Pandorum

For the game based on the film, see Pandorum (video game).

Pandorum
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Christian Alvart
Screenplay by	Travis Milloy
Story by	Travis Milloy Christian Alvart
Produced by	Robert Kulzer Jeremy Bolt Paul W. S. Anderson
Starring	Dennis Quaid Ben Foster Cam Gigandet Antje Traue Cung Le Eddie Rouse
Cinematography	Wedigo von Schultzendorff
Edited by	Philipp Stahl Yvonne Valdez
Music by	Michl Britsch
Production companies	Constantin Film Impact Pictures
Distributed by	Overture Films (USA) Constantin Film (Germany/Austria) Icon Productions (UK/Australia) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (international sales) M6 (France)
Release dates	September 25, 2009 (2009-09-25) (United States) October 2, 2009 (2009-10-02) (United Kingdom)
Running time	108 minutes
Countries	Germany United Kingdom
Sprache	Englisch
Budget	US$33 million
Box office	$20,645,327

Pandorum is a German-British 2009 post-apocalyptic science fiction film, with elements of locked room mystery, Lovecraftian horror, and survival adventure. The film was directed by Christian Alvart and produced by Robert Kulzer, Jeremy Bolt and Paul W.S. Anderson. Travis Milloy wrote the screenplay from a story by Milloy and Alvart. It stars Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster. Filming began in Berlin in August 2008. Pandorum was released on September 25, 2009 in the United States, and on October 2, 2009 in the UK.

The film's title is a nickname of a fictional psychosis called "Orbital Dysfunctional Syndrome" (ODS for short) caused by deep space and triggered by emotional stress leading to severe paranoia, delirium, and nosebleeding. The film received mixed to negative reviews, but had gained a cult following over time.

Plot

In 2174, the human population has exceeded the carry capacity of Earth, leading humanity to build an interstellar ark named Elysium. Its mission is to send 60,000 people on a 123-year trip to establish a colony on an Earth-like planet named Tanis. The passengers and crew are placed in hypersleep, with the crew on a hypersleep rotation to cover the entire journey. Eight years into the mission the ship receives a transmission from Earth in multiple languages: "You're all that's left of us. Good luck, God bless, and godspeed."

Some unknown time later two members of the flight crew, Corporal Bower and Lieutenant Payton, are awakened from hypersleep. Improper emergence from hypersleep leaves them both with amnesia. The ship is suffering from power surges caused by an unstable reactor, which leaves them unable to enter the bridge. Bower ventures into the seemingly abandoned ship to jump-start the reactor before it goes critical. After having a panic attack in an air duct, he begins to suffer from Pandorum, a severe psychological illness which once caused a space captain to send his entire crew to their deaths believing the flight was cursed.

Bower encounters Nadia, a former geneticist and Mahn, an agriculturist, and they are attacked by a group of cannibalistic pale-skinned humanoids with heightened senses of smell and strength and tribal culture. Bower's group flees into a barricaded chamber and finds a cook named Leland, who has been awake for years. Meanwhile, Payton encounters a strange young man named Corporal Gallo, who claims that the ship is lost in space and he had to kill his rotation team in self-defense because they developed Pandorum.

Leland invites Bower's team to dinner, showing them mural drawings depicting the true story of Gallo's past. According to Leland, Gallo developed Pandorum as did any humans that he brought out of hypersleep. Gallo then manipulated the other who suffered Pandorum into exiling themselves within the massive ship to play a game which involved fighting, capturing, torturing, and eating each other. Eventually Gallo went back into hypersleep, leaving the descendants of the psychotics to evolve over the course of successive generations due to an enzyme produced in the hypersleep pod's feeding tubes, becoming a troglofauna species as a result and Gallo's savage game became part of the creature's tradition.

When Bower's group finds the reactor, they also find that it is the lair for a large Hunter community. Bower fails to make a stealthy approach, and Manh acts as a distraction while Bower restarts the reactor, destroying most of the humanoids. Leland flees, and Manh is cornered by their leader, who challenges him to single combat. He defeats the leader, but then is killed when he hesitates to slay a humanoid child afterward.

With the power restored, Payton can finally access the bridge, but Gallo assaults him to prevent him going. Gallo injects Payton with a sedative, but suddenly disappears, leaving Payton holding the syringe himself. It is revealed that "Payton" was hallucinating his younger self and is actually an older Gallo. Gallo opens the shutters on the bridge's windows, revealing that the ship is apparently lost somewhere in space where no stars are visible. The revelation is the final stress that causes Bower to slip fully into Pandorum. Gallo tries to convince Bower that they must continue the wild primitive state within the ship rather than reviving human civilization, since that had led to the overpopulation of Earth.

However, what Gallo's hallucination said about the ship being lost in space was red herring. As Nadia observes bioluminescent ocean life through the windows, and the computer displays that 923 years have elapsed since the mission began- 800 of which the ship has spent underwater after arriving at Tanis and automatically landing itself. Gallo attacks Bower and Nadia, but Bower's psychosis causes him to hallucinate humanoids invading the bridge. In his delirium, Bower breaks a window and water pours into the ship, drowning Gallo and all the remaining humanoids. Nadia manages to snap Bower to reality, and they get into a hypersleep pod. The flood triggers a hull breach emergency which automatically ejects all active pods (theirs as well as those of surviving colonists) to the surface.

Bower and Nadia surface near a lush coastline, and witness the other pods ascending one by one. Thus begins Year One on Tanis, with 1,213 survivors from the original 60,000 humans.

Cast

• Dennis Quaid as Lieutenant Payton/Older Corporal Gallo
• Ben Foster as Corporal Bower
• Cam Gigandet as Younger Corporal Gallo
• Antje Traue as Nadia
• Cung Le as Manh
• Eddie Rouse as Leland
• André Hennicke as Hunter Leader
• Norman Reedus as Shepard
• Wotan Wilke Möhring as Young Bower's Father
• Niels-Bruno Schmidt as Insane Officer Eden

Production

The film began life as a preliminary script written by Travis Milloy in the late-1990s. The story was originally set on a prison ship named Pandorum, transporting thousands of Earth's deadliest prisoners to another planet; the cannibal hunters were the end result of the prisoners' degeneration. The characters played by Antje Traue and Cung Le were inmates. Ben Foster's character was a non-prisoner who did not trust anyone.

Believing no studio would want to make the film, Milloy thought about making it as a low-budget film shot on video in an abandoned paper mill with unknown actors. However, it attracted the attention of filmmaker Paul W. S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt, and they gave it to Impact Pictures, who green-lit it. The producers gave the script to director Christian Alvart who was struck by the similarities to his own screenplay titled No Where. His dramatic story was about four astronauts aboard a settlers' ship who suffer from amnesia. Alvart decided that they should meld the two screenplays together, and the producers and Milloy agreed. With the ship now changed to a settler's ship, the use of the word "Pandorum" was changed from the name of the ship to a type of mental illness caused by sustained deep space travel.

Pandorum was announced in May 2008 with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster in lead roles. Christian Alvart was attached to direct the film, based on a script by Travis Milloy. The movie was financed by Constantin Film through a joint venture deal with subsidiary Impact Pictures. The partnership helped fund the $40 million production. Constantin drew subsidies from Germany's Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) regional film fund, the de (FFA) and the de (DFFF). The German Federal Film Fund provided $6 million to the production, the fund's second-largest 2008 payout after $7.5 million for Ninja Assassin. Filming took place at Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam in August 2008.

Release, director's cut, and sequel

Ben Foster, Cung Le and Antje Traue talk about Pandorum at a panel discussion at WonderCon 2009.

Summit Entertainment handled foreign sales and presented Pandorum to buyers at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, but due to a deal with Contender Films in the UK, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures took over and handled foreign sales to the film. Overture Films distributed Pandorum in North America, Icon in the United Kingdom and Australia, Svensk in Scandinavia, and Movie Eye in Japan. The film was set up as a possible franchise, so that if it performed well, Impact Pictures could green-light one or more sequels.

According to Travis Milloy, it was to have a sequel and a prequel,” he said. The prequel would have detailed the story of Gallo (played by Cam Gigandet in the film), beginning with the launch of the space ship Elysium, continuing with his descent into madness – his becoming the “king of the ship” – and ending with him putting himself to sleep. The third film, a sequel, would have taken place on Tanis, the Earth-like planet. The survivors would have encountered two groups of “creatures” who were engaged in a religious war; their primary points of contention being who owns the land and who is the chosen one. Milloy said that the “twist” of the story is that these warring groups are the descendants of the Elysium crew; people who came out of their sleep chambers 800 years ago, similar to the first film. They are products of Gallo’s demented ideology. Because Pandorum did poorly at the box office, these project ideas were scrapped. When asked why he doesn’t develop these stories in another medium – as a novel or comic book, for instance – he explained that he’s “not much of a novelist. Screenwriting to me is the most simplistic form of writing; you are creating a blueprint for a movie.” Writing a novel is another thing entirely, he explained.

The DVD and Blu-ray Disc release occurred on January 19, 2010 in the United States over Anchor Bay Entertainment.

The director and producer commentaries on the DVD indicate that an unrated version of the movie exists but has not been released.

Reception

Pandorum mostly gained average/mixed or subpar reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports the film holding 28% positive reviews out of 81, with the site rating it 4.2/10. The site's consensus is that "While it might prove somewhat satisfying for devout sci-fi fans, Pandorum's bloated, derivative plot ultimately leaves it drifting in space".

At Metacritic, which judges on a 0–100 scale, the film holds a "generally unfavorable" score of 28 based on 13 reviews. Science fiction magazine SFX was more positive, stating that "Pandorum is the finest interstellar horror in years", and awarding the film 4 stars out of 5. Film Ireland also gave Pandorum a positive review, appreciating the film's synergy of cinematic techniques, set design, and developed characters.

The film grossed $20,645,327 worldwide, failing to bring back its $33 million budget. The film opened at #6 at the US box office with weekend receipts totaling $4,424,126. This is most likely due to a lack of advertisement: the Facebook fanpage mentioned above states that most of its members only learned about the film through Netflix or late night television. The lack of promotion was likely due Overture Films lacking the budget, as the studio went bankrupt several months later. It is also possibly due to the fact it had to compete with Paranormal Activity and Surrogates.

Soundtrack

Untitled

Track listing

1. "All That Is Left of Us" (2:43)
2. "Pandorum" (3:58)
3. "Anti Riot" (4:17)
4. "Shape" (2:03)
5. "Hunting Party" (2:48)
6. "Kulzer Complex" (4:40)
7. "Tanis Probe Broadcast" (2:01)
8. "Scars" (2:20)
9. "Fucking Solidarity" (3:28)
10. "Gallo's Birth" (2:22)
11. "Biolab Attack" (2:25)
12. "Kanyrna" (3:22)
13. "The Stars All Look Alike" (4:32)
14. "Boom" (3:55)
15. "Reactor" (4:08)
16. "Skin on Skin" (3:21)
17. "Fight Fight Fight" (2:56)
18. "Bower's Trip" (7:51)
19. "Discovery / End Credits" (7:55)

See also

• Lovecraftian horror
• Survivalism in fiction
• Malthusianism
• Psychological effects of spaceflight

External links

• Official website
• Pandorum at IMDb
• Pandorum at AllMovie
• Pandorum at Rotten Tomatoes