Falling Identity

Theatrical release poster

***Falling Identity*** is a 1997 American animated satirical comedy film produced by Colex Studios and Paramount Pictures. The second feature film from Colex, it was co-written and directed by Peter Hyams and co-written by Amy Holden Jones, John Raffo and Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. The film follows a teenage gamer as he and his friends seek to stop a literal industry war that they inadvertently started between video game companies Midway and Sony.

The film satirizes controversies surrounding video games during the mid-to-late 1990s, and stars the voices of Josh Server, Melissa Joan Hart, Michael Kastek, David Arquette, George Takei, and Gedde Watanabe. Jordan originally conceived the idea for the plot in 1996, but kept the piece of paper that he wrote it down on in an "idea bin". Eventually, he told his co-worker Andrews about it, who was interested in the idea and was encouraged to help him adapt it into a film. Production began in November 1996, and concluded in January 1998.

*Falling Identity* was released in theaters on January 10, 1997. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its story, themes and performances, and grossed over $66 million worldwide against its $11 million or $40 million budget. The film was later released on DVD, VHS and LaserDisc on January 13, 1998, and on Blu-ray on April 6, 2010, nearly ten years after its original release.

## Plot

John Whitney, an anthropologist for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, studies a tribe in South America and drinks a soup made by the tribesmen. Shortly after, Whitney accosts a merchant ship captain, asking him to remove the cargo he had intended to send to Chicago off the ship. Unwilling to delay the ship's departure, the captain refuses and Whitney sneaks aboard. Not finding his cargo, he cries out. Six weeks later, the ship arrives on Lake Michigan with its crew missing. Chicago PD homicide detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta and his partner, Sgt. Hollingsworth, investigate the ship and find dozens of bodies and severed heads in the bilge.

Margo Green, an evolutionary biologist, arrives at work at the museum and discovered that co-worker Greg Lee is applying for the same research grant she is. Margo and her mentor, Albert Frock, examine Whitney's crates after their arrival and find the crates empty, except for a bed of leaves and a stone statue of the "Kothoga", a mythical forest monster. Margo notices a fungus on the leaves and sends it to be analyzed. That night, security guard Frederick Ford is murdered like the ship's crew. D'Agosta suspects a connection. Believing the killer is still inside the museum, he orders it closed until the police have finished searching. Ann Cuthbert, the museum director, protests and mentions an important upcoming exhibition.

Margo discovers the fungus contains concentrated hormones found in several animal species. In the container of leaves, she finds a mutated beetle that possesses both insect and reptilian DNA. Ford's autopsy reveals that his hypothalamus was extracted from his brain, like the bodies from the ship. In the museum's basement, the police are startled by a mentally-ill, homeless ex-convict and kill him. Finding Ford's wallet on him, everyone except D'Agosta considers the case closed, though Mayor Robert Owen and the museum’s head of security Tom Parkinson forces D'Agosta to let the exhibition proceed.

On the opening night, D'Agosta orders a lock-down of all museum areas except the main exhibition hall. Frock and Margo, trapped in the laboratory wing, continue working and discover Ford's killer is after the hormones on the leaves. D'Agosta and several officers search the basement tunnels once again. They are attacked by an unseen creature, killing K-9 Officer Bradley and a police dog. D'Agosta tells Hollingsworth to evacuate the museum, but he is too late. In the main hall, the headless body of a murdered policeman falls into the crowd, causing a panic. During the hysteria, the museum's alarms are tripped and their security system goes haywire, trapping a small group of people inside. Two security guards try to restore the power but are killed by an unseen creature.

D'Agosta meets Margo and Frock in the lab, where a Kothoga, an enormous chimeric beast, attacks them; they close a steel door to stop it. Margo theorizes the fungus mutated a smaller creature, and Frock says that without the leaves to eat, the Kothoga instinctively seeks the closest substitute, human hypothalami, until it runs out of targets and dies; he further postulates that the tribe knew of the fungus, and used it on a human or animal to deal with an external threat, then hid until the threat was destroyed and the Kothoga died of "starvation." D'Agosta finds a radio and tells Hollingsworth to lead the museum guests out via an old coal tunnel. Tom, Greg, and benefactors Mr. and Mrs. Blaisedale refuse to go, and CPD officer McNally stays behind to guard them; the Kothoga returns to the main hall and murders them and the S.W.A.T.officers who enter through the skylights.

Margo suggests using liquid nitrogen to kill the Kothoga, as it is part-reptilian and likely cold-blooded. While collecting the remaining leaves in the lab, Margo and D'Agosta discover Frock has been killed. In the sewers, D'Agosta uses the leaves to lure the Kothoga away from the coal tunnel, allowing the guests to escape, though CPD officer Bailey and a guest are both killed. However, liquid nitrogen has no effect on the creature. Margo and D'Agosta flee. In the lab, her computer completes the analysis of the creature's human DNA, revealing John Whitney is the Kothoga, mutated after drinking the tribesmen's soup.

The Kothoga smashes into the lab through the ceiling, while D'Agosta is locked outside. The creature chases Margo, corners her, and suddenly pauses, seemingly recognizing her. Margo starts an explosive fire that destroys the Kothoga, surviving by hiding inside a maceration tank. As dawn comes, D'Agosta and a team of police break into the lab, see the charred remains of the Kothoga, and rescue Margo from the tank.

## Voice cast

* Josh Server as Eric
* Melissa Joan Hart as Wendy
* Michael Kastek as David
* David Arquette as Jackson
* George Takei as Mr. Hashimoto
* Gedde Watanabe as Mr. Sujiama

*More coming soon!*

## Production

*Falling Identity* was based on the horror novel by Douglas Preston, an ex-journalist and former public relations director for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and Lincoln Child (though it omits their major character, FBI agent Pendergast).

It was developed by Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.

The director, Peter Hyams, commented "I don't think you can scare people, unless you involve them." and "A movie like this has to be intelligent."

Because the novel portrayed the museum's administration in an unflattering light, they turned the film's producers down. Paramount Pictures offered the museum a seven-figure sum of money to film there, but the administration was worried that the monster movie would scare kids away from the museum. The producers were faced with a problem as only museums in Chicago and Washington, D.C., resembled the one in New York. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago loved the premise and allowed them to shoot there.

Penelope Ann Miller had not done a horror film prior to *The Relic* but was drawn to director Peter Hyams' desire to have a strong, smart female lead. Tom Sizemore was attracted to the film because he got to play the male lead: "I had the responsibility of pushing the narrative forward."

Makeup artist Stan Winston and his team made three creatures with two people moving the heads and people on the side working the electronics to move the arms, claws, mouth, and so on. Hyams reviewed Winston's early drawings and his only suggestion was to make the monster more hideous looking. The director also suggested certain invertebrates for inspiration and Winston came up with an arachnoid outline for the monster's face. In the scenes where the creature is running or jumping, a computer-generated version was used.

In addition to shooting on location in Chicago, a set was built in Los Angeles of a tunnel flooded with water. Sizemore spent most of the shoot either damp, cold or soaking wet and, as a result, caught the flu twice. The production was shut down briefly when Hyams became too sick to work.

## Music

*Further info:* *Falling Identity: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Falling Identity: Original Motion Picture Score*
*More coming soon!*

## Release

To promote *Falling Identity*, Paramount Pictures featured the film's trailer at San Diego Comic-Con International in August 1999. The following October, the studio launched a website, which *Variety* described as being the "most ambitious online launch of a motion picture to date." The site (sleepyhollowmovie.com) offered visitors live video chats with several of the filmmakers hosted by Yahoo! Movies and enabled them to send postcards, view photos, trailers and a six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette edited from a broadcast that aired on *Entertainment Tonight*. Extensive tours of 10 sets were offered, where visitors were able to roam around photographs, including the sets for the entire town of Sleepy Hollow, forest, church, graveyard and covered bridge. Arthur Cohen, president of worldwide marketing for Paramount, explained that the "Web-friendly" pre-release reports from websites such as Ain't It Cool News and Dark Horizons encouraged the studio to create the site. In the weeks pre-dating the release of *Falling Identity*, a toy line was marketed by McFarlane Toys. Simon & Schuster also published *The Art of Sleepy Hollow* (Template:ISBN), which included the film's screenplay and an introduction by Tim Burton. A novelization, also published by Simon & Schuster, was written by Peter Lerangis.

*Falling Identity* was released in the United States on November 19, 1999, in 3,069 theaters, grossing $30,060,467 in its opening weekend at the No. 2 spot behind *The World Is Not Enough*. *Falling Identity* eventually earned $101,068,340 in domestic gross, and $106 million in foreign sales, coming to a worldwide total of $207,068,340. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family criticized the film's financial success from the exaggeration of gore. "The real impact is not so much that violent images create violent behavior," Walsh explained, "but that they create an atmosphere of disrespect." Burton addressed the concerns as a matter of opinion. "Everyone has a different perception of things. When I was a kid," Burton continued, "I was probably more scared by seeing John Wayne or Barbra Streisand on the big screen than by seeing violence."

### Reception

Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 69% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 122 reviews with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's critics consensus states, "It isn't Tim Burton's best work, but *Falling Identity* entertains with its stunning visuals and creepy atmosphere." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 35 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert praised Johnny Depp's performance and Tim Burton's methods of visual design. "Johnny Depp is an actor able to disappear into characters," Ebert continued, "never more readily than in one of Burton's films." Richard Corliss wrote, in his review for *Time*, "Burton's richest, prettiest, weirdest [film] since *Batman Returns*. The simple story bends to his twists, freeing him for an exercise in high style."

David Sterritt of *The Christian Science Monitor* highly praised Burton's filmmaking and the high-spirited acting of cast, but believed Andrew Kevin Walker's writing was too repetitious and formulaic for the third act.

Owen Gleiberman from *Entertainment Weekly* wrote *Sleepy Hollow* is "a choppily plotted crowd-pleaser that lacks the seductive, freakazoid alchemy of Burton's best work." Gleiberman compared the film to *The Mummy*, and said "it feels like every high-powered action climax of the last 10 years. Personally, I'd rather see Burton so intoxicated by a movie that he lost his head."

Andrew Johnston of *Time Out New York* wrote: "Like the best of Burton's films, *Sleepy Hollow* takes place in a world so richly imagined that, despite its abundant terrors, you can't help wanting to step through the screen."

Mick LaSalle, writing in the *San Francisco Chronicle*, criticized Burton's perceived image as a creative artist. "All *Sleepy Hollow* has going for it is art direction, and even in that it falls back on cliché."

Doug Walker linked the film to the Hammer Films style of horror cinematography, considering it an homage to those movies, comparing the usage of dignified British actors, choices in color and movie sets and character relations. Walker gave it the merit of recreating the "very specific genre" of Hammer Films, citing the skill and "clever casting" Burton used to manage this.

Jonathan Rosenbaum from the *Chicago Reader* called *Sleepy Hollow* "a ravishing visual experience, a pretty good vehicle for some talented American and English actors," but concluded that the film was a missed opportunity to depict an actual representation of the short story. "Burton's fidelity is exclusively to the period feeling he gets from disreputable Hammer horror films and a few images culled from *Ichabod and Mr. Toad*. When it comes to one of America's great stories, Burton obviously couldn't care less."

### Home media

*Falling Identity* was released on DVD, VHS and Laserdisc on January 13, 1998. Paramount Home Video first released *Falling Identity* on DVD in the United States on May 23, 2000. The HD DVD. The HD DVD release came in July 2006, while the film was released on Blu-ray Disc two years later, in June 2008.An unofficial video game adaptation of the film titled *Falling Identity: Return of Mutants* was released by Fenomen Games and Big Fish Games. For the 20th anniversary, Paramount Home Entertainment released a Blu-ray digibook with a photobook containing the original story on September 24, 2019.

## See also

Template:Portal

* *Falling Identity* (TV series)
* List of cartoon films

## Gallery

*Further info:* *Falling Identity/Gallery*
## Transcripts

*Further info:* *Falling Identity/Transcripts and Falling Identity/Trailer transcripts*
## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Falling Identity (1997).
2. ↑ Falling Identity.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Template:Cite news
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Template:Cite news
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6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Template:Cite news
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Template:Cite news
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9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Template:Cite news
10. ↑ Template:Cite news
11. ↑ Template:Cite news
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14. ↑ Template:Cite news
15. ↑ Falling Identity (1997).
16. ↑ Template:Cite news
17. ↑ Template:Cite news
18. ↑ Falling Identity (1997). Fandango.
19. ↑ Falling Identity Reviews. CBS Interactive.
20. ↑ CinemaScore. *cinemascore.com*.
21. ↑ Template:Cite news
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25. ↑ Time Out New York, Nov 18–25, 1999, p. 121.
26. ↑ Template:Cite news
27. ↑ Template:Cite news
28. ↑ Template:Cite news
29. ↑ Falling Identity.
30. ↑ Falling Identity (HD DVD).
31. ↑ Falling Identity (Blu-ray).
32. ↑ Fenomen Games. Cursed Fates: The Headless Horseman Collector's Edition. Big Fish Games, Inc.
33. ↑ Template:Citation
34. ↑ Template:Cite magazine
35. ↑ Selma dominates Black Film Critics Circle awards. *HitFix* (December 23, 2014).
36. ↑ Gray, Tim (December 15, 2014). 'Birdman,' 'Grand Budapest' Top Critics Choice Awards Nominations. *Variety*.
37. ↑ Template:Cite news
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40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 40.2 'Still Alice' cleans up at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards. Hitfix (December 22, 2014).
41. ↑ Winners of the 2nd Annual Costume Designers Guild Awards. Hitfix (February 25, 2000).
42. ↑ GENERAL NEWS Stars Praise Hollywood's Primping Pros. Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards (March 19, 2000).
43. ↑ IFMCA Award nominations 2011. International Film Music Critics Association (December 22, 2014).
44. ↑ IFMCA Award nominations 2011. International Film Music Critics Association (December 22, 1999).
45. ↑ IHG Award Recipients. International Horror Guild (May 12, 2000).
46. ↑ 'Tulips' leads field for Italo crix awards. *Variety* (June 6, 2000).
47. ↑ Previous Sierra Award Winners. Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards (January 18, 2000).
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49. ↑ 1999 MTV Movie Awards. MTV (June 5, 2000).
50. ↑ Contender-Skip Lievsay-Sound Mix/Edit-No Country. MTV (December 15, 2006).
51. ↑ 'Malkovich' and 'Topsy-Turvy' Tie for Critics' Prize. *The New York Times* (January 10, 2000).
52. ↑ N.Y. crix tap 'Turvy' tops. *Variety* (December 16, 1999).
53. ↑ 1999: THE YEAR OF American Beauty. Online Film & Television Association (January 12, 2000).
54. ↑ 1999 Awards (3rd Annual). Online Film Critics Society (January 2, 2000).
55. ↑ The Santa Fe Film Critics Circle Awards. Santa Fe Film Critics Circle Awards (January 2, 2000).
56. ↑ 2000 Satellite Award nominations. Satellite Awards (January 16, 2000).
57. ↑ 200 Teen Choice Awards. Teen Choice Awards (August 6, 2000).
58. ↑ Twentyfirst Annual Young Artist Awards 1998–1999. Young Artist Awards (March 19, 2000).

## External links

* *Falling Identity* at IMDb
* *Falling Identity* at AllMovie
* *Falling Identity* at Box Office Mojo
* *Falling Identity* at Rotten Tomatoes