You know how some movies are misunderstood at the time of their release and receive a much-needed re-evaluation decades later, with film enthusiasts reclaiming them as masterpieces of their genre? Well, Supernova isn’t that. In fact, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to call it among the worst sci-fi movies of the noughties, and considering the decade produced such trainwrecks as The Adventures of Pluto Nash and Battlefield Earth, it’s not an easy contest.
Yes, Supernova might not be as infamous as those other two movies, but maybe it should be. A hot mess if there ever was one, Supernova is a cautionary tale of bad CGI, conflicting visions, studio interference, a carousel of directors, and a script that never really knew what it wanted to be. On its 25th anniversary, let’s look back at this deliciously terrible movie and discuss how the behind-the-scenes drama is far more entertaining than anything that actually happens on the screen.
Softcore sci-fi
Supernova is a relatively straightforward science fiction movie — at least until it isn’t. The plot centers on a six-person hospital ship that answers a distress call and rescues Karl (Peter Facinelli), a young man carrying a mysterious artifact. Soon, the ship finds itself facing an unexpected threat worsened by the gravitational pull of a dying star about to go supernova. James Spader and Angela Bassett lead the cast alongside Robert Forster, Lou Diamond Phillips, Robin Tunney, Wilson Cruz, and Facinelli.
The first thing you need to know about Supernova is that it’s a horny movie — a very horny movie. The opening scene features the ship’s computer, aptly named Sweetie, waking up computer technician Benjamin (Cruz) to seductively ask for a chess game. Immediately after, there’s a scene with Phillips’ Yerzy and Tunney’s Danika going at it in a dark room. From there, Supernova tries to press forward with its plot, but there’s just so much sexual heat between pretty much everyone that it’s often distracting. Spader and Bassett spend most of their scenes together exchanging longing glances, as do Tunney and Phillips when they’re not having actual sex. Then there’s Facinelli, who’s truly a menace, walking from crew member to crew member and showing off like a dog in heat.
Supernova might be a better movie if it embraced this low-quality Skinemax approach; I mean, it’s not like it was going to win any Oscars anyway. The visual effects are bad, the performances are so hammy they might as well be smoked, and the script goes from one place to the next without caring for consistency or pacing. It tries to be too many things at once — thrilling sci-fi, Alien rip-off, Event Horizon spiritual sibling — instead of being the one thing it should be: campy. The sex scenes have the type of sax music one can find in a softcore ’80s porno; the lines have an “I researched this on the library” quality to them, and the actors often deliver them with the same kind of self-awareness with which the characters from The Office speak before looking into the camera. Supernova could be fun; instead, it chooses to be “serious,” to its ultimate detriment.
Behind-the-scenes chaos
As it so happens, the behind-the-scenes drama in Supernova is far more interesting than the actual finished film. Originally, Australian director Geoffrey Wright signed on to direct, with Vincent D’Onofrio set to star. Weeks before the project was due to start shooting, Wright left the production due to, what else, “creative differences,” and D’Onofrio soon followed. Spader replaced D’Onofrio and campaigned for Walter Hill to take on directing duties. Hill, who had directed several movies and produced a few of the Alien entries, changed the screenplay and faced a hastened production schedule, claiming the budget was cut during the shoot. After filming wrapped, Hill spent a while in post-production with few visual effects ready. Still, MGM went on with a test screening, which went poorly, as Hill had predicted. Following the negative test screening, Hill quit the project.
Jack Sholder, director of B-level horror movies like Alone in the Dark and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, was hired to re-edit the movie. Sholder changed many aspects of Hill’s version, from the score to the voice of the ship’s computer. However, that version also didn’t work, and MGM tried to go back to Hill, whose demands they refused to meet. This is the point in our story where things get really wild as Francis Ford Coppola enters the fray. Yes, Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather trilogy and The Conversation.
See, Coppola was an MGM board member, and he was brought in to save the film as only a five-time Oscar winner could. Coppola’s main contribution was adding a sex scene between Bassett and Spader’s characters without using Bassett or Spader. Instead, Coppola chose to use footage from Facinelli and Tunney’s sex scene, hiding their faces and darkening Tunney’s skin. If that sounds way too bizarre and nonsensical, it’s because it kind of is, and the movie is not any better for it. Indeed, the scene lasts two seconds and doesn’t achieve what Coppola wanted: to improve the relationship between Bassett and Spader’s characters, supposedly the central romance in the story.
Super-flopa
Sadly, Supernova is a mess of a movie without any structure or purpose. It tries to tell a fairly straightforward story without even attempting to introduce any semblance of stakes or emotional connection. The characters are thin, the dialogue way too contrived to be so basic, and the production values too cheap-looking to pass as a prestigious sci-fi vehicle. Today, the film’s legacy is all about the behind-the-scenes mess and how much it derailed the finished product.
Indeed, you can tell this movie went through countless hands, stitched together before being separated and reshaped again, attempting to turn it into something it’s not. That’s probably the main issue with Supernova: it’s a big pile of nothing, way too basic to become anything of value and way too insipid to endure as a camp classic.
Some movies endure as so-bad-they’re-good classics, guilty pleasures that make us laugh or at least enjoy. Supernova isn’t that: It’s lazy and a bit sad, only spiced up by how horny everyone is, yet it does nothing with that. The film desperately tries to be Alien when it should’ve been Armageddon all along. Oh, what could’ve been; we really wouldn’t have missed a thing.
Supernova is available to stream on Tubi.
