Supernova

Year 2000 Trademarks:

• Use of Sugar Ray’s “I Just Want to Fly” in trailer
• Casting of Victor from Party of Five
• Lou Diamond Phillips presented as sex object

What’s it like 10 years later?

It’s impossible to talk about Supernova without first mentioning the importance of the year 1996 for science fiction and horror. Sure, the year saw the premiere of The X-Files’s fourth season, which would finally reveal the Cigarette Smoking Man’s background, but more importantly it saw the triumphant big-screen revival of two genres that had been relegated to the backmost VHS shelves of rental joints since the mid-’80s: the slasher film and the alien invasion flick. Independence Day and Scream, two of 1996’s highest-grossing films, marked the triumphant return of the little green men and axe-wielding maniacs that were previously the fodder of Fangoria subscribers and ponytailed dudes with forearm tattoos.

For comparison: Before 1996 both the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises released their least-beloved installments, and the Alien franchise was nearly 20 years old. Then, immediately following 1996, we got I Know What You Did Last Summer, Men In Black, Urban Legend, The Blair Witch Project, Men In Black 2, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Granted, these are only six of a hundred films released at the time, but considering these six made roughly half a billion dollars in less than 2 years and there were a dozen less-famous but still-successful knockoffs, it’s safe to say the year 1996 for sci-fi and horror was kind of like the year 1968 for American politics, only this was way more important.

It was only a matter of time before somebody had the brilliant idea to combine these two lucrative genres. Many, many people, in fact. For a brief period at the century’s turn, “science fiction horror” dominated movie screens. Alien had essentially invented this genre back in ‘79 by setting a salivating extraterrestrial loose on an isolated crew of space-miners. But this new crop of space slasher flicks was a bit different. They weren’t satisfied with zero-gravity carnage. Ampped on too many readings of Issac Asimov, these movies wanted to teach us something about the nature of the universe — when it wasn’t slicing astronauts into bloody, floating stumps. What this typically meant was a half-baked metaphysical theme, usually involving a black hole or some other pseudo-scientific mystery, like dark matter or whatever the blobs in The Abyss were made of. Whatever circa ’00s sci-fi horror was all about, it could apparently only be represented by moody blue lighting and electrical bolts:

From this era emerged Supernova, the story of an intergalactic medical emergency vessel in the 22nd century. The vessel’s crew, including co-pilot James Spader and paramedic Lou Diamond Phillips (remember these names), respond to a distress call from a distant mining operation and bring aboard a menacing patient (Peter Facinelli) and a mysterious pink space orb of “ninth-dimensional matter” that grants supernatural powers to whoever touches it. After Spader orders the orb jettisoned from his ship, their new patient –- addicted to the orb’s energy –- begins killing off the crew one by one. He also turns into a werewolf or something.

That’s right: James Spader and Lou Diamond Phillips. To me, these gentlemen alone firmly date Supernova in a past decade. This isn’t to say I’m not a fan Spader or LDP. On the contrary, I have great respect for them both. Spader in particular: After a breakout teenage performance in the 1980s (a decade that often proved a black hole of D-grade teen sex comedies and drug addiction for emerging young talent), Spader nobly entered what I call the “Dennis Quaid zone” of almost superstardom. And like Mr. Quaid, he’s proved one of the most reliable dudes you hope to pop up in random roles. (Rent Wolf and note how close Spader comes to out-doing star Jack Nicholson.) Still, I couldn’t look at Spader in Supernova and keep my mind from wandering back some 20 years to images of Stargate and Crash (the fucking in cars one, not the racism one).

This is why, while watching Supernova 10 years on, I found myself pondering James Spader’s career. Specifically the mid-career of James Spader: those vague years between his Brat Pack era (ending somewhere around sex, lies and videotape in 1989) and his recent breakout as the star of ABC’s Boston Legal. This era of a movie star’s resume — his mid-career — often proves to be the most interesting time professionally. Look at Sean Connery. We all know his dashing early days as James Bond and his post-Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade work as Hollywood’s go-to wise old Scottish dude, but that omits about 20 years. And that’s the time when Connery made weird shit like Zardoz, which was what he wore this in:

Though never reaching the bizarre highs of “Zardoz,” Spader’s mid-career is no less fascinating. Most significantly, watching mid-career Spader one finally realizes how God damn creepy of a performer he is. We’re talking Christopher Walken creepy. Nicholas Cage creepy. Peter Lorre creepy. Post-Devil’s Advocate Pacino creepy. In Spader’s early days, his creepiness –- a whispery manner of speaking and tendency to keep his eyes glazed while looking at people –- was written off as a trait of the snooty assholes Spader was typically cast as (Pretty in Pink, Less than Zero). But as he grew out of these roles and started landing typical straight man parts, it became apparent this was just the weird way in how Spader presented himself to the world. It’s kind of like when you realize those crazy stories your grandfather told you were just the early stages of senility: sad, but also a little fascinating.

The year following Supernova, in fact, Spader acted in one of those previously mentioned post-1996 mainstream horror films: “The Watcher.” In the film, Spader plays an FBI agent tracking a serial killer played by Keanu Reeves. Reeve’s “watcher” was a sadistic sociopath who stalked his prey for months, photographed them, then strangled them with piano wire. But in final film Spader comes out as the creepy one.