Michael Crichton adaptations require a certain chemistry. Some of the best films based on his novels retain the pulpy thrills of their source while enriching their storytelling and suppressing their absurdity, with 1993’s “Jurassic Park” as a referencenaturally. Alternatively, 1995’s “Congo” transforms Crichton’s bad-as-a-heart-attack book about killer gorillas and mythical diamond mines into a fanciful sci-fi safari adventure filled with Jimmy Buffett cameos and Bruce Campbell (in case you’re not sure what kind of movie you’re watching).
And then there’s “Sphere,” the 1998 big-screen version of Crichton’s high-seas sci-fi thriller that’s unfortunately neither silly nor clever nor scary; it’s mostly just soggy boredom. Like Crichton’s original book, the film follows a small group of academics and Navy personnel to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to investigate what appears to be a spaceship from the future carrying a giant sphere from… somewhere. This premise isn’t bad either. In typical Crichton fashion, it reads like a modern populist riff on an older classic of the genre; basically, “Solaris” but underwater, as /Film’s Jeremy Smith observed in his own withdrawal from “Sphere”. And much like that revered sci-fi drama, this particular Crichton project doesn’t wait long before moving into darker cosmic territory, as its human heroes soon realize how unprepared they are to interact with an alien object.
With that, plus a decorated cast led by Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson (then just five years after becoming a snack dinosaur in “Jurassic Park”), “Sphere” looked like it could be Crichton’s next blockbuster film adaptation. Instead, it turned out to be a poorly rated box office failure that almost killed the Michael Crichton brand single-handedly, at least as far as the Hollywood powers that be were concerned.
Sphere marked the beginning of the end for Michael Crichton adaptations
Different settings aside, “Sphere” and “Solaris” really do have an alarming amount in common. In both cases, the human characters gradually realize that their most harmful thoughts and self-destructive impulses are literally being used as weapons against them by these otherworldly entities they have found…and it’s their own fault. But where “Solaris” takes the time to dissect what that says about human nature, “Sphere” uses it mostly as an excuse to deliver cheap jolts and kill off the obvious redshirts in its ensemble in strangely nasty and obnoxious ways.
This is where we need to hold our feet to the fire for director Barry Levinson. He and Dustin Hoffman were fresh off their famous (and eerily prescient) 1997 political satire “Wag the Dog” and had already directed the Best Picture Oscar winner “Rain Man,” but Levinson just couldn’t get his head around “Sphere.” Despite a budget of $80 million (a lot for its time), the film isn’t visually inventive enough to make the high-tech underwater station where most of its story takes place feel like a real haunted house where the walls close in, as opposed to a collection of stark, uninviting sets. Even his characters are rather lifeless, which shouldn’t have been a problem for Levinson in his prime. (Mind you, this was way before his “Alto Knights” era.)
There was another major Michael Crichton adaptation after this (“The 13th Warrior” from 1999), but even if this famous flop had gone better, the response to “Sphere” might have already doomed it. Then again, given that Levinson had also directed Crichton’s absurd 1994 adaptation, “Disclosure” (a clown show to be discussed another day), perhaps he should have known better than to return to it at all.
