Review of Supernova (2000) by Aric C — 29 Oct 2010

"All hell is about to break loose".

"In the farthest reaches of space, something has gone terribly wrong.".

Really bad sci-fi/action film, it wasted a really talented cast. More interesting than the film itself would have been the making of the film: This was the first post-Alan Smithee film. For many years, a director who for whatever reason wished not to be credited for a movie would have his name replaced with the name "Alan Smithee". After the film An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997), the name was too well known, and so the Director's Guild of America decided to replace the name "Alan Smithee" with the name "Thomas Lee". Reportedly, this was shelved for some time by the studio, and upon its release it was reported that the studio, extremely unhappy with Walter Hill's completed product, called in Francis Ford Coppola to "re-edit" the film.

Nick: I'm in favor of order. I'd say right now order is up by one point with one minute left, and chaos has the ball.

Dr. Kaela Evers: Whoever they are, they're as smart as God and a lot less nice.

Nick: [about the alien object] I'm not convinced we shouldn't just blow it out of the closest airlock.

Karl Larson: You can't be serious! do you have any idea what your saying?

Nick: I'm saying I don't know what the hell it is, and nothing you've shown me or told me indicates that you do either. Maybe it is an alien artifact, maybe its a magic trick. Maybe its a distillation of knowledge from an advanced civilization, maybe its just a toy an alien's child toy.

Danika: Or an alien sex object, it looks like...

Nick: [Interrupts] Or maybe it was something so dangerous, that the only way someone could finally get rid of it was by burying it... maybe... it has no business being on this ship.

Karl Larson: Stars die so we may live. We die so stars may be reborn.

Dr. Kaela Evers: When you said you'de been in worse situations than this, were you lying?

Nick: No. When we were falling toward the planet and the engines cut out? That was worse.

Karl Larson: I think you're making a big mistake, Captian.

Nick: [spins on his heels] Oh, yeah? You want to clarify that?

Karl Larson: I'm offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, and you're passing it up for all of us.

Nick: For all of us? Your opportunity of a lifetime has cost us the life of our ship's captian, it has endangered the lives of this crew, and it's wasting our critical time. All this for some half-baked delusional belief that you'll make yourself rich. There is no opportunity here, and there is no us.

Nick: [Nick notices a robot ambling about erratically] God, what happened to your robot?

Dr. Kaela Evers: Nothing.

Nick: Really? I hope "nothing" doesn't happen to me.