*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring James Spader, Angela Bassett, Peter Facinelli, Lou Diamond Phillips
screenplay by David Campbell Wilson
directed by “Thomas Lee”
by Bill Chambers
“In the farthest reaches of deep space, the medical vessel Nightingale keeps a lonely vigil for those in trouble. When a frantic cry for help pierces the void, the crew responds with a near fatal, hyper-space dimension jump into the gravitational pull of a dying star. The disabled ship rescues a shuttlecraft containing a mysterious survivor and a strange alien artifact. Now the crew must unravel a chilling secret and escape the nearby imploding star before the forming supernova blasts them and the entire galaxy into oblivion!”
–Supernova DVD jacket synopsis“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the universe!” –Supernova trailer tagline
Common Hollywood practice: In pursuit of an inclusionary MPAA rating (be it G, PG, or PG-13), a motion picture, irrespective of subject matter, is toned down for its theatrical release, only to see the excised footage restored for home video, because nothing moves tapes faster than the great Unrated promise. Both are commercial considerations to maximize profit: it’s a notorious marketing paradox that allows the studio to have its cake and eat it, too–to seem like arbiters of good taste during the period of heaviest public scrutiny, and then to exploit the repressed appetites of the renting public.
MGM has pulled this stunt with Supernova. The once all-ages (well, as all-ages as Dead Calm in Space, which is how Supernova was pitched, can be) adventure comes to DVD in a “never-before-seen R-rated version.” Alas, “the mesmerizing”–again, MGM’s description–Robin Tunney’s naked breasts were all that was deemed worthy of reinstatement. This is, understand, not a criticism of nudity in general nor this particular example of it, but what really would have made this disc worth a look is a restoration of the film to 48Hrs. helmer Walter Hill’s original intentions. Credited as Thomas Lee, Hill abandoned the film in post-production due to studio interference, with no less than Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Sholder stepping in for reshoots and recuts that left no one happy, least of all audiences when Supernova opened last winter.
The disc contains a bundle of deleted scenes as supplementary material that paint Supernova as originally being bleaker, even disturbing, though on par with Hill’s vision for his Alien saga, and more rewarding as both sci-fi and drama. MGM embraced only the surface trappings of the genre for a more formulaic smoke-and-catwalks experience. For starters, they removed all the blue-collar, quotidian stuff Hill is so good at, sand-papered all the graphic violence that if nothing else would have provided shock value, and deleted contextually intriguing digressions about addiction. Worse, they added a spicy interracial romance between James Spader and Angela Bassett’s characters–which isn’t a crime in and of itself, but there is something supremely yucky about fabricating a sex scene between them by using an outtake of Tunney and putting her in digital blackface. They also downsized Robert Forster’s role, which is a crime in and of itself.
What they ended up with is generic pulp in the Sphere tradition. Hindsight being 20/20, if they were going to lose money on a version, it may as well have been Hill’s–better reviews (guaranteed) would have at least lifted the film’s reputation. As the first official release of 2000, Supernova had critics calling it a bad omen for the year to come, and financially it took a bath, too. (Final domestic tally? $14 million on a $60 million-plus budget.) MGM threw good money after bad here, living down to their pitiful reputation as a halfway house disguised as a studio. Of course, Hill’s cut would share problems with the new-and-unimproved one: cinematographer Lloyd Ahern II’s icy-blue palette is exhausted sci-fi shorthand, and Peter Facinelli’s psychopath is more irritating than imposing, the shorn scalp and muscle-beach shirts feebly disguising an ingénue reaching beyond his grasp. A fairly conventional stylist (Wild Bill being a radiant exception), Hill reveals the wisdom of leaving the direction of the Alien films he co-wrote and co-produced with David Giler to true visionaries.
THE DVD
Supernova as it stands looks and sounds cool on DVD. The flipper offers a 2.35:1, 16×9-enhanced widescreen option on side A and pan-and-scan on side B. The image is sharp and well contrasted, although its significant grain may displease viewers. Colours are accurate and saturated just right, except in the case of the leads’ would-be sex scene. While the 5.1 Dolby Digital audio is loud and directional, the subwoofer never dips to the lows we’ve come to expect from these explosion-packed extravaganzas. Surround use is tight and show-off-y, the voice of “Sweetie” (Vanessa Marshall), the crew’s computer, putting the rears to disorienting use. The only other extra besides the omissions is a horrendous trailer and a booklet that laughably dodges the issue of post-production tinkering entirely.
91 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; MGM
