Fantastic Voyage

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Fantastic Voyage
Directed by	Richard Fleischer
Produced by	Saul David
Written by	Jerome Bixby (story) Otto Klement (story) Harry Kleiner David Duncan (adaptation)
Starring	Stephen Boyd Raquel Welch Edmond O'Brien Donald Pleasence
Music by	Leonard Rosenman
Cinematography	Ernest Laszlo
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s)	August 24, 1966 (U.S. release)
Running time	100 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 science fiction film written by Harry Kleiner. 20th Century Fox wanted a book^{[citation needed]} that would be a tie-in with the movie, and hired Isaac Asimov to write a novelization based on the screenplay. Because the novelization was released six months before the movie, many people mistakenly believed Asimov's book had inspired the movie.^{[citation needed]}

The movie inspired an animated television series, as well as a painting of the same name by Salvador Dali.^[1]

Tagline: Four men and one woman on the most fantastic, spectacular and terrifying journey of their lives...

[edit] Plot summary

The United States and the Soviet Union have both developed technology that allows matter to be miniaturized using a process that shrinks individual atoms, but its value is limited because objects shrunk will return to normal size after a period of time - the smaller an object is made, the less time passes before it reverts.

Scientist Jan Benes, working behind the Iron Curtain, has figured out how to make the shrinking process work indefinitely. With the help of the CIA, he escapes to the West, but an attempted assassination leaves him comatose, with a blood clot in his brain.

To save his life, Charles Grant (the agent that extracted him from the Soviet Union), pilot Captain Bill Owens, Dr. Michaels, surgeon Dr. Peter Duval and his assistant Cora Peterson board a submarine, the Proteus, which is then miniaturized and injected into Benes. The ship is reduced to one micrometre in length, giving the team only one hour to repair the clot; after that, the submarine will begin to revert to its normal size and become a target for Benes' immune system – and, more importantly, expand to full size while inside Benes, ripping his body apart.

Many obstacles hinder the crew on their journey. They are forced to travel through the heart (a temporary cardiac arrest must be induced to avoid destructive turbulence), the inner ear (all in the lab must remain quiet to prevent similar turbulence) and the alveoli of the lungs (where they replenish their supply of oxygen). When the surgical laser needed to destroy the clot is damaged, it becomes obvious there is a saboteur on the mission. They cannibalize their radio to repair the laser. When they finally reach the brain clot, there are only six minutes remaining to operate and then follow the veins to the removal site.

The traitor, Dr. Michaels, knocks Owens out and takes control of the Proteus while the rest of the crew is outside for the operation. He then tries to run them down, but crashes and is trapped in the wreckage. After Duval successfully removes the clot, they swim desperately to one of the eyes, to escape via a teardrop. Michaels is killed when he grows large enough for white blood cells to detect and attack him.

[edit] Logical flaw

In the original movie, the crew (apart from the saboteur) manage to leave Benes' body safely before reverting to normal size, but the Proteus remains inside, as do the atoms of the saboteur's body (albeit digested by a white blood cell). Isaac Asimov pointed out^{[citation needed]} that this was a serious logical flaw in the plot, since the submarine (even if reduced to bits of debris) should also revert to normal size, killing Benes in the process. Therefore, in his novelization Asimov had the crew provoke the white cell into following them, so that it drags the submarine to the tearduct. The submarine (or rather, the wreckage of it) then expands outside Benes' body.

As well, the scene where the crew collects air from Benes' lungs after their own supply is sabotaged should not work, as they are normal-sized air molecules. Asimov's novelization solved this problem as well by including a miniaturization device in the jury-rigged suction machine. However, in the movie, the unminiaturized air was used only to pressurize a tank for ballast, not for breathing.

According to the introduction of the novel, Asimov was rather reluctant to write the novel because he believed that the miniaturization of matter is physically impossible. But he decided that it was still good fodder for sci-fi story-telling and that it would still make for some intelligent reading. Plus it was known that 20th Century Fox wanted someone with some sci-fi clout to help promote the film.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Further novelization

• Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, was written by Isaac Asimov as an attempt to develop and present his own story apart from the 1966 screenplay.^{[citation needed]} This novel is not a sequel to the original, but instead is a separate story taking place in the Soviet Union with an entirely different set of characters.

• Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm is a third interpretation, written by Kevin J. Anderson, published in 2001. This version has the crew of the Proteus explore the body of a dead alien that crash-lands on earth, and updates the story with such modern concepts as nanotechnology (replacing killer white cells).

[edit] Trivia

• The film was originally planned to have an epilogue^{[citation needed]}, where we see Dr. Benes has recovered from the microsurgery. However, despite the success of the mission, he still suffered some minor brain damage; specifically the portion of his memory that contained the secret of how to maintain a miniaturized state for longer than an hour. Verified as genuine^{[citation needed]} , copies of scripts containing this ending have circulated conventions for years, and can be found on the Internet. Asimov's novelization includes a similar epilog which omits the memory loss.

• The actual full-sized set and prop for the Proteus was placed in storage at the 20th Century Fox backlot for years^{[citation needed]}, and maintained in relatively good condition. It was brought out of retirement briefly for use in filming a Public Service Announcement in 1972 for the American Medical Association on the risks of heart disease. Shortly afterwards, it was painted orange and modified for use as a rescue vessel in Irwin Allen's disaster film, The Poseidon Adventure.^{[citation needed]} However, due to budget constraints, all scenes featuring the rescue craft were cut before any scenes were filmed, and the hull of the modified Proteus was later scrapped.

• Parts of the miniature sets, as well as some of the full-sized sets, were "borrowed" by Irwin Allen for use on some of his various TV shows. One of the blood vessel sets was used as a conveyor tube in an episode of Lost in Space where Will Robinson has just been converted into a diminutive duplicate of Dr. Zachary Smith. Part of the inner ear miniature set was used in the episode "Jonah and the Whale" on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The laser gun was used on several of Allen's series as an alien weapon prop, and there is some evidence that the set design techniques for the brain set were developed for the 2nd episode of Lost in Space as the interior of the alien derelict in the episode Derelict in Space.

• Much of the aforementioned usage of sets and props from Fantastic Voyage in Irwin Allen's TV efforts can be attributed to two facts^{[citation needed]}: Special effects for both efforts were supervised by L.B. Abbott, and both were filmed in adjacent stages at the 20th Century Fox studios. Paul Zastupnevich, Allen's associate during the majority of his sci-fi TV work, stated in numerous interviews that the use of the Fantastic Voyage sets and props was, at times, due to "midnight requisitioning" on the part of both Allen and Abbott. Richard Basehart also referred to specifics on filming the episode Jonah and the Whale of having to film certain scenes long after normal studio hours because they were "borrowing" a set from another production and had to finish shooting before that production resumed shooting the following morning.

• In 1997, a sequel was announced^{[citation needed]} by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, which would take place 30 years after the events of the original film. The sequel promised a new level of special effects made possible by using actual microcamera footage from within a human body, as opposed to miniature or CGI effects. Devlin also stated^{[citation needed]} that he'd planned a role for Raquel Welch as one of the head scientists for the CMDF facility, being the only one of the original medical team still alive. However, with the critical and financial failure of Devlin and Emmerich's Godzilla film, several of their film proposals – including a remake of the classic, seminal "giant ant" film, Them! – were quietly placed on indefinite hold and/or outright cancelled by their respective studios.

• According to L.B. Abbott^{[citation needed]}, the two-inch miniature for the Proteus was stolen by a bird that pilfered the small model while it rested on a windowsill, drying following a paint touch-up. It has never been recovered, and Abbott jokingly theorized that it's probably still part of some bird's nest up in some tree!

• The "whirlpool" scene where the two-inch Proteus miniature was spun around and sucked into a fistula shortly after the sub was injected into Benes' bloodstream was made using a large punch bowl, strawberry-flavored milk, and three cups of Cheerios cereal.

• Donald Pleasance's final scene as Dr. Michaels involved a lot of screaming in agony. Much of that turned out to be real^{[citation needed]}, as the soap suds that were used to create the white corpuscle effect had gotten into his eyes, and due to the way the command chair had been arranged so as to render him trapped as the scene called for, he was unable to wipe his eyes free of the suds and/or receive medical attention until the scene was safely 'in the can'.

• Much of the interior scenes of the CMDF complex were filmed at a football stadium at night. You can see brief glimpses of the outside playing field area as General Carter takes Grant through the complex on the small go-cart, as they pass the stairway entrances to each section of the stadium.

• The entire operating theater, control room, and miniaturization chamber were all one contiguous set. The only piece of this area of the complex that was separate was the sterilization chamber.

• A comic book adaptation of the film was released by Gold Key in 1967. Drawn by industry legend Wally Wood, the book followed the plot of the movie with general accuracy, but many scenes were depicted differently and/or outright dropped, and the ending was given an epilog similar that seen in some of the early draft scripts for the film.

• The idea of shrinking people down for the purpose of traveling inside another human's body has been frequently used in animated cartoons. Many of these shows, including The Simpsons, Futurama, Sealab 2021, The Fairly OddParents, Rugrats, Invader Zim, Jimmy Neutron, ReBoot, Muppet Babies, Beetlejuice, Dexter's Laboratory and soon to be Spongebob have directly spoofed Fantastic Voyage.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

1. ^ Lot description for Dali's Le voyage fantastique. THE ART OF THE SURREAL Evening Sale (February 6, 2007). Christie's website. Retrieved on January 29, 2007.