Originally published April 24, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1275
Young Will Robinson looks to his sister Penny who—rather than wholesome and clean-cut—now evokes a style best described as “Punk Toontown” and possesses a voice that’s a cross between The Nanny and Lisa Simpson. Penny has just gone into gruesome detail as to what happens when one is faced with the effects of floating unprotected in the vacuum of space. And the cherubic Will wonders, “Do they have a name for what’s wrong with you?”
Sure do, Will. The name is, “The Nineties.”
New Line Cinema’s $80 million Lost in Space, opened April 3 on more screens than any film in New Line Cinema’s history, with a story that is both an update and, at the same time, retro. Updating the 1960s classic (which, in modern terminology, means “old”), the Space Family Robinson embarks on a colonizing mission intended to provide the means of salvaging a dying earth.
But matters go awry when a sabotage attempt by an eco-terrorist (worst kind) named Zachary Smith—who winds up inadvertently being stuck on the vessel when it takes off–causes the Jupiter II to wind up… everyone say it with me… lost in space.
Basically Akiva Goldsman’s convoluted script retells the first two episodes, “The Reluctant Stowaway” and “The Derelict,” adding a ton of familial angst, a boatload of special effects (more effects, according to New Line, than any film in history), and a time travel element so byzantine it makes the plot to Mission: Impossible look like the Barney movie.
It’s not quite as badly written as, say, the effects-laden Independence Day (nothing could be) but it manages the impressive feat of trying to accomplish too much and–consequently—accomplishes almost nothing. Story elements are introduced and never pay off, opportunities missed (after Penny’s early dissertation on dying in the vacuum of space, can you imagine Penny’s anguish if they’d had a scene where Will really was trapped in space with only minutes to live?)
Oftentimes story developments seem present, not for the purpose of serving the film, but serving the toy shelves. (How they missed the giant cyclops, I have no idea. To be honest, I was kind of hoping he’d show up.) No one really seems to have sufficient screen time to be fleshed out, and key relationships which built in the series over time (Will’s genuine fondness and friendship for the robot, for instance) are taken on faith rather than evolved on screen.
Director Stephen Hopkins manages to take the tepid script and walk, rather than run, with it, as the cast generates such low energy that you almost have to wonder whether the actors feel like the dance band on the Titanic, i.e., they know that no one’s listening to them anyway because there’s too much to look at. William Hurt and Mimi Rogers, in particular, as John and Maureen Robinson, generate the chemistry of flat Coca Cola, as Hurt trades in Guy William’s Zorro-esque heroism and swashbuckling for overly cerebral brooding, and Rogers just looks lost (which is appropriate, I guess.)
It’s not a complete wasteland. Judy Robinson has been upgraded from her original incarnation (who can forget that she “gave up a promising career in musical theater” to join her family) and is now the ship’s doctor. Granted, it’s questionable having the ship’s medic be a member of the family (“Okay, daddy, time to check your prostate”), but at least it’s something… although Judy (Heather Graham) is largely limited to trading half-witty repartee with ship’s pilot Don West. Matt LeBlanc as West, though, is amazingly fun to watch; he has several scenes with original West Mark Goddard, and one wonders if Goddard gave him some tips. If he did, they paid off, because of the entire cast, LeBlanc is the only one who looks like he’s having a great time.
But for the most part, we’re left looking at the FX, and boy, there’s a lot to look at. Two new space vessels, two new robots, a CGI critter that is the film’s answer to the idiotic “disguised” chimp from the original series called the Bloop… except in the film it’s called the Blaap, or the Bwaap, or the Bweep, or the Bwaaach, or some other dámņëd thing, I never did quite catch it properly. Don West wears a battle helmet last seen in Stargate, the Robinsons sport a variety of ensembles including launch gear that trade in the original Swanson’s Frozen Dinner duds from the 1960s for hard plastic black body suits that almost cry out for molded nipples.
The only other major attraction in the film is Gary Oldman as Doctor Smith. He’s great in the role, even subtly aping some of Jonathan Harris’ mannerisms. However, the script does make the calamitous mistake of having Smith cop to the fact that he was trying to murder the Robinsons. In the original series, Smith never really admitted to it, constantly claiming that he was misunderstood and unjustly accused. It gave them an emotional out, enabling Smith to build a base of (admittedly, self-serving) trust between himself and Will, and justifying to some degree why Don West didn’t simply shove the little weasel out the airlock (since he couldn’t be absolutely sure that Smith was anything more than an irritating trouble-maker, as opposed to a murderer.)
But in this case Smith is candid about his villainy. He even seems to revel in it, flaunting it. During an ominous moment on a derelict ship, Smith’s spider-sense warns him that nastiness is imminent and he conveys this to the Robinsons by saying, “Evil knows evil.”
By choosing this direction, by making Smith so purely vile, the script backs the characters into a corner. No matter how much they try and rationalize it, there is absolutely no way that LeBlanc’s war-veteran West–whose overall goal is to protect the Robinsons—doesn’t space Smith by the third reel. No way. It’s not like he automatically obeys the orders of John Robinson. As a matter of fact, they make a point of saying he doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways. “Give me an excuse to kill you,” West tells Smith at gunpoint. How about this: He already tried to kill you, moron! He set the robot to destroy the Robinsons, he presents an ongoing sabotage threat, he revels in his villainy, and he completely trashes a section of the medlab for no reason other than to be a creep. Clearly this is someone who does not work and play well with others.
If Oldman’s Smith is a self-admitted genuine threat to life and limb, LeBlanc’s West ices him, without a flicker of conscience, without a heartbeat of remorse. End of story.
And the bottom line is, they could afford to off Smith. They really could.
You see, the original LiS was set in 1997, but the Robinson family of that time—father John, wife Maureen, sisters Penny and Judy, and son Will—were more evocative of the TV standard of the Cleavers or the Andersons. There might have been general bickering from time to time, a disagreement here and there over how best to handle a dicey situation. But for the most part this was a heroic, loving family united in their great adventure.
No more. That is not good enough for the ultra sophisticated ’90s. Wholesome is boring. Heroic is passé. And in the new Lost in Space film, we have swung from one extreme to the other as the loving Robinsons are replaced by the dysfunctional Robinsons. It’s supposed to give us an ironic subtext, you see. The Robinsons physical predicament (being lost in the void) is a reflection of their emotional situation, since they are equally lost in their ability to relate to one another. Professor John Robinson is bound and determined, in his colonizing efforts, to try and save the world… and yet he’s so busy doing that that he’s completely lost touch with such vital and important relationships such as his non-existent bond with son Will.
That’s why Smith is almost superfluous in this film. In the original series, it was the sheer decency and overall niceness of the Robinsons that prompted network execs to say, in essence, “This show needs more conflict.” And it wasn’t a bad idea. If you’re going to do the Cleavers in space, you need Eddie Haskell.
The original pilot featured neither Smith nor Robot. Smith was inserted to stir things up, and the Robot was his henchman. At least that was the original intent, despite whatever they may have morphed into by the show’s campy third season. But in this film the Robinsons themselves are so contentious, so fractured, so completely screwed up as a family unit, that they don’t need anyone to make things worse. Things are bad enough for them if they’re left to their own devices. In Lost in Space, we embark on the slippery slope of what the audience is supposed to do when the heroes aren’t heroic. Characters can have foibles and still be heroic, still be someone you root for. Let’s face it, Kirk was an overly smug womanizer, Spock was a superior-minded stiff, and McCoy was a racist. But dammit, Jim, you knew they were the heroes. And granted, in Space Cases, we had a contentious bunch of space goers, but they weren’t supposed to be a family carefully selected to helm a colonizing mission, they were a group of screw-ups who were thrust into a situation and had to rise to the occasion.
With the Robinsons, there’s no one to root for. No one really to care about. The Robinsons are the center of the Lost in Space saga, and if the center cannot hold, you have nothing that an audience can really care about. The original Robinsons were nice… they were nice. John Robinson was the TV dad every kid would have liked to have (well, not me. I’d have leaned more towards Gomez Addams.) Maureen was supermom with endless patience, and the kids were likeable and “normal.”
You wanted them to find their way home, you anguished over their predicament. Here, you just don’t care about them. When Penny (Lacey Chabert) voices the dreaded realization, “We’re lost,” you don’t feel any stirring of compassion. Instead you just say, “Well, yeah, hence the title.”
Is it impossible to tell a story of a dysfunctional family in space? No, not at all. What if the Robinsons had started out a warm, loving family, someone the audience could root for. And then, when the calamity befalls them, they fall apart. Deep-seated conflicts, unresolved hostilities merely papered over, come to the surface. There are recriminations, finger pointing, anger and vituperation. The family fractures. They thought they were happy, but they were wrong. They were likeable, but now they’re hurting, and we feel for them and want them to reunite into the way we feel they’re meant to be. Subsequent events then develop to pull them together, to make them in reality that which they had originally thought they were.
That’s certainly not the only way. I’m sure there’s many others, most of them likely better. Instead the Robinsons have been “improved” to be angry and bickering. With the psych profile this bunch probably generated, you can’t be surprised they were shot off into space: Earth was probably glad to be rid of them.
And that’s kind of sad, really. There’s a drive to revive the heroic icons of the 1960s… and then trash them (geez, look what they did to Mr. Phelps). As if to say, How could we have ever been so foolish to think that anyone could be decent and heroic. As if we hold up a mirror to the ’60s and see only contempt reflected back.
Maybe the Robinsons aren’t the only ones who are lost.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)
• 
Having sincerely dislike the teevee version, and hearing Bad Things about the movie, i gave it a wide berth.
Nothing i have heard since has convinced me that that was a bad move.
I’d also disliked the original TV show — a lot — but, for all its problems, I really enjoyed the movie. Maybe it was because, in my opinion, it had nowhere to go but up.
Ah, Lost in Space. The film that introduced me to the concept of buyer’s remorse.
I think I spent a buck on it at a garage sale—I was robbed.
Heh.
My first wife and i went to see Ðámņáŧìøņ Alley on opening day with a friend. As we cam out, Starhelm said “This is the kind of movie that makes me want to go to the box office and demand my time back.”
I thought Matt LeBlanc was pretty awful, actually. I felt like I was watching one of Joey Tribbiani’s performances. Of course, everything about the movie was awful. Honestly, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Independence Day is Citizen Kane in comparison.
The First season and a half of the series really is pretty solid Science Fiction. It’s a shame that by the end it had devolved into talking vegetables. ( which was actually the last episode). It really had lots of potential for more and the original cast was really wasted many times. It’s a shame that when it went to movie, that while they at least remembered that the original opening was serious, they had to go overly dark and messy to distance themselves from their memories of the outcome. Same thing they nearly did with BSG, by forgetting that there is a lot of death and destruction in the first six hours, it was just the network interference that caused the sillier episodes later in the too short 70’s run. Battlestar Galactica though was still remade correctly though.
Much as I liked the new BSG, I can’t help thinking of the CSI episode “Astro Quest” where the goofy STAR TREK-type show “Astro Quest” got a grim and gritty remake where the characters killed each other and shouted dramatically about how they were all doomed. (Grace Park was also one of the convention attendees upset about the description of “Astro Quest Redux.”)
For that matter, James, the first person in the crowd who screamed out the loudest about the “Astro Quest” remake was Ronald D Moore, exec producer of the BSG remake. As the story goes, his line was the genuine first reaction the BSG remake got from the audience when previewed at a con.
–Daryl
“There’s a drive to revive the heroic icons of the 1960s… and then trash them (geez, look what they did to Mr. Phelps).”
I still hold that wasn’t really Phelps in that movie, but an infiltrator in one of those fabulous rubber masks, who had kidnapped Phelps and tried to destroy the IMF from within. If anyone in the movie had had the initiative of those meddling kids, they’d have tied him up, peeled off the mask, and discovered they had all been betrayed by Old Man Wilson…
I like the idea that the whole thing was an elaborate fraud to test Tom Cruise’s character for fitness to lead his own team.
In the first 3 M:I films IMF had a traitor in their ranks makes me wonder why the whole dámņ agency wasn’t subject to a lot of Federal investigations if not a total disbanding by the government.
I liked the Lost in Space movie warts and all, but like Star Trek I think it’s better suited to a TV series than a movie series.
I’m not a guy that sneers at everything that came before the decade I came of age. I love a lot of 1960s pop culture. The Beatles are my favorite band, I love the Marvel Comics of the period, and a lot of the movies from that period are pure gold.
But the TV shows are just so fûçkìņg bland. Exception made for anthology shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Even Star Trek is a little bit bland IMO, but it was positively risqué when compared to blandfests like Lost in Space and Mission: Impossible.
Ah, yes, one of those life experiences which remain indelibly seared in one’s consciousness, however much one wishes one could forget it.
Not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES I thought to myself “Wolf, get up out of your seat and leave, NOW!” But I couldn’t. The proverbial deer in the headlights phenomenon, I was trapped, forced to endure this cinematic disaster of Biblical proportions.
The pain started when they announced that the threat of terrorist action had them put the launch pad atop this ridiculous tower in the middle of the city. Can you say “target for tonight”? No matter how crowded things get, there’s always some piece of real estate no one wants. Set up over there, for S’Net’s sake.
Then there’s the family which will have to work closely in cramped quarters in difficult conditions, but can barely give each other the time of day? Is this the best and brightest they can come up with?
They have anti-grav, but use chemical propellants until they’re high enough up that anti-grav is of limited use anyway.
How much did it cost to build and install that FTL hyper drive? A BILLION or three? So why spend the money to install it when they KNOW IT DOESN’T WORK RIGHT???
Over and over the ‘WHAT?!?!’ moments kept piling up, throwing me out of the movie, willing suspension of disbelief systems, and their back-ups overloading and burning out.
Worse, there’s no real payoff for those who made the mistake of sitting through the thing. Smith is still infected by that genetic virus mutating whatsit thingie. Obviously in the hopes of being resolved in a possible sequel from which we were thankfully spared.
To be honest, I really didn’t expect much, but I also didn’t think it was going to be anywhere near this awful. Especially compared to what the original, albeit shoestring budget, Smith-less pilot episode showed the series could have been.
If the ’90’s were terrible, post-9/11 doom ‘n’ gloom is positively rancid. I felt like I had to take a few dozen pills of prozac in just three hours after watching the latest James Bond movie.
Please, Hollywood…stop trying to be “deep”. You suck at it. Just let heroes be heroes again.
Just got back from seeing it with a long time friend who is a big Bond fan, who hated CASINO and QUANTUM, but he really liked this one, as did I.
As a guy who has read the original CASINO ROYALE novel, I don’t think James Bond is a straightforward “hero”. The Daniel Craig Bond, while a little closer to the “realistic” Bond from Ian Fleming novels, is still TOO heroic.
A faithful Bond would be a little like the rapist thug in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but not as bad.
As a guy who’s read any of Fleming’s Bond stories, you should be expecting these movies to share nothing in common with them aside from a title and the names of some of the characters. I’m not sure if any of the movies have been in fact based on any of the stories, but I know for a fact that several have not.
Yeah, I know.
I just find it weird when people complain of tone not being bright enough, or of certain characters not being portrayed as heroic enough, when the original portrayal of a character isn’t that cheery or heroic.
Sorry if I sound a bit harsh. I get annoyed by the repetition of fans always complaining that their heroes aren cheerful any longer. Not that I automatically prefer them dark. I always also annoyed in the 1990s when everything HAD to be dark.
It’s just that I always thought that entertainment can work with a cheerful tone, and it also can work with a dark tone, it isn’t tone itself that makes it good.
Rene – The problem here is, the basic premise, people risking their lives under cover with the world at stake (or significant portions thereof much of the time) and the Opposition looking to Do Bad Things To You(tm), it doesn’t exactly lend itself to levity, unless you’re doing POLICE SQUAD as a spy story, or yet another remake of GET SMART. M herself comments about how they operate in the shadows, not bright sunshine. Of course this does beg the question of why Bond keeps introducing himself by what we’re led to believe is his real name, instead of a carefully crafted cover identity.
Starwolf – Yes, I agree completely. I was the one defending a darker Bond in my original post.
“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” was very closely based on the book.
The latter half of “Moonraker”, OTOH, is mostly an uncredited remake of “Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die”, an Italian spoof starring Mike Conners and Dorothy Provine.
I remember being generally okay with the film at the time, but I was quite young when it came out, so I suspect it hasn’t aged well.
But even then, I knew the film’s biggest mistake was not casting Bill Mummy as the adult Will Robinson.
From what I understand he was offered the role and turned it down. Just like how Harris was offered the part of Smith’s higher up in the terrorist organization and turned it down. According to scuttlebutt, his response was “If I don’t play Smith I don’t play.”
Man, I miss Jonathan Harris.
Actually they initially told Mumy that he was playing the adult Will…and then came back and said, “Uh, no.”
PAD
Before the film came out I asked Harris if he’d be doing a cameo in the film. His responce (and try to hear this in his voice) “I don’t DO cameos”
As PAD mentioned below Mumy was going to do to thinking that he was going to play the adult Will. He had even arranged for time off from Babylon 5 until they told him it would be a different role.
Yeah, they wound up telling Bill he could play the role of the guy who stands there just as the ship is taking off and intones something like, “Farewell, Jupiter 2.”
PAD
Loved the first few minutes. Could have done without the rest of the film.
In September, I had a week off, and I used some of that time to finally watch the DVD set I had of the first season of “Lost in Space.” It was longer than I’d anticipated, 28 episodes plus the original pilot. (And, boy, is it dull without Dr. Smith. And that is something I never thought I’d say, that an episode of “LiS” could be improved by adding Dr. Smith in it.)
I had remembered the first season as being worth watching over the last two, and it is — somewhat. It hadn’t quite dropped into the campiness of the other seasons. And you can tell where, in the fifth or sixth episode, they decided Smith was going to stay around instead of killing him off as they’d originally planned.
I will hand it to them that they did have Prof. Robinson exiling Smith in a few episodes. (One of these even had the kids hating Smith after he’d sold the robot to a “space trader.”)
I had forgotten about the episode where they encountered Warren Oates as a space cowboy, or Sherry Jackson and Mercedes McCambridge as part of a family of “space croppers.” (Sadly, there was no meeting of Jackson and Angela Cartwright who had both, prior to this, been Danny Thomas’ daughters on “Make Room for Daddy.”)
I enjoyed “War of the Robots,” where they find no less than “Forbidden Planet’s” Robby the Robot, who squared off with the Jupiter II’s robot. (One odd thing about this episode — Angela Cartwright is nowhere to be seen and her absence is never commented on. Was she doing promo work for “Sound of Music?”)
I have to say the episode I found most promising was “All That Glitters,” in which Smith accidentally turns Penny into a platinum statue. (One wonders how miserable Angela Cartwright was in the make-up.) I like it because, for once, Smith sees himself for what he really is, and he is horrified. If they had only built from that. Sadly, by the end of the episode, the status quo is resumed. (This one is also interesting by a guest appearance by Werner Klemperer as a space cop. He must’ve gotten time off from “Hogan’s Heroes.”)
In all, these were okay. But the producers and/or network were having trouble deciding whether or not “LoS” was a kid’s show. Sadly, the second season came along, and the ball was firmly in the kiddie court.
Haven’t decided if I’ll pass this on to a friend as a Christmas present, or put it up on eBay.
Those were the days of episodic television that mandated that everything had to be the same at the end of the episode as at the beginning, when there were no overarching storylines and scripts were written based on the series “bible” and nothing else.
It had to be possible to produce and run episodes in any order.
Indeed – I maintain that this trend wasn’t really overturned until the mid-ninties, when over-arching plotlines were finally embraced by genre shows.
.
I like to refer to this reversal ‘the Babylon 5 effect’
You can tell Michael Rennie had fun doing the two-parter first season episode.
Yes, I forgot to mention Rennie’s guest role in the “The Keeper, Part 1 & Part 2.” It was amusing, in that every monster who had shown up previously in the series showed up on this. And the title character was obviously showing up three decades early from the Q from “ST:TNG.”
It took me a long time to warm back up to Akiva Goldsman after “Batman & Robin” and “Lost in Space” because they both have really clumsily introduced “Chekhov’s guns;” a global telescope and the tendency of space-spiders to eat their wounded, respectively. I found myself thinking about “Lost in Space” again after seeing “Wreck-It Ralph,” which, without getting into spoilers, is so detailed and rich with characters and scenery that the Chekhov’s gun (or guns) genuinely surprised me.