Supernova (2000)
Supernova is a joke. Its endless problems compel you to nitpick it to death. Unfortunately, it's also completely forgettable so watch out; you might watch it once, hate it, and then accidentally see it again down the line.
In the early 22nd century, violent cartoons have been banned, robots and artificial intelligence are commonplace, and mankind has mastered light-speed travel. On the medical search-and-rescue- ship Nightingale 229, Captain A.J. Marley (Robert Forster), co-pilot Nick (James Spader), medical officer Kaela (Angela Bassett), medical technician Yerzy (Lou Diamond Phillips), paramedic Danika (Robin Tunney), and technician Benjamin (Wilson Cruz) receive a distress signal from Titan 37 - 3,000 light-years away. Teleporting there, the ship suffers heavy damages. With the man responsible for the distress signal (Peter Facinelli), the crew discovers a mysterious alien artifact.
I’ll get my biggest nitpick out of the way first. The Nightingale 229 is the most ill-conceived rescue vessel I’ve ever seen. The way the transdimensional jump system works is that everyone has to get into these capsules before the jump. If they don’t… did you see The Fly? I can buy that. The problem is that the ship only has 6 capsules!
On paper, this plot sounds like it could make sense, or be good. In execution, it feels like stuff just happens. The characters are flat and the performances are awful. It never feels like the events of Supernova are happening in a living breathing world, instead, it’s just some half-baked, hackneyed script that’s been chopped up and re-written over and over, held together with some flashy special effects and pseudo-science that raises more questions than answers. The only way to properly explain the film's stupidity is to spoil certain plot points but believe me, you still won't truly understand what it feels like to sit down and watch this accident in space.
That mysterious artifact I mentioned? It’s a bomb. Not just a regular bomb, an explosive created by 9th-dimensional aliens to destroy everything in our universe. Why? Two theories are proposed. 1) They fear us. A ridiculous supposition. 2) They want to “enable humankind to achieve a new level of existence”. I’d buy that one, except for the fact that the artifact makes people go insane and go kill-crazy!
Here’s where I start asking questions. These aliens have developed a weapon that will destroy all matter in our 3-dimensional Universe - for kicks. Why hide it in the middle of some moon orbiting a blue sun? Why hide it at all? Just drop it in our galaxy and activate it right away. We’re told the device manipulates peoples’ minds into making them want to bring it to Earth, where it will detonate. That makes no sense. If you went through all the trouble to acquire an atomic bomb so you could kill Mike Schneider, director of “Night of the Living Dead Reanimated”, and instead of just dropping it onto the city where he lived, you spent days tracking down their home. It’s overkill and a waste of effort. What if someone figured out what the device did and found a way to disarm it, or better yet, sent it back to those 9th-dimensional hamster raisins and blew them up?!
Supernova is kind of fascinating, the kind of picture you’d love to see with the director so they could explain to you what went wrong. Except no one would bother documenting this catastrophe. This is just another obscure, crappy science fiction movie that reminds you of other, better works. (On VHS, January 21, 2016)
