Last week I went on at length about how excited I am for Netflix’s shot at making Irwin Allen’s beloved show that started off as Science Fiction and devolved into Science Dreck/Fantasy, back into the Sci-Fi journey it should’ve been. As I promised, I re-visited the 1998 film to reconfirm how I felt about it since my last viewing over a decade ago. I also want to be open to demonstrating how my opinion can change because I will never deny liking Lost when it was first released April 3, 1998. Here’s the original, rather short review from Maggi Picayune. Its brevity we can thank for the limitations of print.
Lost in Space: All is forgiven for screenwriter Akiva Goldsman after the complete el Niño-level disaster Batman & Robin devolved into. Goldman (sic) gives the Robinsons, Major West, Robot and Dr. Smith a Nineties makeover and unlike so many other TV revivals, this one works. The premise is still the same, Dr. Smith sabotages the Jupiter 2 on her maiden voyage to Earth’s first colony. They end up way off course and arrive into an unknown part of the galaxy. However, the story is serious and not campy this time; no planets inhabited by go-go dancers or alien gangsters loansharking to Dr. Smith. It doesn’t mean everything from the TV show was pitched; Gary Oldman still interjects Smith’s infamous clichés inspired by Johnathan Harris and it retains some of the Sixties’ sentiments of emotion. What I liked very much was the Robinsons getting a little more depth: Judy is a physician, Penny is an adolescent turning into a teenager (complete with annoying personality and diary excerpts) and Maureen is a xeno-biologist. I always felt the female Robinsons were just eye candy in the TV series. The special effects are excellent, I won’t spoil it for the rest of y’all when you rent it or see it. The only error made in this film is it violates one of my personal laws I have against Science-Fiction movies: No Cute Animals That Detract From The Plot! For example, Ewoks. The monkey-lizard they adopt is pointless to the story. But it’s easily forgivable since the rest of this holds up very well.
Hmm. I actually forgave hack extraordinare Akiva Goldsman 20 years ago. I must have been hasty in wanting to heal after he made Batman & Robin a weird homo-erotic romp.
Anyway, I burned another two-plus hours of my life to see how the 1998 version is doing, thank you Netflix for having this.
The good parts. Lost 1998‘s first act is solid, even Matt LeBlanc’s dumb, not-well-thought-out pick-up lines on Heather Graham. The other actors, included the original actors’ cameos do a great job. You don’t get a solid sense on how urgent the crisis is but you know the Robinsons aren’t going for the hell of it. The second act is fair and then the last act is plagued by clunky, cliche and stilted dialog, especially if it’s coming out of Will (he says “cool” too much and without credibility), Major West and to some extent Dr. Judy Robinson. Dialog aside, the early CG-based effects on the crew is where Lost 1998 has really aged poorly and it didn’t take an HD TV to expose them. Today, I think most intelligent directors would either have the CG house tighten it up or go with practical effects on the hibernation setups, Major West’s armor and Dr. Smith’s possible, future transformation. Anything else not involving people looks decent: Jupiter 2‘s flights, the spider creatures and the hyper gate sequence at the opening. Finally, Gary Oldman breathed new life into Jonathan Harris’ rote dialog with the menace it needed.
The critics who were super-harsh on the plot probably didn’t watch the original neither. For me, the time-travel element was a legitimate plot point. Professor Robinson (a Physicist) seemed to have a solid grasp on the subject (his hypergate may utilize some fourth-dimensional properties) and the Sixties show threw all kinds of things at the audience. Lost in Space didn’t pay attention to the realities of space travel we knew then, nor did Star Trek fairly often, and there were at least a couple instances of time travel, the most memorable being Dr. Smith having an opportunity to prevent himself from being the stowaway. I personally think that the 1998 attempt could’ve been better if it received more time in editing to fix what didn’t work (give West some depth on why he acts like an idiot around Dr. Judy), render the parts they couldn’t finish for time yet explained the story better (namely the sequences on the Proteus) and release during the Summer. I was a projectionist for the Summer of 1998, it was a season pretty deprived of anything very good or strong: Godzilla (a crap-storm of awfulness), Armageddon/Deep Impact (crap), Dr. Doolittle (crap), The Truman Show (crap burger), Lethal Weapon 4 (crap-o-rama), Mulan (fair, cliche), There’s Something About Mary (a surprise but not an Action flick), Saving Private Ryan (aka, Spielbrieg cribs a better German movie called Stalingrad) and Out of Sight (really good but failed, should’ve been a Fall release).
Now comes the moment of truth. Does Lost in Space 1998 deserve the thumbs up I gave it 20 years ago or throw it on the trash heap filled with numerous re-boots (Star Trek 2009, Robocop, The Pink Panther, Planet of the Apes via Tim Burton and The Longest Yard…aka, another Adam Sandler vanity project).
I have to grudgingly give it “worth seeing” rating only for Sci-Fi fans. Maybe I’ll change my mind once I’ve succeeded in bingewatching Netflix’s 465+ minutes (say an hour for the pilot, the other nine are 45 minutes). Non Sci-Fi fans, they don’t like much so they can skip this. It earns my tweaked review due to more Lost 1998 did right: costumes, style/look, premise, giving every family member a critical role as crew (none of the women are exclusively eye candy) and Gary Oldman.