Movie review: Lost in Space

Originally published April 24, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1275

Young Will Robinson looks to his sister Penny who—rather than wholesome and clean-cut—now evokes a style best described as “Punk Toontown” and possesses a voice that’s a cross between The Nanny and Lisa Simpson. Penny has just gone into gruesome detail as to what happens when one is faced with the effects of floating unprotected in the vacuum of space. And the cherubic Will wonders, “Do they have a name for what’s wrong with you?”

Sure do, Will. The name is, “The Nineties.”

New Line Cinema’s $80 million Lost in Space, opened April 3 on more screens than any film in New Line Cinema’s history, with a story that is both an update and, at the same time, retro. Updating the 1960s classic (which, in modern terminology, means “old”), the Space Family Robinson embarks on a colonizing mission intended to provide the means of salvaging a dying earth.

But matters go awry when a sabotage attempt by an eco-terrorist (worst kind) named Zachary Smith—who winds up inadvertently being stuck on the vessel when it takes off–causes the Jupiter II to wind up… everyone say it with me… lost in space.

Basically Akiva Goldsman’s convoluted script retells the first two episodes, “The Reluctant Stowaway” and “The Derelict,” adding a ton of familial angst, a boatload of special effects (more effects, according to New Line, than any film in history), and a time travel element so byzantine it makes the plot to Mission: Impossible look like the Barney movie.

It’s not quite as badly written as, say, the effects-laden Independence Day (nothing could be) but it manages the impressive feat of trying to accomplish too much and–consequently—accomplishes almost nothing. Story elements are introduced and never pay off, opportunities missed (after Penny’s early dissertation on dying in the vacuum of space, can you imagine Penny’s anguish if they’d had a scene where Will really was trapped in space with only minutes to live?)

Oftentimes story developments seem present, not for the purpose of serving the film, but serving the toy shelves. (How they missed the giant cyclops, I have no idea. To be honest, I was kind of hoping he’d show up.) No one really seems to have sufficient screen time to be fleshed out, and key relationships which built in the series over time (Will’s genuine fondness and friendship for the robot, for instance) are taken on faith rather than evolved on screen.

Director Stephen Hopkins manages to take the tepid script and walk, rather than run, with it, as the cast generates such low energy that you almost have to wonder whether the actors feel like the dance band on the Titanic, i.e., they know that no one’s listening to them anyway because there’s too much to look at. William Hurt and Mimi Rogers, in particular, as John and Maureen Robinson, generate the chemistry of flat Coca Cola, as Hurt trades in Guy William’s Zorro-esque heroism and swashbuckling for overly cerebral brooding, and Rogers just looks lost (which is appropriate, I guess.)

It’s not a complete wasteland. Judy Robinson has been upgraded from her original incarnation (who can forget that she “gave up a promising career in musical theater” to join her family) and is now the ship’s doctor. Granted, it’s questionable having the ship’s medic be a member of the family (“Okay, daddy, time to check your prostate”), but at least it’s something… although Judy (Heather Graham) is largely limited to trading half-witty repartee with ship’s pilot Don West. Matt LeBlanc as West, though, is amazingly fun to watch; he has several scenes with original West Mark Goddard, and one wonders if Goddard gave him some tips. If he did, they paid off, because of the entire cast, LeBlanc is the only one who looks like he’s having a great time.

But for the most part, we’re left looking at the FX, and boy, there’s a lot to look at. Two new space vessels, two new robots, a CGI critter that is the film’s answer to the idiotic “disguised” chimp from the original series called the Bloop… except in the film it’s called the Blaap, or the Bwaap, or the Bweep, or the Bwaaach, or some other damned thing, I never did quite catch it properly. Don West wears a battle helmet last seen in Stargate, the Robinsons sport a variety of ensembles including launch gear that trade in the original Swanson’s Frozen Dinner duds from the 1960s for hard plastic black body suits that almost cry out for molded nipples.

The only other major attraction in the film is Gary Oldman as Doctor Smith. He’s great in the role, even subtly aping some of Jonathan Harris’ mannerisms. However, the script does make the calamitous mistake of having Smith cop to the fact that he was trying to murder the Robinsons. In the original series, Smith never really admitted to it, constantly claiming that he was misunderstood and unjustly accused. It gave them an emotional out, enabling Smith to build a base of (admittedly, self-serving) trust between himself and Will, and justifying to some degree why Don West didn’t simply shove the little weasel out the airlock (since he couldn’t be absolutely sure that Smith was anything more than an irritating trouble-maker, as opposed to a murderer.)

But in this case Smith is candid about his villainy. He even seems to revel in it, flaunting it. During an ominous moment on a derelict ship, Smith’s spider-sense warns him that nastiness is imminent and he conveys this to the Robinsons by saying, “Evil knows evil.”

By choosing this direction, by making Smith so purely vile, the script backs the characters into a corner. No matter how much they try and rationalize it, there is absolutely no way that LeBlanc’s war-veteran West–whose overall goal is to protect the Robinsons—doesn’t space Smith by the third reel. No way. It’s not like he automatically obeys the orders of John Robinson. As a matter of fact, they make a point of saying he doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways. “Give me an excuse to kill you,” West tells Smith at gunpoint. How about this: He already tried to kill you, moron! He set the robot to destroy the Robinsons, he presents an ongoing sabotage threat, he revels in his villainy, and he completely trashes a section of the medlab for no reason other than to be a creep. Clearly this is someone who does not work and play well with others.

If Oldman’s Smith is a self-admitted genuine threat to life and limb, LeBlanc’s West ices him, without a flicker of conscience, without a heartbeat of remorse. End of story.

And the bottom line is, they could afford to off Smith. They really could.

You see, the original LiS was set in 1997, but the Robinson family of that time—father John, wife Maureen, sisters Penny and Judy, and son Will—were more evocative of the TV standard of the Cleavers or the Andersons. There might have been general bickering from time to time, a disagreement here and there over how best to handle a dicey situation. But for the most part this was a heroic, loving family united in their great adventure.

No more. That is not good enough for the ultra sophisticated ’90s. Wholesome is boring. Heroic is passé. And in the new Lost in Space film, we have swung from one extreme to the other as the loving Robinsons are replaced by the dysfunctional Robinsons. It’s supposed to give us an ironic subtext, you see. The Robinsons physical predicament (being lost in the void) is a reflection of their emotional situation, since they are equally lost in their ability to relate to one another. Professor John Robinson is bound and determined, in his colonizing efforts, to try and save the world… and yet he’s so busy doing that that he’s completely lost touch with such vital and important relationships such as his non-existent bond with son Will.

That’s why Smith is almost superfluous in this film. In the original series, it was the sheer decency and overall niceness of the Robinsons that prompted network execs to say, in essence, “This show needs more conflict.” And it wasn’t a bad idea. If you’re going to do the Cleavers in space, you need Eddie Haskell.

The original pilot featured neither Smith nor Robot. Smith was inserted to stir things up, and the Robot was his henchman. At least that was the original intent, despite whatever they may have morphed into by the show’s campy third season. But in this film the Robinsons themselves are so contentious, so fractured, so completely screwed up as a family unit, that they don’t need anyone to make things worse. Things are bad enough for them if they’re left to their own devices. In Lost in Space, we embark on the slippery slope of what the audience is supposed to do when the heroes aren’t heroic. Characters can have foibles and still be heroic, still be someone you root for. Let’s face it, Kirk was an overly smug womanizer, Spock was a superior-minded stiff, and McCoy was a racist. But dammit, Jim, you knew they were the heroes. And granted, in Space Cases, we had a contentious bunch of space goers, but they weren’t supposed to be a family carefully selected to helm a colonizing mission, they were a group of screw-ups who were thrust into a situation and had to rise to the occasion.

With the Robinsons, there’s no one to root for. No one really to care about. The Robinsons are the center of the Lost in Space saga, and if the center cannot hold, you have nothing that an audience can really care about. The original Robinsons were nice… they were nice. John Robinson was the TV dad every kid would have liked to have (well, not me. I’d have leaned more towards Gomez Addams.) Maureen was supermom with endless patience, and the kids were likeable and “normal.”

You wanted them to find their way home, you anguished over their predicament. Here, you just don’t care about them. When Penny (Lacey Chabert) voices the dreaded realization, “We’re lost,” you don’t feel any stirring of compassion. Instead you just say, “Well, yeah, hence the title.”

Is it impossible to tell a story of a dysfunctional family in space? No, not at all. What if the Robinsons had started out a warm, loving family, someone the audience could root for. And then, when the calamity befalls them, they fall apart. Deep-seated conflicts, unresolved hostilities merely papered over, come to the surface. There are recriminations, finger pointing, anger and vituperation. The family fractures. They thought they were happy, but they were wrong. They were likeable, but now they’re hurting, and we feel for them and want them to reunite into the way we feel they’re meant to be. Subsequent events then develop to pull them together, to make them in reality that which they had originally thought they were.

That’s certainly not the only way. I’m sure there’s many others, most of them likely better. Instead the Robinsons have been “improved” to be angry and bickering. With the psych profile this bunch probably generated, you can’t be surprised they were shot off into space: Earth was probably glad to be rid of them.

And that’s kind of sad, really. There’s a drive to revive the heroic icons of the 1960s… and then trash them (geez, look what they did to Mr. Phelps). As if to say, How could we have ever been so foolish to think that anyone could be decent and heroic. As if we hold up a mirror to the ’60s and see only contempt reflected back.

Maybe the Robinsons aren’t the only ones who are lost.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)