Supernova

Plot synopsis:
Supernova chronicles the search-and-rescue patrol of a medical ship in deep space in the early 22nd century and its six-member crew, which includes captain and pilot A.J. Marley (Robert Forster), co-pilot Nick Vanzant (James Spader), medical officer Kaela Evers (Angela Bassett), medical technician Yerzy Penalosa (Lou Diamond Phillips), search and rescue paramedic Danika Lund (Robin Tunney) and computer technician Benjamin Sotomejor (Wilson Cruz). Aboard their vessel, the Nightingale 229, they receive an emergency distress signal coming from an ice mining operation on the moon Titan 37, more than 3,000 light-years away.
The crew answers the call and dimension-jumps — during which Captain Marley suffers fatal injuries due to a malfunction of the ship's equipment — arriving in the path of Titan 37's debris cloud, some of which damages the ship and causes the loss of 82 percent of its maneuvering fuel. Worse still, Titan 37 orbits a blue giant, and its high gravity field will pull the ship to the point where it will be incinerated in 17 hours, 12 minutes — which happens to be almost the same amount of time that the Nightingale 229 will need to recharge its jump drive, their only possible hope for escape. With only an 11-minute window for escape, the surviving crew soon find themselves in danger from the disturbing young man (Peter Facinelli) they rescue, and the mysterious alien artifact he has smuggled aboard. This artifact is analyzed by the ship's computer and is said to contain nine-dimensional matter.
It is ultimately discovered that the young man who called for rescue is actually Karl Larson, an old former lover of Kaela (it is implied they had an abusive relationship). Karl came into contact with the nine-dimensional matter after recovering the artifact. It somehow enabled him to acquire super-strength and supernatural healing abilities, and made him younger (such that Kaela did not recognize him). Karl murders most of the crew except Kaela and strands Nick on the mining platform. Karl unsuccessfully attempts to romantically reconcile with Kaela. Nick finds his way back to the medical ship through a rescue pod left on the mining platform, and a battle ensues between Nick and Karl. Karl is ultimately killed by Kaela using explosives placed near the alien artifact which Karl was obsessed with retrieving. The explosion ejects the artifact into space, hurtling it towards the blue giant.
With moments left before the dimension jump activates, Kaela and Nick place themselves into the only remaining dimensional stabilization chamber (Karl had destroyed all but one), which is the only thing that enables human beings to survive the ship's dimensional jump drive. The pods are meant to hold only one person; however, two subjects might be genetically mixed during the dimensional jump. Before Nick and Kaela enter the only remaining pod, the computer warns them that the nine-dimensional matter is reacting with the gravity of the blue giant sun and will cause a nine-dimensional reaction that will spread in all directions, such that the reaction's resulting supernova will reach Earth within 51 years. The computer hypothesizes that the reaction will either destroy life on Earth or "enable humankind to achieve a new level of existence". Just before the blue giant supernovas, the ship engages in a dimensional jump which brings Nick and Kaela back to Earth. As a result of their being in the same pod, the two of them each have one eye of the other person's original eye color. The ship's computer also reveals that Kaela is pregnant, which may be the result of them being in the pod together during the jump, or the result of their copulation hours earlier.

Tags: flashback

Review:
It's the middle of the day in Sydney at the same time as the Sahara, India and what I presume to be Central America, when they're all meant to be in Australia they keep changing the side of the road that they're driving on, the number plates are not Australian (the cars either), half the street signs don't even exist here, waitresses in cafés don't wear uniforms (except at Starbucks), the only Australian accents are terrible, the desert scenes are definitely more like 14 than 4 hours drive from Sydney - everything about Australia in particular is just wrong!
It wasn't until Luke Perry says "St Louis is half way around the other side of the world" that I really became convinced that they were meant to be in Australia.
Well, firstly, there is no need for me to give a summary of this mini-series when people can just easily refer to the standard disaster film formula: smart guy with all the answers, pretty but tough woman, cute kid, corrupt government agent/politician/business man who is only interested in some greedy proposition and some CGI effects.
Although the story is supposedly set in Australia, the director and the actors don't seem to know this and are confused whether the location should be America, Australia, the UK or South Africa (the shift in scenery and accents just gets irritating after the first half-hour).
While one can't blame the CGI effects for being far from great given the lower budget of the series, this could have been avoided if it hadn't bothered to show off.What could have save 'Supernova' was if the plot was solid and the characters were interesting but it didn't even have that.
The characters were so flat and uninspiring that they just left the audience praying that sun would just swallow these people up, and the plot was tedious and too drawn-out.If you want a disaster film, stick with 'The Day After Tomorrow' or 'Independence Day'.
This must surely be one of the worst movies ever made - an abysmal script, ridiculous sets and effects, woeful actors, outrageously poor accents, unbelievable story, ridiculous conclusion, etc, etc It's like a Godzilla movie, but without the finely-tuned character development and deeply thought-out plot - hell, it makes Godzilla look like Shakespeare.Set in Sydney - oh really??
About location : Cape Town, South Africa, is perfectly recognizable in most exterior scenes (Table Mountain with Signal Hill on its right when looking from the sea; the business center of the city; even in some street scenes you can see typical buildings with Old Cape Dutch style; the license plates are definitely capetonians; on a house wall there is a plate claiming that the house is protected by Chubb Security Company; in one scene you can see a train, which is a Metro one, used in CPT,...etc.).A "movie" to forget.
Since the premise of the film derives from astro-physics, the finale - a typically empty 'happy ending', having absolutely no grounding in any science whatsoever - makes no sense whatsoever.Although the film actually avoids religion, let's put the matter in religious terms for clarification: Imagine Judgment Day; and God is really pee-ed off and decides no one is worth saving.
This movie would've gone a lot better if Aussie A-List actors put on their flawless Yankee accents (mind you I'm sure they had better projects to work on.) Luke perry...
The series stupidly segue-ways from an exploding sun to a convicted rapist going after the Loving Wife and the Adorable Daughter.The Adorable Daughter is played by Eliza Bennett, who sadly had to take a stop in this miniseries before she stars in the highly anticipated 2008 fantasy film 'Inkheart,' also starring Brendan Fraser and Paul Bettany.
Leaving the incredibly bad science out of it (and believe me, as a former astronomer I gotta say the science was so bad!), the people who made this movie did obviously NO research on what Australia is supposed to look like.Not only did just about everyone have an American accent (and most of those who affected an Aussie accent need to fire their dialect coach), but just about every detail was way, way off.
Too bad they couldn't have scheduled another film for this time."Supernova" would a made a pretty good two hour disaster movie.
While not particularly surprising, given the limited effects budget for TV fare, the bad "space effects' contrast jarringly with the pretty good "earth effects" on display.Peter Fonda plays, flatly, a world famous astronomer who predicts the sun will go supernova (enlarge, then explode) within a month (or, was it a week).
The women come off much better in the acting department, most notable are Tia Carrere (as a government agent), Emma Samms (as a crusading TV news commentator), Clemency Burton-Hill (as a scientist) and an unnamed actress who plays Fonda's bartender-squeeze.Jettison an hour and "Supernova" would be good enough for a "7".
To the writers and producers I say "If you want to make a movie like this, do your homework."(By the way, I have used Australian spelling which is different from American spelling, so please don't get worked up over that.).
A quick summary of errors - the accents, of course (Yanks never get them right - though the producers get half a point each for one New Zealand accent and one semi-Afrikaaner); Sydney populated by Yanks and Brits, and the odd black West Indian; Aussie vegetation the same as that in Colorado; what looks suspiciously like Table Mountain - which overlooks Capetown in South Africa - "to the west of Sydney"; a serial rapist and murderer, imprisoned in a US-style prison in Pretoria (that's actually in South Africa, guys!), condemned to death by lethal injection - we don't have the death penalty here in Oz - escaping overland to Sydney for revenge; Sydney cops driving 1.5 litre toy cars...
When the outside world is actually the empty lot of a studio in Hollywood or LA, with a few home movies cut in for "authenticity," it's no wonder that most Americans know nothing about the rest of the planet, care less, and regard other countries as their private playground.
Almost as funny as Robot Monster, or any of the magnificent Ed Wood Classics, but without the deep scientific grasp of those earlier films.Read a dozen or so reviews -- the reviewers put a lot more into their posts than anyone connected with this incredible turkey -- I didn't see any review mention that our sun can't supernova, it isn't the right kind of star.
It can nova, and its furthest expansion will reach the orbit of the inner planets, probably out to earth, but will not fill the whole solar system, as stated by one of the characters.Great observation by one of the reviewers on how, after surviving in those Phoenix locations, the lucky few come to the surface and get to work on constructing a new sun.
No one in the whole project who knew any science at all, with tens of millions of dollars to burn -- pun definitely intended.During the opening scenes I thought the story would involve the supernova of some distant giant star finally reaching our solar system seven million later.
Which would have been convenient, as their countryside is quite similar in parts and also that they drive on the correct side of the road.Not even the license plates had been changed.What was great was that Mythbusters was on Discovery at around the same time.Shows like this and another recent wreck (Poseidon Adventure), really bring into question the integrity of some of the players: Peter Fonda, Tia Carrere, Lance Hendriksen.
I thought it was terribly made it jumped about to much to many sub plots and when they were in Sydney the were showing American buildings and American number plates what idiots there is no point in watching it as they hadn't written a good script the idea was good but they needed to get a better script writer.
But the inmates could then apparently surface and drive across country, first to what we thought was Sydney, Australia, then across desert to a country house in what looked suspiciously - and obviously - like South Africa.
For example, I really liked it when Luke Perry discovered he'd put a plus sign into the equation instead if a minus sign so the world as we know it really wasn't going to end.
Well you can take a sci-fi scenario of the possible sun going supernova and then add the crime thriller of the possible murderer who seeks revenge and you get the television mini-event "Supernova." This overly long, sometimes boring, and many times unconvincing drama has so many clichés, impossible illogical plot decisions that it's pretty hard to watch.
Peter Fonda, Tia Carrera, Emma Samms and Luke Perry team up to save the world from our exploding sun!
As Luke Perry (as Chris Richardson) explains, it's "the end of the world as we know it," in an original two part Hallmark Channel TV movie.This film simply fails to take advantage of what it has to offer.
What gave these old films their charm was that they didn't know any better at the time, and to their credit, the writers/directors/whatever were trying to push the boundaries and encourage budding new thought.As always, making an obviously idiotic film like this is just retarded and lazy..
I won't go into detail about the absolutely INEPT representation of Australia in this dismal piece of tripe, but I will address the basic premise of the film.The Sun is simply not massive enough to go nova, let alone supernova.
This movie follows in the slouching, palsied footsteps of a dismal movie called "The Void" which purported to be science-fiction.And as with "The Void," the science is mostly wrong and the fiction so poorly-written that you want to hurl your remote at the TV screen in disgust.One innovation that seems to be aimed at creating a huge audience and will probably please no one is the unique method of production in which parts of the film are shot in Australia and parts in other places (some location shots were either done or simulated to have been done in North America - scenes featuring the destruction of the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA and plot references to that and other American cities).
From other posters' comments, there was at least one other version of this movie than the one I am watching in the Hallmark satellite TV channel right now.Well, the Aussies and Americans will both spot major false notes in this turkey - the cars and trucks are all right-hand drive and run on the left-hand side of the road, while the vehicle sirens are all those "oo-gah, oo-gah" klaxons that the British and Australians like to use.
You got your suspense-thriller in my disaster film!" The other responds "No, you got your disaster film in my suspense-thriller!" About that time, a producer emerges from his office and overhears the exchange--and thus, Supernova was born.This movie has a lot of "I used to be famous!" stars, including Luke Perry, Emma Samms, Lance Henriksen, and other names who were popular sometime back in the 1980s.
The serial killer plot thread finally develops (in one of the most absurd scenes of the movie it's almost funny), Luke Perry finds himself in a bit of a Twilight Zone situation, and we finally get to see some big explosions as a major city is destroyed.
"Hey, maybe we can chuck a nuclear bomb into an asteroid," is much more compelling than "Hey, maybe we got the calculations wrong."Simply avoid this movie, unless you happen to come across it and you have nothing better to do, like watching "Lake Placid 2"..
But thats what happens when you get some Beverly Hills 90210 burnout to conduct some Astro Physics research and hire an arab, a Jamaican and a bimbo as his incompetent colleagues.Perry's mentor who first read his findings and discovered the impending doom of the world did what anyone else would do in the same situation, namely not tell a soul and instead go hang around a beach in South Africa with a blonde local waitressIn breakthrough technology scientists can now watch giant fireballs hurtling towards earth at great speeds by using extremely intelligent satellites which can stand in the path of the fireball whilst filming and then flip round the back of it afterwards to get the perfect shot while it smashes into earth.
Also we got a look into the mind of a rioter when the mob was faced with an angry police force instead of banding together they decided to attack their fellow rioters.Still showing hes 'Got it' Matthew Perry found the time (in between pondering the fate of the world and saving his family from a killer) to spade 3 girls and also discuss at length why a 16 year old girl was at a party, proving that even when your wife and child are days away from dying not even the Apocalypse can stop a man like Luke Perry making a run at some Asian poon.A sinister scheme was uncovered by the government to firstly hide the fact that sun was going to blowup, hoping that nobody would notice the fireballs, extreme heat,millions of people dying around them, the disappearance of the sun and the fact that the sea has become the worlds largest deep fryer, hoping that people would write it off as some sort of freaky eclipse or just blame it on that pesky el nino.
All designed for an ambitious attempt to sort out the ensuing over heating problem with a little dry ice and then bring them out of hiding after it 'all blows over' and begin construction of the new sun.In an ambitious move Wayne's Asian Girlfriend from Wayne's World decided to drive from Sydney to St Louis with only her good looks and ill conceived idea to aid her.
Luke Perry is his colleague whose wife and daughter are being pursued by an escaped serial killer as he gallivants about the countryside with Tia Carrere who is a turncoat federal agent while the earth is being destroyed by fireballs emanating from the sun.
Okay, Luke ultimately saves the world by discovering that Peter's original formula was missing a minus sign and, with that news, the sun immediately stops hurling fireballs and decides to behave like a good little sun, the worldwide rioting and looting stops, entire cities which were destroyed are now deemed "just a scratch", Luke's wife shoots and kills the serial-killer bad guy, and the rain comes to put out all the fires.
It cannot be compared to other end of the world saga's and after the opening scenes should definitely not be torn apart to look for logic, when it is clear to all who watch this movie that logic and research have not been added into the making of this movie at all.We have a thriving industry of actors, producers, directors and playwrights in South Africa and unfortunately due to lack of publicity and the fact that it is more cost effective to film in South Africa, these hardworking people are often reduced to acting in movies, that they can hardly bear to watch themselves.Everyone has to start somewhere and better known actors such as Peter Fonda should have their acting ability and judgment questioned more than the 'glorified extra's' who are simply taking whatever they can get.
The producers could have chosen a million other destinations that would have made more sense.I nearly switched off, but I was hoping the producers had a surprise up their sleeve at the end - like the Earth really ending, but then the scientists discovered a flaw in their equations (which they had to repeat several times in case we missed it) and the Earth was saved - but not the movie.
Luke Perry Cannot Act His Way Out Of A Paper Bag. Wow, I feel cheated out of the time I wasted watching this utter garbage.
I was never entirely sure where things were supposed to be set, or who people were - the caption would say we were in Australia and ten minutes later you'd realise you were watching things happening in South Africa with no real awareness that the transition had been made.
Never mind our sun is projected to die out as a red giant instead of exploding, but let's just go with it.So, we've got government agents wandering around, trying to scoop up those people who will have been determined to possess the "necessary" skill sets if there are any survivors left (a la' a Noah's Ark kind of thing) who can rebuild the civilization.
But it doesn't stop there...add to that a subplot that includes an escaped serial killer and man...then the horrible acting, horrible accents, horrible effects...This is quite possibly the worst movie ever made.It seems that an "Astrophysicist" discovers that the Sun is much older than previously thought.
In honesty I missed the point of the sub-plot convicted killer, it didn't add anything to the movie.At the end they say "To Be Continued", apparently only the first half was on this particular DVD set, that's fine with me, if the second half is anything like the first, I'd rather not waste my time, I've got access to YouTube and can get more convincing and entertaining movies on it.
And even the special effects look like they were done using a freeware software package!Watch 30 minutes or so just to see how bad it is, but for the sake of your sanity, please do not watch the whole movie....
Until I read these other comments I hadn't realised the plot was supposed to be set in Australia, OK I got the comments by the wife of the scientist about "how I hate it here" but thought that she meant the Deep South of the USA (because it frankly looked like that).