure, science and mystery. At the end of the entire story, there’s a lesson to be learned and more adventures to experience as the credits roll. It leaves you wanting more than what’s given. For me it goes beyond the movie’s contents because this movie is yet another glimpse into the future that will never exist.
A sad thing these movie futures; so grand in their scope while so alluring in their promise of prosperity. Yet I know that the movie was a work of fiction beyond any shadow of a doubt, because the government actually listened to — and backed! — a scientist with a halfway decent idea that didn’t involve killing another person.
If this movie — nicknamed “the Iceberg” in Hollywood industry circles— took out Titanic at the box office, then it’s worth seeing.
CHOICE CUTS (spoilers ahoy):
- The Jupiter-2 was an awesome piece of industrial design in action at the time. It’s a saucer ship unlike anything I’d ever seen before in science fiction. I was impressed by everything I saw right down to the Jupiter 2 interfaces, inside and out.
- The hyperdrive’s ability to become the deus ex machina to bust the Robinsons out of problems they have is notable.
- The Robot (voiced by veteran narrator Dick Tufeld, “Thundarr the Barbarian” [TV-NBC], “Garfield & Friends” [TV-CBS]) comes in the brand-new version and the rebuilt one, which strangely looks like the original Robot from the TV series.
- Several other members of the original 1965 series show up: June Lockhart, Angela Cartwright, Marta Jensen, and Mark Goddard are there in other roles to see their counterparts off into new adventures. Sadly Billy Mumy — the original Will Robinson —did not appear.
- STEALTH CAMEO: A young Lennie James (AMC’s “The Walking Dead”, Blade Runner 2049) shows up as Major West’s fighter-pilot buddy.
- The spacesuits during the flight from the alien spiders still take my breath away. The sliding mechanism for the flexible head armor is amazing and animated well.
- The alien planet as it changes with the waves of time is really great, as does the escape from the alien planet. It’s one of the wildest ideas for an escape ever. The blend of practical and CG still holds up nearly 25 years later, in my opinion.
- Pollution destroying Earth by mankind’s hand? Sounds familiar…especially when the word “climate change” is in the film. And if it’s not spoken in the film, then the results certainly are present.
- The polluted cities of Earth shown have a knock-off Blade Runner quality to them. The only difference is the domes where humanity lives.
PRICELESS QUOTES:
As Major West (LeBlanc) launches the Jupiter-2, he says as a callback to his role in the mission:
“And the monkey flips the switch.”
The Robinson family shares a tender moment of love as they are reunited, but Major West brings it upon himself to remind them of the present issue:
“You know, the planet IS breaking up around us.”
After escaping the sun’s deadly gravity pull via an uncontrollable hyperdrive, Penny Robinson (Chabert) states the obvious:
“We’re lost… aren’t we?”
Dr Robinson (Rogers) walks in on Major West and Prof. Robinson (Hurt) having a squabble, so she intervenes with acute observations:
Am I interrupting something? No really, I think you two should go ahead and slug it out. I mean, here we are on a an alien world and you boys want to get into a pissing contest? Please, go for it. I’ll have Judy down here in a heartbeat to declare you both unfit, and I’ll take over this mission. Now I don’t want to hear another word from you, is THAT clear? NOT another word. Better. Now if you’ve finished hosing down the decks with testosterone, I suggest you come with me. I may have found a way to get us off this planet.
This movie isn’t the best, but it comes pretty damned close.
Originally published at http://gedren56.blogspot.com.
