Customer Reviews

Supernova

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(42)

 

 

Best:

1) It really feels like you're in space and far from home.
2) The acting from everyone was amazingly good.
3) 9th dimentional matter is very cool as a concept. The special-effects rendition of what it looks like and how it effects humans is astonishing.
4) The indestructable man Carl (strengthened by the 9th dimentional matter), who just keeps coming no matter what you do to him (and they did a LOT), was simply eye-popping to watch.
5) The main spaceship's dimentia-drive (that seemed to be a less safe precursor to hyperspace or warp drive) was an interesting addition.
6) The deleted scenes are numerous and MUST-sees.
7) You get to see Robin Tunney topless twice (ha).

Worst:

1) The scientific jargon is a little hard to understand (or believe) sometimes.
2) The ending (even the alternate version) was predictable, but they threw in some conceptual touches to make you think - hmm.

Recommendation:

The price is good. Get it even if you aren't a huge sci-fi fan.

I actually really liked this movie, I thought it was fun, fairly intelligent, sexy, humorous, quite suspenseful and the special effects were pretty good too.

Okay so I am a fan of Angela Bassett and James Spader, and they were pretty hot in this movie you have to admit! Angela plays Dr Kaela Evers the ship's medical officer and James is the ship's hunky co-pilot Nick Vanzant who has a lustful eye on Kaela who isn't that interested in him much to his disappointment.

The action takes place on medical spaceship and were an alien artefact is secreted aboard by a miner the aforesaid medical spaceship and its crew rescue who unbeknown to them is slowly mutating into something not quite human courtesy of the alien artefact. There is also a ship's computer called Sweetie with a female persona who is pretty much running the show from a technology point of view and a star that is about to go supernova.

One by one the crew are picked off by the demented miner, who has mayhem on his mind, and soon only Spader and Bassett are left on the ship which is in danger of being sucked into the gravitational field of the crumbling star and there is only one life pod left and to share it means the possibility of Kaela and Nick's DNA merging together which it does partially, in that they both end up with one blue and one green eye but miracle of miracle's Kaela also ends up pregnant, a condition she never expected to be in!

All in all it is a pretty good sci-fi film, shame it was panned so much because it is well worth watching but I have noticed over the years I have been reviewing films that the more intelligent the sci-fi film on offer, the less likely it is appreciated by the "green slime and mega-blood and guts" brigade as I call them. You know who you are guys, if it isn't gung ho with no plot then you don't want to know!

Watch this film and enjoy, that is if you have a brain in your head that appreciates something that comes under, "intelligent" and "thoughtful", however if this is too much for your brain cells, give it a miss and watch something easier like Star Wars or Men in Black, great films that are lots of fun but totally lacking in anything remotely intelligent from beginning to end.

Seeing the R-Rated DVD version of SUPERNOVA magnifies the creative differences between the Motion Picture corporate mindset and the creative control of the Director. How? The DVD contains a little more non-frontal nudity and about twenty minutes of deleted scenes which if incorporated into the original theatrical release would have resulted in a totally difference film. The alternate ending conjures up memories of THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE and answers the question, where's the Supernova. The deleted scenes make this movie more complex by actually making key elements of the plot more visible. Synopsis: The medical rescue ship NIGHTINGALE "light-Jumps" to answer the distress calls of a mining planet. Upon arrival, they find the mining planet threatened by a "Blue Giant" (a sun going supernova). The ship is damaged coming out of the "jump" and now the rescuers' survival is threatened unless they can repair their ship and re-jump before the blue giant explodes. The reason for the distress call is a mystery to the crew until, one survivor is brought aboard carrying an alien artifact of unknown purpose and power. What follows can easily be called a non-threatening copy of ALIEN. BUT, then we view the deleted scenes (unfortunately grouped separately under DELETED SCENES) and the "copy" takes on new properties with questions answered, scenes extended to a point where they actually make sense, and what sounds to be a difference soundtrack with a little more HEAVY METAL (movie) influence. What Happened to this film? It could have been a classic if left uncut. Even the deleted scenes suggest additional film sequences were abandoned and/or not included on this DVD. I viewed this movie in standard format before watching it in widescreen (both offered on this DVD) and you are not missing much. However, hometheater sound at "rock your world level" is highy recommended. This is a movie worth watching again, even if its just to mentally place those deleted scenes within the running movie.

Very sharp sets, cool lighting, and interesting characters re-tell a suspenseful 'alien' tale; except that the intruder is a mutated trojan horse with a time bomb created by ETs (and script writers) who know something about Quantum Collapse and 9-dimensional matter. (Current super-string theory holds that present day matter {3 dimension plus time} is the result of a universal collapse of an earlier 9 dimensional {plus time} reality. See Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory (Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics)

The idea that advanced aliens would lay booby-traps for unsuspecting, potential competitors, and that the bait would be pretty crystals and super human strength is VERY original; not to mention that the results of unleashing such matter WOULD, in fact, cause a light-speed tidal wave that completely annihilated everything in it's path by recreating matter with 9 dimensional characteristics.

If that's not interesting enough, then enjoy the chess playing computer, Angela Bassett, Lou Diamond Phillips, or the really cool shots of space around a blue giant.

Remember: If you only saw the VHS version, you haven't seen the movie. The restored scenes on the DVD make the movie, and I can only guess that they must have been deleted by someone who thought they were too cerebral.

Minor complaint: The gratuitous nudity got a little silly.

The story is of the crew of a first aide spaceship, the Florence Nightingale, being lured into some faraway planetary system by some distress call. During the 'warp' to get to their destination, the mission's leader dies, and that lets the team to cope with what expects them there...

They rescue one guy and find out that he had discovered some kind of strange artifact on the planetoid. Little by little, a few things appear clearer: 1) The guy is not what he seemed at first (big surprise there...); 2) The artifact is not just a pretty trinklet (another big surprise...); 3) Somewhere, the artifact represents a menace and the guy they rescued will do all he can to protect it.

The story is actually clever, with undertones of some old Star Trek episodes, but much more realistically treated. The characters are quite full and interesting, even though some of them are mediocre personas (and second rate actors.) Finally, the special effects are great, thanks for the democratization of IT resources necessary to recreate weightlessness and space views.

I really loved this film. I'm a sucker for B-style sci-fi films and am a regular with SciFi Channel flicks like this. Plus, James Spader rocks! While the plot is thin at times, it's a great piece of sci-fi with some good special effects and a neat loner main character. A definite watcher!

This movie was awesome, 2nd to the best sci-fi movie of year 1999, 1st being Pitch Black. The trailer of this movie was a bit deceiving, after seeing it, it was a lot better then I thought. The special effects was excellent, the story was entertaining and interesting, the characters were good but there wasn't a whole lot of action. This is difinitely a movie worth getting in my collection.

This film has an interesting history. Principal photography was completed under director Walter Hill, but he left the project due to creative differences with a few of his bosses at MGM. Two other directors, one of them the once-great Francis Ford Coppola, were then asked to reshoot some scenes and edit it all into a comprehensible film. Screen credit for directing this mess is given to Thomas Lee, which is the new pseudonym the DGA is using for instances where the director doesn't want his name stamped on the awful film he helped create (Alan Smithee rest in peace). That story I just told was more interesting and entertaining than Supernova itself. It is a boring, vague film that develops subplots but never finishes them, showcases some genuinely good special effects that would have been much more at home in a better movie, and wastes the talents of some decent actors (Bassett, Spader, and Diamond Phillips really deserve better). Parts of it are kind of like a space porno movie where people have sex five minutes after meeting for the first time. Also, for those of you expecting it to be some kind of a disaster movie about a supernova, you will be disappointed; this is more of a murder-in-space story, like Alien except without the alien and everything else that made Alien great. And then there's the ending, which is more like just a random place where they decided to stop telling the story than an ending. This movie seriously is so bad you can't even make fun of it. Crow and Tom Servo would be rendered speechless. Seriously, unless you really like James Spader or really want to see Robin Tunney's breasts (she was the girl in End of Days and plays another thick-skulled bimbo here), my advice is to stay the hell away.

I would first like to start off by saying, before going into the movie today, I thought it was gonna blow chunks...hard...and that's not a euphemism. All I heard about this flick is bad, bad, bad.but those are professional critics, and I'm only 14. Director Walter Hill had disowned his film, and hid (I guess) under the pseudonym Thomas Lee. I also heard that this movie was in the can for a couple years (it was supposed to come out near Event Horizon's release date in 1997? It's not clear if that's true or not, though) until someone picked it up and finished editing it. What else could go wrong? Well, I didn't find out until today (January 16), when I had to drive 1 hour to see the movie. Will it be an hour I had to regret? Let's see...

I want to start out with the good things...very good visuals and sound. I watched it in a very new movie theater with Dolby Digital EX and stadium seating.can't get any better. The space shots were awesome. But that's not the entire movie, now is it? It had pretty decent acting, something you don't find very often in these spacey sci-fi movies. And then...um...well...there's not too much to add about the good things. Now, don't think I'm gonna trash this movie. The movie was way too short to develop a very good plot.about as long as The Blair Witch Project (I think 87 minutes not counting the credits?). It didn't focus too much on the oncoming supernova, rather the bad guy. The alien artifact they found was not completely explained...I was left wondering what the heck it was. Is it because I had to go to the bathroom during the movie to flush $5 down the toilet? Nah, it was way too confusing. A 9th dimension thingamabob inside 3rd dimension matter? Hmm. And, it was a little predictable, and that's not very good. I like spoiling movies before I go seeing them, but if I hadn't, it would still be predictable. Like aforementioned, it was too short to incorporate any good twists. The camera work was like NYPD Blue on a bad day! Too many light feedbacks, and it was really shaky. And there was a little too much sex in the movie. It kind of revolved around that aspect, especially the bad guy.

In the end, "Supernova" is not a spectacular movie, but if you want a little fun, check it out if you're into sci-fi flicks. Don't expect a mind-blower, though.

This film is pretty interesting. I was very impressed with the end sequence of the exploding supernova and the hyperspace warp drive sequence of the spaceship. If you get this DVD, watch that sequence in slow motion, frame-per-frame, then again at full speed. It's a very powerful and masterfully exectued sequence, especially when the screen turns black and silent for a few seconds. Such experimenal cinematography, when it works, as it does here, deserves more credit than many of the reviewers give it here. The storyline is unique enough. Alas, it may be too far-fetched for us to really grasp, however, this notion of one man embodying the very cosmos itself. But if you really think about it, we all have that power within us, we are all the offspring and basic stuff of stars...