Sphere (film)
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| Sphere | |
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 Sphere Movie Poster |
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| Directed by | Barry Levinson |
| Produced by | Barry Levinson |
| Written by | Michael Crichton (novel) Kurt Wimmer (adaptation) Stephen Hauser & Paul Attanasio (screenplay) |
| Starring | Dustin Hoffman Sharon Stone Samuel L. Jackson Liev Schreiber Peter Coyote |
| Music by | Elliot Goldenthal |
| Cinematography | Adam Greenberg |
| Editing by | Stu Linder |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | February 13, 1998 |
| Running time | 129 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $80,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $37,020,277[1] |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Sphere is a 1998 science fiction / thriller film, starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson. Sphere was based on the 1987 novel Sphere by Michael Crichton. The film was released in the United States on February 13, 1998.
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[edit] Plot
In the middle of the South Pacific in the near future, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, an alien spacecraft is discovered by the U.S. Navy. The thickness of coral growth on it suggests that it has been there for a few hundred years. A team made up of a marine biologist, a mathematician, an astrophysicist, a psychologist and a member of the U.S. Navy is tasked with investigating the spaceship. The team are housed in a state-of-the-art underwater living environment called the Habitat during their stay on the ocean floor.
Upon entering the spaceship, the team made two startling discoveries. The first is that the ship is American, and was in service in the future, gathering objects from around the galaxy to bring back to Earth, until an "Unknown (Entry) Event" takes place. However the exact year from when the apparently American spaceship came from cannot be verified. This is due to the date format which only indicates the last two digits of the year, 06/21/43, could indicate an infinite possible time from the future. Harry then concludes that the ship has travelled from 50 years in the future: 2043.
The second find is a large perfect sphere held inside the ship which has very unusual properties.
Ted (Liev Schreiber) hypothesizes that the unknown event in the ship's log was the ship inadvertently crashing into a black hole, which propelled it several hundred years backwards through time.
Harry (Samuel L. Jackson) then comes to the conclusion that they will all die on the ocean floor, because if the trip through the hole that happened in the future was called an "Unknown Event", then the team never made it back to the surface to tell anyone about it. This becomes the premise of the film.
After this discovery, a massive surface storm drives them to cover on the sea floor for one week. The group then faces a series of crises, including a giant squid, electrical fires and water snakes, which are all believed to be the work of an alien intelligence, which is called 'Jerry'.
Over the course of the film various members of the team are killed off until only Harry (Samuel L. Jackson), Norman (Dustin Hoffman) and Beth (Sharon Stone) remain. At this point, they realize that all three have entered the Sphere, that it has given them the power to manifest their thoughts into reality, and that all the disasters that had been plaguing them were the result of manifestations of the worst parts of their own minds. The entity 'Jerry' turns out to be Harry's subconscious communicating with them through their computer system while Harry is asleep.
At that point, Beth's suicidal thoughts manifest themselves as arming explosives that were brought along to clear away the coral, and the remaining team is forced to leave the Habitat. As they sit down in the cockpit of the mini-sub in which they are to escape, they suddenly find themselves on the bridge of the spaceship. In the ensuing climactic scene, they run through an ever-changing labyrinth inside the ship, finally succeeding to fight off the illusion and return to reality, in which Norman punches the mini-sub's emergency surfacing button just in time. The explosives go off and destroy the Habitat and the spaceship, but the Sphere itself remains undamaged.
The film ends with the three deciding to use their powers to erase their own memories before being debriefed, in order to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Thus, Harry's paradox, in which they are alive yet no one has learned about the "unknown event", is resolved. As they erase their own memories of the "unknown event", the Sphere is seen emerging from the ocean and flying off into space at the end of the movie.
[edit] Reception
It is noteworthy that the film was considered a disappointment to many fans of Michael Crichton's novel. The film drifts away from the book in several places. In an interview, Dustin Hoffman stated that they were not ready to release that film and that there was so much more that they wanted to do with it, but simply had no ability to do so due to a time constraint.[citation needed]
Frederic Brussat stated Sphere was "a sci-fi thriller that presents a riveting and rounded anatomy of fear." However, other reviewers were less complimentary; David Steritt claimed Sphere amounted to little more than "a run-of-the-mill fantasy, competently produced but disappointingly familiar." while Chris Grunden stated "This journey is a road to nowhere."
Sphere currently holds a 17% fresh rating at rottentomatoes, with an average score of 4.4/10.[2]
[edit] Soundtrack
| Sphere | |||||
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| Soundtrack by Elliot Goldenthal | |||||
| Released | February 24th, 1998 | ||||
| Genre | Classical Avante garde Modernist |
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| Length | 35:36 | ||||
| Label | Varese Sarabande, Cat.VSD-5913 |
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| Producer | Elliot Goldenthal | ||||
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The score for Sphere was composed by Elliot Goldenthal. It is a very dramatic, dark and ethereal piece. It is one of his more straight forward soundtracks, although it is still considered original and inventive. Although the overall mood is atmospheric and pensive, there are dramatic, anthemic and shattering pieces, usually for the action parts such as "Event Entry 6-21-43" and "Manifest Fire". The style of the whole score is very similar to that of Alien³ (also composed by Goldenthal), many familiar motifs occour throughout the soundtrack.
[edit] Track listing
- Pandora's Fanfare (1:17)
- Main Titles (2:49)
- Event Entry 6-21-43 (0:53)
- The Gift (1:42)
- Sphere Discovery (2:08)
- Visit to a Wreckage (1:58)
- Water Snake (2:36)
- Terror Adagio (3:24)
- Wave (3:18)
- Fear Retrieval (3:48)
- Andante (2:20)
- Manifest Fire (3:48)
- Manifest3 (3:47)
- Their Beast Within (1:44)
[edit] References
- ^ Sphere (1998). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2007-09-24.
- ^ Sphere (1998). Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2008-02-17.
[edit] External links
- Sphere at the Internet Movie Database
- Sphere at Allmusic
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