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Evolution
Evolution film poster
Directed by	Ivan Reitman
Written by	David Diamond Don Jakoby David Weissman
Produced by	Joe Medjuck Ivan Reitman Daniel Goldberg
Starring	David Duchovny Orlando Jones Julianne Moore Seann William Scott
Cinematography	Michael Chapman
Edited by	Wendy Greene Bricmont Sheldon Kahn
Music by	John Powell
Distributed by	- USA - DreamWorks - non-USA - Columbia Pictures
Release dates	June 8, 2001
Running time	101 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	~ US$80,000,000

Evolution is a 2001 comedy sci-fi movie directed by Ivan Reitman. It is based on a story by Don Jakoby who converted it into a screenplay along with David Diamond and David Weissman. A short-lived animated series, Alienators: Evolution Continues, that was loosely based on the film was broadcast months after the movie was released.

Evolution was seen as reminiscent of Reitman's Ghostbusters for its portrayal of four rag-tag heroes battling unnatural forces.

Taglines

• Coming to wipe that silly smile off your planet
• Have a nice end of the world

Plot

The film begins with a meteor heading towards Earth. Wayne Grey, a young firefighter trainee, is in the desert outside the Arizona town of Glen Canyon, practicing a fire rescue. The meteor strikes the old shack he had been using, creating a massive crater and, worst of all, wrecking his car.

The next day, chemistry professor Ira Kane and geology teacher/girls' volleyball coach Harry Block, who both teach at Glen Canyon Community College, get a tip about the meteor impact. Conning their way past the local police, Ira and Harry locate the meteor in the network of caves below the desert and cut off a piece of the meteor as a sample. Examining the sample back at the college, Ira discovers single-celled organisms rapidly dividing and multiplying, and learns that these organisms could not have evolved on Earth. When Harry suggests that the military needs to get involved, Ira disagrees, with a cryptic "I know those guys." Ira and Harry decide to study the aliens themselves, with one eye on the Nobel Prize. Taking their class on a field trip to the meteor, the professors find that the life-forms have evolved tremendously overnight, with the cave now filled with alien fungi and a thick carpet of oxygen-intolerant flatworms. Meanwhile, Wayne fails his firefighter entrance exam and grudgingly returns to his miserable job as a country club pool manager.

Returning to the crash site the day after, Ira and Harry discover that the U.S. military has moved in overnight and set up a massive research camp. Brought before the post's overseers, General Russell Woodman and Dr. Allison Reed, an epidemiologist from the Centers for Disease Control, Harry is amazed to find that Woodman is Ira's old boss and that there is considerable bad blood between them. Woodman gladly tells Ira and Harry that they found out about the discovery through a tap placed on Ira's computer; as he puts it, the military "likes to keep tabs on our prodigal sons." Unable to continue their research, Ira and Harry file a lawsuit in the local courthouse to force the military to allow them access. Woodman reveals Ira's entire disgrace: years ago, Ira had overseen a disastrous field test of a new anthrax vaccine that caused debilitating and humiliating side-effects in the test subjects - a condition that came to be called "Kane's Madness." The judge finds Ira and Harry unfit to be involved in the research and bars them from the site.

When they return to their offices, Ira and Harry find that they have been robbed; all of their samples and research has been stolen by the army. They decide to break into the army base disguised as officers and discover that the cavern has changed radically in the week they've been absent. The alien cave resembles a bizarre jungle teeming with advanced insect and reptilian life-forms. A confrontation with Allison is cut short when an alien bug enters Harry's environmental suit and then his body, and the geologist is rushed to the camp infirmary. Interviewing Ira, Allison wonders why he would have put his friend in such danger, and Ira tells her that his military disgrace has led him to being virtually exiled to this Arizona backwater, and he was so desperate to escape that he hadn't been thinking clearly.

Later that night, a member of the country club is attacked and killed by a bizarre amphibious reptile on the golf fairway. The creature dies almost immediately afterwards, and Wayne is able to claim its corpse. He brings it to Ira and Harry the next day and explains how it died; it simply choked in the fresh air. It seems that the creatures are still oxygen-intolerant. It also seems that the military cordon around the crash site isn't as tight as it should be. Another attack in suburban Glen Canyon later that day leads to the discovery of a large number of alien corpses just outside the city. Harry, displaying a rare mastery of his scientific field, concludes that the cave network beneath the desert, which intersects with a number of abandoned silver mines, is simply impossible to seal off. His moment of glory, however, is cut short by the birth of a winged alien dinosaur-like reptile right in front of them - one which can survive in oxygen. It immediately takes flight and heads for the center of Glen Canyon. Racing after it, Ira, Harry, and Wayne track it to a shopping mall and manage to kill it. The meteor's secret is now well and truly out.

Governor Lewis immediately brings his heavy-handed style of micromanagement to bear on Woodman's operation. Allison explains that the aliens' incredible growth rate makes them inherently uncontrollable. Ira, Harry, and Wayne show up, fresh from their defeat of the alien bird at the shopping mall, and accuse the military of being unable to handle the task. After attempting to blame the current problem on Ira, Woodman suggests that the best way to deal with the alien outbreak is a generous quantity of napalm. Initially reluctant, Governor Lewis changes his mind when the base itself comes under attack from escaped alien primates, and gives Woodman a free hand. When her protests are swept aside, Allison quits the base and throws her lot in with Ira.

Back at the college laboratory, when Harry lights a cigarette, the key to the aliens' metabolism is accidentally discovered; heat feeds it and triggers tremendous evolutionary advances. Woodman refuses to hear the group's discovery, though, and continues to prepare for the saturation bombing the next morning.

All but giving up hope, Ira soon makes a second discovery: the element selenium is a natural poison to the aliens. Two of his more underperforming students, brothers Deke and Danny Donald, tell the group that selenium is the active ingredient in Head & Shoulders shampoo. The six of them round up as much Head & Shoulders as they can, load up a fire engine acquired by Wayne, and set out to kill the aliens before Woodman's strike goes ahead. The general, however, begins the strike earlier than planned, and Ira, Harry, Allison, and the Donalds are caught in the alien cave as the organisms begin to metamorphose out of control, amalgamating into an amorphous mass that attacks them. Fleeing in the fire truck, they, as well as the astounded observers in the military outpost, can only watch as a massive single-celled alien organism erupts from the desert and towers hundreds of feet above Glen Canyon. Almost immediately, it begins to split just as the originals had under Ira's microscope, but on a gigantic scale. Despite the obvious change in circumstances, there seems to be no reason why the shampoo idea wouldn't still work, and Ira suggests that they find a good point of entry in the mass.

Keen for revenge, Harry insists on being the one to stick the hose into the "point of entry" they find (what is essentially the creature's anus) and fills it with shampoo. The mass immediately begins to shudder and decay. Driving manically to get out from under it, the fire truck gets clear just as the gigantic alien explodes, raining green glop down for miles around. The extremely-camera-friendly Governor Lewis holds a press conference as soon as possible, congratulating each member of the heroic party personally (at the same time announcing Wayne's sudden promotion to the fire service as reward for his part). However, Ira and Allison sneak away before he can get to them and make love in the cabin of the fire truck.

The movie ends with Ira, Harry, and Wayne doing a commercial for Head & Shoulders shampoo.

Cast

Kyle Gass, Sarah Silverman, Richard Moll, Tom Davis, Miriam Flynn, and John Cho have cameo appearances.

Trivia

This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles. (June 2007)

• Evolution was originally written as a serious horror science fiction film, until Ivan Reitman stepped in and re-wrote much of the script.
• During the lengthy shooting in Page, Arizona, Dan Aykroyd entertained the local folk by carding guests at a bar, unofficially greeting people at Wal-Mart, and visiting locals for a cup of coffee in their homes.
• Shot in December, DreamWorks asked the locals to delay putting up their Christmas decorations. Following the shoot, DreamWorks paid the city employees overtime to light up the town in time for Christmas.
• The clumsiness in Julianne Moore's character was her idea.
• The three main characters perform a commercial for "Head & Shoulders" at the end of the movie. The idea to this came from Ivan Reitman's son.
• Ira (played by David Duchovny) makes an incredible (and ultimately, correct) leap of logic when he deduces that the element selenium might be as poisonous to the alien life-forms as arsenic is to humans. Fox Mulder, Duchovny's character on The X-Files, is notorious for arriving at similarly implausible (and usually, correct) leaps of logic (usually just in time to advance the plot prior to the commercial break).
• The placement of the element selenium in Head & Shoulders shampoo is technically correct. Head & Shoulders Intensive Treatment Shampoo actually does consist of approximately 1% selenium sulfide. However, Head & Shoulders shampoo shown in the white containers mixed with the blue ones contains 1 % zinc pyrithione and not the selenium sulfide in the blue containers.
• David Duchovny turned down a role in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones to appear in this movie.
• The three-eyed smiley face used as the logo of the film in marketing was borrowed from the comic book Transmetropolitan. Producers had to get permission from DC Comics to use it and were licensed by Smileyworld Ltd, owner of the trademark of the Smiley logo, to use it for advertising and commercial purposes.
• In the film, when the governer has a meeting for the first time in the research centre, the clock behind him showes 7:25am and when Ira (played by David Duchovny) the clock shows 8:40am.

References

1. "TheMovieBoy Review: Evolution (2001)". Retrieved 2007-07-20.

External links

• Evolution at IMDb
• Evolution at Rotten Tomatoes
• Evolution at Box Office Mojo

• Articles with trivia sections from June 2007
• 2001 films
• DreamWorks films
• Columbia Pictures films
• American films
• Comedy films
• Comedy science fiction films
• English-language films
• Films directed by Ivan Reitman
• Films shot in Super 35