I thought I would comment on this one, because I thought it was one of the most God-awful movies to come out in 1998. It is by far the worst Michael Crichton-based movie yet. Perhaps it's because I had high hopes (the book is one of my favorites), but I cannot remember the last time I saw a movie as jarbled, disorganized, and ultimately non-interesting as this one.
This is a special effects movie with no special effects. The most high-tech shots are the opening credits, for God's sake! The plot requires (spoiler warning) an underwater habitat, a gigantic submerged spaceship, a humongous alien sphere, several underwater creatures and finally a giant squid attack. All of these elements are handled with incredible incompetence. The habitat is filled entirely with grey---the navy is smart enough to put color in habitats like this, to keep people from going crazy. Nobody wants to spend much time in a place like this, especially a movie audience. The squid attack is so bad its laughable---we never see the squid! Imagine the T-Rex scene in Jurrasic Park if it began with a tree shaking and then stopped. In Sphere, we basically get a blip on the radar screen, then the camera moves around a lot.
The writers try to remain faithful to the plot, but get so many critical points wrong that the whole things falls apart long before we see any squids. Its almost as if they read certain chapters of the book, then tried to guess what the rest was about. The final act, when all is explained, made perfect sense to me in the book, but in hopelessly incomprehensible in the movie. And the ending takes a *major* turn from the book---what was that about! I have no trouble when movies make intelligent changes from their inspirations, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Barry Levinson is a good director, and I'm sure he will make a better movie some day. Perhaps he should stick to comedy. Or perhaps he thought he would need to do a big-budget movie to go along with the indie hit Wag the Dog. Either way, he gets a crucial point wrong here: What made the book Sphere so compelling to read wasn't squids or jellyfish, but our fascination with the Sphere itself---Where did it come from? What is its purpose? Neither the book nor the movie answers those questions completely, but the difference is the movie never seems to care.
This is a special effects movie with no special effects. The most high-tech shots are the opening credits, for God's sake! The plot requires (spoiler warning) an underwater habitat, a gigantic submerged spaceship, a humongous alien sphere, several underwater creatures and finally a giant squid attack. All of these elements are handled with incredible incompetence. The habitat is filled entirely with grey---the navy is smart enough to put color in habitats like this, to keep people from going crazy. Nobody wants to spend much time in a place like this, especially a movie audience. The squid attack is so bad its laughable---we never see the squid! Imagine the T-Rex scene in Jurrasic Park if it began with a tree shaking and then stopped. In Sphere, we basically get a blip on the radar screen, then the camera moves around a lot.
The writers try to remain faithful to the plot, but get so many critical points wrong that the whole things falls apart long before we see any squids. Its almost as if they read certain chapters of the book, then tried to guess what the rest was about. The final act, when all is explained, made perfect sense to me in the book, but in hopelessly incomprehensible in the movie. And the ending takes a *major* turn from the book---what was that about! I have no trouble when movies make intelligent changes from their inspirations, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Barry Levinson is a good director, and I'm sure he will make a better movie some day. Perhaps he should stick to comedy. Or perhaps he thought he would need to do a big-budget movie to go along with the indie hit Wag the Dog. Either way, he gets a crucial point wrong here: What made the book Sphere so compelling to read wasn't squids or jellyfish, but our fascination with the Sphere itself---Where did it come from? What is its purpose? Neither the book nor the movie answers those questions completely, but the difference is the movie never seems to care.