Zathura (film)

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Zathura

Zathura film poster
Directed by Jon Favreau
Produced by Michael De Luca
Scott Kroopf
William Teitler
Peter Billingsley
Written by Chris Van Allsburg (book)
David Koepp
John Kamps
Starring Jonah Bobo
Josh Hutcherson
Dax Shepard
Kristen Stewart
Tim Robbins
Frank Oz
John Alexander
Derek Mears
Douglas Tate
Joe Bucaro
Jeff Wolfe
Adam Wills
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) November 11, 2005
February 3, 2006 (UK)
Running time 114 minutes
Language English
Budget $65,000,000
Gross revenue $64,321,501
Preceded by Jumanji
For criticism see Criticism of Zathura_(film)

Zathura: A Space Adventure is a film directed by Jon Favreau, based on an illustrated book by Chris Van Allsburg, author of Jumanji. It starred Jonah Bobo as Danny and Josh Hutcherson as Walter. Tim Robbins also had a small role as the divorced father of Walter and Danny. In the film two boys discover a space themed board game from the basement, where everything inside it becomes real when they play. The film was released on November 11 2005 by Columbia Pictures. It was shot in Los Angeles and Culver City, California. The film also gave a sister to the boys, introduced a derelict astronaut to the plot, and multiplied the number of the Zorgons and Zorgon ships. [1]

Contents

Plot summary

Walter (Josh Hutcherson) and Danny (Jonah Bobo) are two brothers who cannot get along with each other or with their older sister Lisa (Kristen Stewart). Then, when Dad (Tim Robbins) sets off for work, they discover a space themed board game from the basement, where everything inside it becomes real. The boys are eventually drawn into an adventure when their house is magically hurtled through space.

During the course of the story, the boys must overcome their personal ill-feeling held toward one another in order to survive. They are aided in this by an astronaut (Dax Shepard) who appears as a result of the game. This astronaut is eventually revealed to be an older version of Walter, who had been trapped as a character in the game's world as a result of using a wishing card to cause Danny to disappear- wishing that his brother had never been born-, resulting in him being unable to escape the game as it was no longer his turn and the game could not advance without another player. This backstory becomes the basis, although the viewer only sees its role as such in retrospect, of parallels drawn between the two versions of Walter, including a revelation of the backstory without mention of his name or that of his brother.

Sometime midway through the game, Walter is caught cheating, after he initially thinks Danny did, and is punished by being sucked out into space. The astronaut rescues him.

Accompanying Danny, Walter, and the astronaut is Lisa, who while not a player is as vulnerable to the dangers present in the game. She is placed in cryogenic freeze for five turns. She develops a crush on the astronaut, and is thus horrified when she finds out that she fell for an older version of her brother Walter.

The main villains in the movie are the Zorgons; reptilian, biped tool-users who are fond of heat and are attracted to a heat source much like bees are attracted to nectar, because they are cold-blooded. The Zorgons, having burned their own planet to obtain more heat, are nomads who travel through space seeking more to burn and who keep a flock of four-eyed goats on their ship.

Another character, a robot (Frank Oz), first appears as a wind-up tin toy that quickly becomes life-size. It is supposed to defend the players, but as it is malfunctioning it mis-identifies Walter as an alien life form and begins rampaging through the house. Walter uses a "Reprogram" card on the robot, and it instead sets its sights on the Zorgons. A single Zorgon survives the robot's kamikaze attack and sneaks up behind Walter and Danny as they are wondering where Lisa is. Just as it's about to kill them, it is crushed and killed by Lisa with Danny's piano.

The older Walter is finally released when Walter, drawing another wishing card, wishes the astronaut had his brother back, resulting in the 'other' Danny appearing. After the future Walter apologises to his brother, the two seem to merge with their other selves (after the astronaut turns back into another version of Walter) now that the future caused by Walter wishing Danny away has been erased.Unfortunately, in the latter stages of the game, a massive Zorgon fleet arrives and attacks after Walter frees the astronaut and his brother.

Danny eventually completes the object of the game, moments later, the house is drawn into a roaring black hole, which Danny realizes is Zathura. The Zorgon fleet is pulled into the black hole, as are Lisa and Walter. Moments later, they have returned to Earth. All the "pieces" of the game (the house, its furnishing, and the players) have been replaced as they were before the game began. The brothers are thereafter much more cooperative with one another. The boys, and Lisa, retain their memories of the game's events in which they all agree never to speak of Zathura again.

As the kids get in the car with their mother and drive away, one of their bicycles which drifted off into space and can be seen in several parts of the movie falls back to the lawn. At the end of the movie, there is a scene that takes place 15 years later in which Danny has a son who finds Zathura.

Production

Favreau preferred to use practical effects instead of CGI in the film. "...it’s so fun to actually shoot real spaceships or have a real robot running around on the set, or real Zorgons built by Stan Winston. It gives the actors, especially young actors, so much to work off of," he said.[2] Dax Shepard, who plays the astronaut in the film, said that he would not have been interested in doing the film if the effects had been "CGI based".[3] Actress Kristen Stewart enjoyed the on-set effects, saying that, "When we harpooned walls and ripped them out, we were really doing it. When there was a fire on set, there was really fire," and that, "The only green screen I was ever involved with was for getting sucked out into the black hole."[4] Miniature models were used to create the spaceships, and Favreau enjoyed going back to techniques used in many earlier films such as the original Star Wars trilogy.[5] However, in some shots the Zorgon ships were computer-generated, and digital effects were used in many other shots, such as to create meteors and planets, to add computer-generated legs and arms to the robot suit built by Stan Winston Studios, to digitally augment the Zorgon suits (which were constructed so that the head came out of the front of the suit where the actor's chest was and the actor wore a blue screen hood over his own head), and to create an entirely computer-generated Zorgon for one shot.[6] According to Pete Travers, Visual Effects Supervisor on the film for Sony Pictures Imageworks, retaining the stylized "1950s sci-fi look" from Van Allsburg's book "was a very important aspect of the effects".[7]

Jon Favreau discouraged the notion that the film is a sequel to the earlier film Jumanji, having not particularly liked that film. Both he and Chris Van Allsburg (who also wrote the book of the same name upon which Jumanji is based) stated that Zathura is very different from Jumanji.[8]

The soundtrack to the film is an original score by John Debney and is available on CD[9].

Release

The studio hyped the release of Zathura in an attempt to generate word of mouth, with tie-ins including an episode of The Apprentice showcasing its family appeal, and received positive buzz from critics. The film currently garners a 76% "Certified Fresh" approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but was considered a box office bomb because of its $13,427,872 opening weekend gross, ranking #2 for the weekend. Even worse, it lost 62% of its audience the next weekend, due to the significant opening of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It ended up grossing just $29,258,869, less than half of its $65 million budget. The international box office total was $35,062,632, for a total of $64,321,501 worldwide. Ironically, the plot's similarities with Jumanji proved to be its undoing, with one observer referring to it as "Jumanji in space without Robin Williams".

Cartoon Network showing

When Cartoon Network aired the film, a mild profanity was left uncensored during the scene where the robot first appears, only three inches tall, and Walter orders it to "Get [him] a juice box, Biotch" The word was censored, however, for the second showing.

Released

Cast

See also

The story is similar to Jumanji, another illustrated book by Van Allsburg (in the book, the Zathura game is contained inside the Jumanji one, although paradoxically the astronaut is revealed to be the creator of Jumanji); likewise in the movie versions Zathura takes place in the 2000's and Jumanji takes place in 1995)

References

  1. ^ Van Allsburg, Chris (November 2002). Zathura : a space adventure. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0618253968. 
  2. ^ Murray, Rebecca. "Interview with "Zathura" Director Jon Favreau: Jon Favreau on the Practical Effects in "Zathura" and His Young Stars". About.com. Archived from the original.. http://movies.about.com/od/zathura/a/zathurajf110705.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-19. 
  3. ^ Murray, Rebecca. "Dax Shepard Discusses "Zathura": Interview with Dax Shepard at the LA Premiere of "Zathura"". About.com. Archived from the original.. http://movies.about.com/od/zathura/a/zathurads110705.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-19. 
  4. ^ Barker, Lynn (2005-11-08). "Kristen Stewart: Zathura". TeenHollywood. TeenHollywood.com II Inc.. Archived from the original.. http://www.teenhollywood.com/d.asp?r=110761&c=1038&p=8. Retrieved on 2008-07-20. 
  5. ^ Szymanski, Mike. "Interview: Jon Favreau and company get board with space exploration in Chris Van Allsburg's Zathura". Science Fiction Weekly. Archived from the original.. http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue447/interview.html. Retrieved on 2008-07-19. 
  6. ^ Robertson, Barbara (November 2005). "The Game’s Afoot: Digital effects help shift time and space in the movie Zathura". Computer Graphics World 25: 18–23. Retrieved on 2008-07-23. 
  7. ^ Wolff, Ellen (2005-11-11). "Imageworks Goes Retro Sci-Fi With Zathura". VFXWorld. AWN, Inc.. Archived from the original.. http://vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=2692&page=1. Retrieved on 2008-07-20. 
  8. ^ Whipp, Glenn (2005-11-12). "'Zathura' creators shun sequel 'Jumanji' label". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Union-Tribune Publishing Co.. Archived from the original.. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051112/news_1c12zathura.html. Retrieved on 2008-07-21. 
  9. ^ Sound track info

External links


Preceded by
Fun with Dick and Jane 		Box office number-one films of 2006 (UK)
February 5 		Succeeded by
Chicken Little

Template:Jon Favreau

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