ROTTEN TOMATOES: Emmerich to Go On Fantastic Voyage

Emmerich to Go On Fantastic Voyage

Now when are they going to make Innerspace 2?

by Jeff Giles | August 16, 2007

Now here's something trippy for you. This item not only concerns a movie remake, but is itself a remake of news from ten years ago: According to Variety, Roland Emmerich has decided to direct a new version of 1966's cult sci-fi classic Fantastic Voyage.

Emmerich, who recently finished next March's 10,000 B.C., was attached to a Voyage remake in the '90s, but the project became a casualty of the disappointment that was Godzilla -- until the director read a new script treatment by National Treasure screenwriters Marianne and Cormac Wibberley. Whatever Emmerich read convinced him a new Voyage could be successful after all, and the film is now set to be released by Fox, with the Wibberleys in negotiations to write the script.

The original, you may recall, starred Raquel Welch and Donald Pleasence in the story of a team of scientists who are miniaturized and injected into a scientist's body in order to repair a blood clot in his brain. Emmerich's first attempt at a new Voyage was to take place 30 years after the events of the original film, but it's unclear which direction the new script will take.

Source: Variety

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(1-10 of 10 posts) | Reply

cgcbooks writes:
on Aug 16 2007 06:06 AM

Try something new for Christ's sake. There was nothing wrong with the original.

(Reply to this)

Ashron writes:
on Aug 16 2007 06:16 AM

Well, I'll go on record as saying this could actually be pretty good. I agree that I wish Hollywood would do something new, but with the effects that can be done now, this could actually be a lot of fun. The script needs to be good though, and the writers they are considering do give me pause.

(Reply to this)

Prosper761 writes:
on Aug 16 2007 08:17 AM

Just another example of imagination-deprived numbers crunchers running Hollywood, who are too lazy and/or too scared to make original films. Sadly, they won't stop until audiences are fed-up enough to stop paying to see these train-wrecks.

(Reply to this)

Avi writes:
on Aug 16 2007 08:36 AM

Almost every animated show ever made has parodied Fantastic Voyage - Fairly Oddparents, Spongebob, Teen Titans, etc, etc.

A remake is so unnecessary.

(Reply to this)

Bob* writes:
on Aug 16 2007 10:17 AM

uh, why? :S

(Reply to this)

UCLASmrtGuy82 writes:
on Aug 16 2007 12:15 PM

This is based on the old Coolio song right? Because if it is, this a**hole stole my idea!

(Reply to this)

okuonuora writes:
on Aug 16 2007 01:16 PM

Innerspace 2? They can inject themselves into Kevin Federline's nads to prevent him from procreating again.

(Reply to this)

Hieremias writes:
on Aug 16 2007 01:42 PM

Wait wait wait wait wait....... Godzilla was a disappointment??

(Reply to this)

ericssin writes:
on Aug 16 2007 06:27 PM

Nooo not another "remake" is so hard to write something new? I saw the 60's movie and it is good, I seriously doubt they'll make a good "new version". is so disappointing to see so many remakes, dumb sequels/prequels, and bad videogame/comic adaptations.

(Reply to this)

Alexaion writes:
on Aug 16 2007 11:01 PM

In reply to this comment (#1044170)
Hmm... Ashron, what exactly is bad in borrowing off other ideas? I'm getting a little tired of all these comments declaiming Hollywood for a supposed drought of ideas and originality, and taking that as the measure of 'good.' Truly, if you apply that to it, let's toss Hamlet out of our list of classic works of Literature, alright? For it is in no way original - a mere retelling that not only had been done once but many times before.

But we still revere it (and rightly so.) Why? Because entire originality, though it times is laudable, often means nothing. Some of the best works are those that adapt others and change things to suit the new artist's sensibilities. There is more to a story than just the general premise, after all - and often, that's all these remakes share with their earlier counterparts. There is the art of words; in film, there's the art of filming. There is acting. There are costumes. There's style and music. These things may all be said to be original. Why, praytell, does the borrowing of a general storyline at once make something deserving of this ridicule? Does it denote a lack of imagination? No. In Hamlet I've only listed one example.

I doubt you're familiar with Epics (there aren't many these days, or in any days for that matter, who are), but there is one that is often considered very highly, Vergil's Aeneid. Not a bad piece of literature, to be sure. But fact is, it borrows it's premise out of myth; some portions are almost identical to segments in Homer's Iliad. Lack of imagination? Two millennia don't think so. But there is nothing inherently different in that than in what's being done here. In fact, every single of the great ancient works we possess are based on pre-existing myth, or as sequels to them. Take the Attic Tragedies as an ideal example. They were written in much the same way that these supposed dumb 'remakes' and 'adaptions' were. They were telling the same old mythological stories; rehashing the same ones that other playwrights had done maybe a few years before. They adapt things to suit the author, change things here and there such as focus and theme, and use the story as a vehical to bring something new across. And for this they're brillant, whilst still being nothing more than remakes.

So tell me, when Aeschylus wrote 'The Libation Bearers', and a decade or two later Sophocles wrote 'Elektra', and a bit thereafter Euripides wrote his own 'Elektra'... what's so different than these remakes? Careful, then, in your critism of this. Of course, people in that time were critisising the 'new' playwrite Euripides as opposed to the older Sophocles and Aeschylus - I'm sure they were speaking much as you are now. But in the long retrospect of history, maybe those complaints were rather groundless, and were merely born out of reactionary misundersanding. Be careful that you don't fall into the same category.

(Reply to this)

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