Sphere (film)
Sphere is a
science fiction movie, released on
February 13,
1998, starring
Dustin Hoffman as Dr. Norman Goodman (Johnson in the novel),
Sharon Stone as Dr. Elizabeth 'Beth' Halperin,
Liev Schreiber as Dr. Ted Fielding and
Samuel L. Jackson as Dr. Harry Adams.
Sphere was based on the
1987 novel
Sphere by
Michael Crichton.
In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, an alien spacecraft is discovered by the U.S. Navy. A team is assembled, with the task of making contact with any alien life inside the spacehip, made up of scientists specialising in various fields, a psychiatrist and a member of the U.S. Navy. The team are housed in a state of the art underwater living environment during their stay on the ocean floor.
Upon entering the spaceship, two startling discoveries are made. The first is that the ship is American, and was in service in the year 2047, gathering objects from around the galaxy to bring back to Earth, until an 'Unknown Event' takes place.
The second discovery is a large metallic perfect sphere held inside the ship which has very unusual properties.
Ted hypothesises that the unknown event in the ship's log was the ship inadvertently crashing into a black hole, which propelled it several hundred years backwards through time.
Harry then comes to the conclusion that they will all die on the ocean floor, because if the event is due to happen in the future and no one knows, then the team must never make it back to the surface to tell anyone about it. This becomes the premise of the film.
After this discovery, a massive surface storm drives them to cover on the sea floor for one week. The group then faces a series of crises, including a giant squid, electrical fires and water snakes, which are all believed to be the work of an alien intelligence (the sphere) called Jerry.
Over the course of the film various members of the team are killed off until only Harry, Norman and Beth remain. At this point, they realize that the three of them all entered the sphere, which gave them the power to manifest their thoughts into reality, and that all the disasters that had been plaguing them were the result of manifestations of the worst parts of their own minds.
Once the storm passes, an angry thought by Beth causes the charges on a batch of explosives near the ship to be armed, resulting in a rush to escape to the surface on the mini-submersible before the spaceship and underwater living environment are destroyed.
The film ends with the three deciding to give up their powers to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands and to forget the whole incident occurred, preserving causality.
It is noteworthy that the film was considered a disappointment to many fans of Michael Crichton's novel. The film drifts away from the book in several places. In an interview, Dustin Hoffman stated that they were not ready to release that film and that there was so much more that they wanted to do with it, but simply had no ability to do due to a time constraint. Several have commented on putting forth a petition to go and shoot more for the film, finish it, and release it as a director's cut to leave a more satisfied feel, but these ideas have never taken off.
