Riverworld (2003 film)

Riverworld is a sci-fi/fantasy feature-length pilot episode for a series that was never produced. It aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2003. It was loosely based on the Hugo Award-winning^[1] "Riverworld" saga by Philip José Farmer. Production began in 2001. It was rebooted in 2010, under the same title.

Plot

In the year 2009, a meteor shower above Earth claims the life of American astronaut Jeff Hale (Brad Johnson). He awakens inside a jade-green bubble beneath the surface of a body of water filled with them. A mysterious cloaked figure pierces his bubble with a staff pressing it against his forehead, forcefully filling his mind with images to come. Dazed and in pain, he soon finds himself crawling nude onto a beach littered with metal canisters; the canisters contain unisex outfits of clothing. Soon dozens of people from different lands and historical eras emerge from the water, also nude, and they begin distributing the mysterious canisters. Remarkably, they understand each other's language, all except for a lone Neanderthal man, who lacks the capacity for speech.

Hale learns that the "known world" is the bank of a massive river. Anyone who has ever lived on Earth at any time in history is qualified to start life anew on Riverworld, reborn in his or her prime of life. It is not immediately clear whether Riverworld is Heaven, an extraterrestrial planet, or some other dimension. Other cloaked figures are seen fleetingly, but their purpose is unknown. Food is provided, and the climate is clement. The need for shelter is easily provided by available resources and simple manual labor.

Hale meets and makes close friends with some of his fellow castaways, all of them from different time periods: a young lady named Alice Liddell Hargreaves (Emily Lloyd); Mali (Karen Holness), a former slave of the pre-Civil War era; and Lev Ruach (Jeremy Birchall), a Jewish victim of the Nazi Holocaust. The Neanderthal among the castaways is later killed by a man introducing himself as Lucius Domitus Ahenobarbus (Jonathan Cake), a citizen of Ancient Rome. When Hale begins to argue with Lucius about the latter's brutal social ethics, Lucius attacks him for the leadership role, but their fight is interrupted by a group of warrior slavers under the rulership of one Valdemar (Kevin Smith), who has erected his own empire and still plans to expand by using the new arrivals as his slave force.

While in captivity, Hale and the others are joined by two more prisoners: Monat (Brian Moore), an extraterrestrial who died - along with the rest of mankind - in a cataclysm in the year 2039 he tried to warn Earth about; and a young girl named Gewnafra (Nikita Kearsley), the only known human being in Riverworld reborn as a child. During the night, Hale is freed by the hooded stranger he saw upon his reawakening in Riverworld, manages to hide from Valdemar's men, and follows his fellow resurrectees to Valdemar's fortress. While freeing his mates, he witnesses Valdemar holding gladiatorial games for entertainment and for weeding out the "weak" from the "strong"; but then the despot is challenged and killed by Lucius, who reveals himself to be none other than the historical Nero and subsequently takes over Valdemar's forces.

Monat leads his fellow captives to a community of fugitives he is associated with, which is led by the aloof and cocky Samuel Clemens (Cameron Daddo) who has built a riverboat christened the Go For Broke, augmented by Monat's technological expertise, to explore the river. Nero, however, learns about and intends to use Clemens' riverboat to extend his dominion downriver. With the aid of a traitor in Sam's ranks, he invades the fugitives' camp, imprisons Hale and his comrades, and forces Clemens to show him how to operate it. Hale and the others fight back against and overcome Nero and his men, reclaiming the riverboat, and Hale personally kills Nero in combat.

Following their liberation, the band heads upstream to explore the mysteries of Riverworld. Sam gives command over to Hale, who has realized Sam's more popular name, but Sam asks Hale to keep it a secret from everyone else. Thus Hale becomes the Captain of the Go For Broke, while Clemens is content with just being its pilot. However, Nero is subsequently shown being resurrected in a new body somewhere else underneath the river.

Differences from the Riverworld books

A number of liberties are taken in the film with regards to the source material. The original hero and villain are replaced by other characters, the timeline of events is compressed (including the learning of languages which is eliminated entirely), and the nature of the resurrection process and food and clothing production are altered. Instead of a single meteor of iron, a "valley of meteors" with a constant stream of small falling objects provides the metals used by the characters. The Riverboat is powered by fusion rather than being recharged by Grailstones. The character Loghu is apparently replaced with another female warrior named Mali, and the alien Monat is radically different in appearance and behavior from that described in the books.

References

External links

• Riverworld (2003) at the Internet Movie Database