Sphere (film)

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Sphere
Sphere Movie Poster
Directed by	Barry Levinson
Produced by	Barry Levinson
Written by	Kurt Wimmer (from the novel)
Starring	Dustin Hoffman Sharon Stone Samuel L. Jackson
Music by	Elliot Goldenthal
Editing by	Stu Linder
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	1998
Running time	129 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

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.

1 Plot
2 Criticism
3 See Also
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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 a marine biologist, a mathematician, an astrophysicist, a psychiatrist and a member of the U.S. Navy. The team are housed in a state-of-the-art underwater living environment (the Habitat) 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 (Entry) Event" takes place.

The second is a large near-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 trip through the hole that happened in the future was called an "Unknown Event", then the team never made 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.

It was then that they had to leave the Habitat because of Beth's premonition of wanting to kill herself, thus setting off an underwater explosive and obliterating the ship, the Habitat, and the surrounding environment.

Fortunately the three escaped well before the shock wave sucked them and blasted them to pieces.

The film ends with the three deciding to give up their "powers" to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. This done, the "power" of "forgetting" everything may just be the right recipe of redemption from the Sphere.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Criticism

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 so 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.