Sphere (1998) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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This may be the one sphere that does not actually roll anywhere.

Sphere works to create what a real-life experience would be like when finding an alien ship and intelligence. It also works to make that the most boring 134 minutes spent in a movie theater with some of the best talent available at the time.

First Impressions

In this trailer, a group of four scientists are assembled to investigate a 300-year old alien spacecraft wreck in the ocean. The man that assembles them tells them something is still “running” inside. But inside the creepy, dark wreckage, they discover a human. What’s going on? On a computer terminal, they begin to have a conversation with the alien, who claims its name is “Jerry.” The film looks to have a horror vibe as the investigations continue. Just what does first contact look like in this film by writer Michael Crichton? It looks like a Sphere.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

The film is broken into 11 vignettes with unique title cards. Psychologist Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman) is ferried by a helicopter pilot (Huey Lewis) to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to investigate what he believes to be an airplane crash. He is met by Navy Captain Barnes (Peter Coyote) working with the Oceanographic Science and Seismology Agency (OSSA) at a crash site of a presumed alien spaceship. They are joined by biochemist Beth Halperin (Sharon Stone), mathematician Harry Adams (Samuel L. Jackson) and astrophysicist Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber). They are quickly briefed and taken down 1,000 to the crash site and a Navy/OSSA habitat.

Once below, they immediately suit up and walk across the ocean floor into the giant vessel which has apparently been in the same spot for 300 years. Inside they discover footprints on the dusty floor and the mummified body of a human astronaut in the cockpit. They quickly realize, after watching some computerized logs, that this is a spaceship from their future which had an unexpected event (apparently a collision with a black hole) which sent it to the year 1709 where it crashed. In the cargo hold the team finds a giant golden sphere, whose surface undulates lightly, that reflects everything in the room, except for themselves.

They get word that a cyclone is heading towards them on the surface, and they will be cut off for a few days. Harry believes they are all destined to die underwater, due to the fact that the ship traveled from the future and identified the anomaly as an unknown event. He says that if they make it back to civilization, they would obviously talk about what they found. This paradox means they never return to let anyone know what they found. Later, Harry leaves the habitat and approaches the sphere which briefly reflects his image before he disappears. Norman enters the chamber to see what happened and Harry reappears at his feet. Norman notices his reflection on the sphere as well.

After this encounter with the sphere, strange things begin to happen. One of the Navy personnel assigned to the habitat (Queen Latifah) is attacked by strange jellyfish and killed. Barnes accuses Norman of recommending a mentally unstable biochemist in Beth. The computers begin showing random numbers on them until Harry is able to decode what they say. An entity that calls itself “Jerry” asks them how they are doing. The other Navy diver (Marga Gómez) doesn’t answer and when she is found outside by Beth and Norman, she has been pulverized by a giant squid.

The squid continues to attack the habitat, crushing parts of the structure. Barnes uses the electric charge in the hull to repel the creature, but that starts a fire in which Ted and Barnes are both killed. Norman tries to reason with “Jerry,” but the entity becomes upset and wants to stop being called “Jerry.” Harry is acting weird, having been unable to wake up during the squid attack. Norman realizes the code that Harry implemented was wrong and the entity is not named Jerry, but Harry. The mathematician’s subconscious and fears are manifesting things that become real and attack the team.

The three remaining scientists all become suspicious of each other and eventually realize that each has entered the sphere at different times, thus creating manifestations from each of their subconscious. Beth accidentally thinks about suicide and activates some explosives near the alien craft. The three survivors try to escape in the mini-sub, but are transported into the alien ship. Norman sees through the illusion and launches them back to the surface as the ship and habitat explode. After decompressing they discuss how to handle their debriefing. Since the future has no knowledge of this event, they use the powers they received to agree to forget the incident. The undamaged sphere launches itself from the underwater wreckage and takes off into outer space.

“It’s not that different from a child. A child imagines something that believes it’s real and it’s not there, but with Harry, He not only makes it real from himself, he makes real for all of us.” – Norman

History in the Making

Given the people involved in the making of Sphere, one might assume that this was actually a good film. Directed by Barry Levinson, who was known for his comical dramas, such as Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam, and Diner, Sphere became his first sci-fi film after 16 years of directing, and his second film based on a Michael Crichton story. The first was one of Crichton’s few non-genre works, Disclosure, which was about Michael Douglas bringing a sexual harassment suit on Demi Moore, his boss. His interest with the story for Sphere may have been brought on by his previous work with Crichton, and the fact that the subject matter involved a lot of character moments, presenting itself as an atypical science-fiction film.

The film also sports a number of top-tier actors in the cast. The main three, hyped on the poster and other materials, include Dustin Hoffman (who worked with Levinson previously in Rain Man, and had been working as an actor for the previous three decades), Sharon Stone, and Samuel L. Jackson. Any one of these actors was cause for audiences to want to see a film that included them, as all three were hot properties at the time. Just below them in popularity was relative newcomer Liev Schreiber, who had made his breakthrough with the horror film Scream just two years previous, and Peter Coyote, a character actor who had been in dozens of films including the sci-fi films Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. This was not a low budget, or half-assed film. Yet, somehow the film falls apart, becoming monotonous and dumb.

As a film whose main story conceit deals with the fact that characters are able to manifest illusions (or tangible elements of reality), the film treats that flexible reality poorly for the audience. Often, in films of this nature, the viewpoint of the narrative chooses to either make all the illusions obvious as illusions, or go with them from a single character’s perspective. Sphere jumps around with the point of view. Most of the film is seen from Norman’s perspective. He’s the first character that is introduced and the one that brings the audience into the story. But as he becomes an unreliable narrator within the first half of the film (having entered the sphere, unknowingly) it becomes difficult to understand what the film considers is real, versus the character. It doesn’t help that the choppy nature of the story leads to strange gaps in the timeline. Each vignette, with titles like “The Analysis” and “The Power,” present specific details, but often include a narrative break between them, continuing in the next section from a different perspective. The editing choices do not help with the ability to follow the narrative. And by the time the story evolves into the characters understanding the nature of their predicament, the audience doesn’t care anymore. It becomes a long, tiresome slog with a bunch of dumb “smart” characters. Since everyone is a doctor of some kind, but none of them are fleshed out more than a degree or two. Each does stupid things for reasons that do not seem motivated.

Genre-fication

Some of the most interesting science-fiction aspects of the film are not explored as much as they might be with another director. Instead the psychological aspects of the alien sphere on the scientists are explored. Not that there’s much else that could be explained by these characters since they have no way of further understanding the events that they are experiencing. As an example, the spaceship they find under the ocean, which has been there for 300 years (according to the biologist explaining how fast coral grows), is of a future technology. The log system on the ship appears to indicate it came from the future–presumably 2043 or later, by passing through a black hole, being jettisoned into Earth’s past where it crashed. For many sci-fi aficionados, that’s the interesting story. Where did this vehicle come from, and what other secrets does it have? But the existence of the vehicle and the log entry indicating an “unknown” phenomena troubles Harry. He postulates that the only way that a future society would not know about this discovery (thus creating a paradox), would be that the scientists never make it back to the surface to tell anyone. That can make for an interesting story, where the audience assumes that any possible thing will kill the characters. In fact, that’s what people are waiting for–the characters to die, but they eventually make it back. The answer to Harry’s dilemma is of course that they forget the knowledge they have, so there’s nothing to tell to anyone. It’s an answer, but not one that requires over two hours to get to.

Sphere also pulls a number of plot and stylistic elements from some of the best sci-fi films of all time. Fans of the genre will recognize moments from Alien, The Abyss, Event Horizon and Solaris. These moments include a group of people in space suits (underwater environment suits, in this case) traveling into a derelict ship of unknown origin (Alien & Event Horizon). There are multiple scenes that take place outside the habitat in the open ocean, and dealing with an alien presence underwater, plus a storm threatens to keep them submerged longer than expected (The Abyss). The characters experience a strange sphere that is able to pull memories from inside their subconscious and project them in the real world (Event Horizon & Solaris). Unfortunately the film does not exceed the sum of these parts. It instead leans towards being a psychological horror film, relying on creating an environment of paranoia, both for the characters, but also to an extent with the audience. This might explain some of the weird edits and jumps in spatial time. But even with characters questioning each other’s motivations and integrity, the audience doesn’t end up caring. That may be because there are many scenes that do not actually lead anywhere other than to sow confusion.

Societal Commentary

Some of the best science-fiction stories deal with questions about humanity’s reason for being here. That’s what much of Michael Crichton’s work deals with as well. Is humanity ready or responsible to revive extinct species (Jurassic Park)? Or is it possible to presume that humanity can investigate a deadly virus with autonomy (The Andromeda Strain)? In this case, is mankind ready for the power that this alien sphere can provide? The obvious answer, in all these cases, is no. Humanity never seems ready to explore these bigger issues, especially in sci-fi films. Sphere indicates that if people were given the ability to make their thoughts a reality, they would fall back into the creation of their fears and nightmares as a primary source.

The characters receive a power from entering the sphere. Norman creates a school of jellyfish, that are not actually jellyfish according to Beth’s examination, out of nowhere. There was no prompting from anyone else, apparently. Fletcher’s attack was random, possibly brought on by Norman’s fleeting thought that being alone in the water might bring jellyfish, and so his memories drifted back to his childhood trauma of leaping off a boat into a school of small nettles. However, Harry’s fear and paranoia is the one that really gets focused on, especially his memories of reading about the giant squid attack from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Harry conjures up copies of the book, blank from page 87 on, since that was all he ever read as a child. His subconscious also creates the persona of “Jerry” on the computer system, and ends up killing Ted and Barnes. What the film never does is really explore these trauma’s with the characters. Beth is the worst of all, being a “scientist” character in name only. She appears broken from the start of the film, when she is questioned about a previous suicide attempt which was predicated by an inappropriate relationship between herself and Norman while she was a patient of his. This relationship is only ever hinted at, and never really explored. It makes for characters that have strong traits, but lack any real characterization since at no time does the audience ever sympathize or empathize with anyone.

The Science in The Fiction

For a science-fiction film, the film does have a lot of real-world science included in it. But it also contains a lot of bad science as well. Or at least conveniences all for the sake of the plot–or getting characters from point A to point B. Norman explains to the helicopter pilot that he believes he’s being taken to a plane crash. He theorizes this due to reports he’d written for the government. One of his reports was also about how to deal with the crashed alien spacecraft with a ULF, an unidentified life form. He mentions that there would need to be multiple scientific disciplines, which explain the others. But specifically he included these people by name, as they were all people in those disciplines that he knew. He later admits that the entire report was bunk, and made-up, all as a way to cash the high paycheck that he was offered for writing the report.

Sphere attempts to approach the idea of finding a crashed spaceship in a very real way. Scientists would be gathered from different specialties, and then taken to the location. Here, it’s 1,000 feet underwater. So, with no training on deep diving, these characters are then put into suits and walked over to the wreckage (which could have any number of dangers) immediately after setting foot on the bottom of the ocean. There’s no military presence, save Barnes who is with the Navy. And no thought to possible repercussions about opening a 300 year old vessel–other than not removing their helmets. One aspect of the deep dive that is more scientifically accurate is the use of helium in the habitat. This is explained as a way to prevent injuries when diving so deep, and also that oxygen is toxic in that environment. Well, that’s not exactly the case, but little is made out of any of that, except for a potentially funny moment where the characters all speak with chipmunk voices from being on helium. From then on they wear small devices on necklaces that alter their voices back to normal.

The Final Frontier

Sphere could have been so much more than it is. There are some fun character moments between the actors, and the idea of what would happen if an alien vessel were found, or at least an alien probe, has the potential for a lot of interesting notions. A lot of other films have explored those ideas, better than this one. It’s unclear what the problem may have been with the execution of this film. Perhaps the script wasn’t completed when filming started, or other choices were made along the way. Did the studio have a different idea about where the story should go? Or did the actors demand things for their characters that didn’t fit the overall plot of the film? We may never know.

It’s disappointing to look at a history of amazing sci-fi films, and come upon something that has the potential to be an amazing story. And realize that it really does nothing to advance the genre one way or another. Sometimes that’s what happens. Creators set out with the best of intentions, drawing amazing and talented individuals into a production that ends up not going anywhere anytone thought it might. Sadly, there are many films in the history of cinema that this applies to. Sci-Fi Saturdays always attempts to bring a modicum of positivity to even the worst films reviewed here, because every film can have something for somebody. Sphere challenges that notion at every turn.

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