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For the game based on the film, see Pandorum (video game). 2009 Germany film
Pandorum
Theatrical release poster
Directed byChristian Alvart
Written byTravis Milloy
Christian Alvart
Produced byPaul W. S. Anderson
Jeremy Bolt
Robert Kulzer
StarringDennis Quaid
Ben Foster
CinematographyWedigo von Schultzendorff
Edited byPhilipp Stahl
Music byMichl Britsch
Production
companies		Constantin Film
Impact Pictures
Distributed byOverture Films
Release datesSeptember 25, 2009 (US)
October 2, 2009 (UK)
Running time108 minutes
CountriesGermany
United States
LanguageEnglish
BudgetUS$33 million
Box office$19,648,784

Pandorum is a 2009 German/American science fiction horror film written by Travis Milloy and directed by Christian Alvart. The film stars Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster. Filming began in Berlin in August 2008. Pandorum was released on September 25, 2009 in the United States, and on October 2, 2009 in the UK.

Plot

An astronaut, Corporal Bower (Ben Foster), wakes up from suspended animation to find himself alone, with no memory of who he is, what he is doing, or what happened to the crew of the 16,000 passenger sleeper ship, Elysium. He proceeds to wake up Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid), who is also suffering from memory loss. They are unable to access the ship's bridge and cannot communicate with any other members of the crew, including the flight crew team whom they are supposed to relieve.

While exploring the spacecraft under Payton's radio guidance, Bower talks with Payton about Pandorum, a psychological condition brought on by extended periods of deep-space travel and hyper-sleep. Its symptoms and effects include severe paranoia, vivid hallucinations, and homicidal tendencies. Payton tells of another ship in which a single flight crew member, affected by Pandorum, jettisoned every crew member into space, killing five thousand.

As Bower continues on, he encounters dead bodies and fast-moving humanoid creatures. Escaping from one of them, he then encounters other human survivors, Manh (Cung Le) and Nadia (Antje Traue); they work together to reach the ship's nuclear reactor. Bower informs the other survivors that the reactor will fail permanently if he does not reset it.

Moving on, the group encounters another survivor, Leland (Eddie Rouse), who tells them the story of what had happened before they awakened: Earth, suffering from massive overpopulation, launched the Elysium on a 123-year voyage to a new, Earth-like planet called Tanis to create a settlement. When the ship later learns that Earth was somehow destroyed, one of the three bridge crew members went insane. After killing the other two crewmates, he awakened most of the remaining crew to torture and manipulate them. Those crew members who did not participate with the flight member's orders were banished to the hold of the ship, and forced to scavenge in order to survive. When he finally grew bored of this, he went back into suspended animation and left the rest of the crew awake. Genetic augmentations that every crew member had received prior to the mission for quick adaptation to Tanis had instead adapted them to the ship, turning them into the cannibalistic monsters that Bower and the other survivors have been encountering. Leland then uses gas to render the group unconscious. Upon awakening they find themselves chained up with Leland about to kill them for food.

Meanwhile, Payton discovers another crew member, Corporal Gallo (Cam Gigandet), who reveals that he was part of the flight crew that received the final message from Earth. He claims that his other two crew mates suffered from an onset of Pandorum and that he was eventually obliged to kill them in self-defense. By now, most of the ship's population is either dead or mutated.

Bower manages to convince Leland to allow them to restart the ship's nuclear reactor. The group fights their way down to the reactor and Bower gets it online at the last moment. Manh lures away most of the mutants but is eventually killed by one of them. While moving through the passenger hypersleep storage area, Bower fully regains his memories, now realizing that Payton is not who he says he is. Gallo is actually a hallucinated manifestation of Payton's younger self, and Payton is actually the crew member afflicted with Pandorum. Leland finds his way to Payton, but is killed when Payton stabs him in the eye. Bower finds his way to the bridge and Payton opens a window on the ceiling above them, to reveal black emptiness, devoid of stars. Payton then tries to convince Bower that he is the one who is suffering from Pandorum. Bower attacks Payton, while simultaneously battling the symptoms of Pandorum. As they fight, it is revealed that the ship has actually been on Tanis for the last 800 years, having crash-landed and sunk to the bottom of a body of water. After 123 years of spaceflight, the ship's log shows the mission has been ongoing for a total of 923 years and it is now the year 3097. Bower accidentally causes a hull breach, and soon water starts pouring in, presumably drowning Payton and the mutated creatures.

Bower escapes to the ocean's surface with Nadia by ejecting his hypersleep pod from the ship. The hull breach causes the ship's computer to initiate an emergency evacuation, finally ejecting the remaining 1211 hibernating and un-mutated crew members onto the surface of the ocean on Tanis, the new home for the final 1213 survivors of humanity.

Cast

Production

Writer Travis Milloy wrote a spec script in which it was set on a prison ship and that the characters played by Antje Traue and Cung Le were prisoners, Ben Foster's character was a non-prisoner not trusting anyone. The producers gave the script to director Christian Alvart, and he was surprised in that he was writing a similar script titled No Where, about four astronauts aboard a settler's ship with no memory of who they are. Alvart decided that they should combine the two scripts together, and the producers and Milloy agreed. Pandorum was announced in May 2008 with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster in lead roles. Christian Alvart was attached to direct the film, based on a script by Travis Milloy. The film was financed by Constantin Film through a joint venture deal with subsidiary Impact Pictures. The partnership helped fund the $40 million USD production, as Constantin drew subsidies from Germany's Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) regional film fund, the German Federal Film Board (FFA), and the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF). The German Federal Film Fund provided $6 million USD to the production, the fund's second-largest 2008 payout, after $7.5 million USD for Ninja Assassin. Filming took place at Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam in August 2008.

Release

Ben Foster, Cung Le, and Antje Traue talk about Pandorum at a panel discussion at WonderCon 2009.

Summit Entertainment is handling foreign sales and presented Pandorum to buyers at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Overture Films will distribute Pandorum in North America, Icon in the United Kingdom and Australia, Svensk in Scandinavia, and Movie Eye in Japan. The film is set up as a possible franchise, so if it performs well Impact Pictures may greenlight one or more sequels.

The DVD and Blu-Ray release occurred on January 19, 2010 in the United States over Anchor Bay Entertainment.

The director and producer commentary on the DVD indicate that a unrated version of the movie exists but as of this time, an unrated version of the movie has not been released.

Reception

The film received mostly negative to mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports the film as holding a 28% approval rating. The site's consensus is that "While it might prove somewhat satisfying for devout sci-fi fans, Pandorum's bloated, derivative plot ultimately leaves it drifting in space." At Metacritic, which judges on a 0-100 scale, the film holds a "generally unfavorable" score of 28 based on 13 reviews. Science fiction magazine SFX was more positive, stating that "Pandorum is the finest interstellar horror in years", and awarding the film 4 stars out of 5. Film Ireland also gave Pandorum a positive review, appreciating the film's synergy of cinematic techniques, set design, and developed characters. Audience reaction was mostly positive at website Box Office Mojo; their polls report that on a scale of A+ to F, the average grade cinemagoers gave the film was B+. OneMetal's DVD reviewer, Graham Gough, was less charitable, awarding the film 2/5, remarking that "But for sturdy turns from the leads, a few moments of savagery, and some good old-fashioned set design, the movie would be unspeakably dull." On IMDB the general audience seems to find the movie better than the top critics rating it with a 6.9 out of 10.

The film opened number 6 at the box office with weekend receipts totalling $4,424,126. As of March 4, 2010, the film has grossed $19,089,710.

Criticism of the use of the term "Evolution"

Like many other movies and books in pop culture, Pandorum hints at an understanding of evolution that is incorrect. In the 63rd minute of the movie, Corporal Bower asks Nadia about the cannibalistic monsters, to which she replies:

"I believe it’s the accelerator – the synthetic enzyme in our feeding tubes that would help our bodies adjust and adapt to the new environment on Tanis. From what I’ve seen, these things have adapted to the ship instead...That stuff in our blood is supposed to jump start evolution."

While there is nothing inherently wrong with the science-fiction concept of an enzyme that might help an organism adapt to a new environment, it is incorrect to call this process evolution. Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations. The mutation or adaptation developed by a single organism is not evolution; if the accelerator enzyme is supposed to cause changes in the individual people that receive the enzyme, this cannot be considered evolution. Conversely, if the cannibalistic monsters were the products of small changes in population traits over hundreds of years passed down through dozens of generations, this process could be referred to as evolution. In the latter case, it still would not make sense to say the enzyme "jump started" evolution, unless maybe the enzyme caused greater genetic mutation, which would in turn increase variation within the population thereby increasing the likelihood that some new traits would be preserved through natural selection.

The story later reveals that the voyage has been over 900 years long- and hence the cannibalistic monsters did indeed adapt, over a long period of time, from those crew members that were banished by corporal Galo into the cargo holds.

Soundtrack

Untitled

Track listing

  1. "All That Is Left of Us" (2:43)
  2. "Pandorum" (3:58)
  3. "Anti Riot" (4:17)
  4. "Shape" (2:03)
  5. "Hunting Party" (2:48)
  6. "Kulzer Complex" (4:40)
  7. "Tanis Probe Broadcast" (2:01)
  8. "Scars" (2:20)
  9. "Fucking Solidarity" (3:28)
  10. "Gallo's Birth" (2:22)
  11. "Biolab Attack" (2:25)
  12. "Kanyrna" (3:22)
  13. "The Stars All Look Alike" (4:32)
  14. "Boom" (3:55)
  15. "Reactor" (4:08)
  16. "Skin on Skin" (3:21)
  17. "Fight Fight Fight" (2:56)
  18. "Bower's Trip" (7:51)
  19. "Discovery / End Credits" (7:55)

References

  1. Official UK and Ireland Film Website, Icon Film Distribution
  2. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/website/Classified.nsf/ClassifiedWorks/8EC74EB0656FEC5C802576390033C2CA
  3. ^ "Pandorum". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
  4. "Pandorum". ComingSoon.net. Coming Soon Media, L.P. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  5. ^ McNary, Dave (May 8, 2008). "Quaid, Foster set for 'Pandorum'". Variety. Retrieved August 8, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  6. ^ Roxborough, Scott (November 7, 2008). "Impact finds $40 mil to make 'Pandorum'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved December 1, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  7. Koehl, Christian (August 5, 2008). "'Pandorum' secures German funds". Variety. Retrieved August 8, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  8. The official Pandorum movie site
  9. First Word on Pandorum Home Video Release
  10. ^ Pandorum at Rotten Tomatoes
  11. "Pandorum". Metacritic. Retrieved 2009-10-14.
  12. http://www.sfx.co.uk/2009/09/30/film_review_pandorum/
  13. McGlynn, Jack (October 29, 2009). "Pandorum Review". Film Ireland. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
  14. Gough, Graham (2010-03-14). "OneMetal DVD Review: Pandorum". OneMetal. Retrieved 2010-03-26.
  15. "Pandorum (2009)". 2010-05-13.
  16. Futuyma, Douglas J. (2005). Evolution. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc. ISBN 0-87893-187-2.

External links

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