Everything about Fantastic Voyage totally explained
Fantastic Voyage is a
1966 science fiction film written by Harry Kleiner.
Bantam Books obtained the rights for a paperback
novelization based on the
screenplay and approached
Isaac Asimov to write it (Asimov 1980:363). Because the novelization was released six months before the movie, many people mistakenly believed Asimov's book had inspired the movie (Asimov 1980:390). According to
Fred Schodt's The Astro Boy Essays, FOX also approached NBC to get the rights to an
Astro Boy episode which had the same premise, but they never contacted the manga artist or credited him in the final product.
The movie inspired an
animated television series, as well as a painting of the same name by
Salvador Dalí.
Plot
The
United States and the
Soviet Union have both developed technology that allowed matter to be
miniaturized using a process that shrinks individual
atoms, but its value is limited because objects shrunk return to normal size after a period of time - the smaller an object is made, the quicker 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 who extracted him, played by
Stephen Boyd), pilot Captain Bill Owens (
William Redfield), Dr. Michaels (
Donald Pleasence), surgeon Dr. Peter Duval (
Arthur Kennedy) and his assistant Cora Peterson (
Raquel Welch) 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 large enough for Benes'
immune system to detect and attack.
The crew faces many obstacles on their journey. They are forced to detour 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's 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 exit the body.
The traitor, Dr. Michaels, knocks Owens out and takes control of the
Proteus while the rest of the crew is outside for the operation. Duval successfully removes the clot with the laser. Michaels tries to crash the sub into the clot area to kill Benes, but Grant fires the laser at the ship, causing it to veer away and crash. Michaels is trapped in the wreckage and killed when white blood cells attack and destroy the
Proteus. Grant saves Owens from the ship, and they all swim desperately to one of the eyes, where they escape via a teardrop.
Cast
Production
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. According to
L.B. Abbott, a bird stole the miniature while it was drying on a window sill 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.
Donald Pleasance's final scene involved a lot of screaming in agony. Much of that turned out to be real, as the soap suds that were used to represent the
white blood cells attacking him had gotten into his eyes, and as he was trapped in the command chair as the scene called for, he was unable to wipe his eyes free of the suds or receive medical attention until the scene was safely 'in the can'.
Much of the interior scenes of the secret complex were filmed at a football stadium at night. Brief glimpses of the outside playing field area can be seen as General Carter takes Grant through the complex on a small
golf 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.
The film was originally planned to have an epilogue, with Dr. Benes having 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, copies of scripts containing this ending have circulated in conventions for years, and can be found on the Internet. Asimov's novelization includes a similar epilogue, though omitting the memory loss.
Reuse of sets and props
The actual full-sized set and prop for the
Proteus was placed in storage at the
20th Century Fox backlot for years, 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. 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's some evidence that the set design techniques for the brain set were used on
Lost in Space as the interior of the alien spaceship in the 2nd episode "The Derelict".
Much of the aforementioned usage of sets and props from
Fantastic Voyage in
Irwin Allen's TV efforts can be attributed to two facts: 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 science-fiction 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.
Background
Logical flaws
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 remains of the saboteur's body (albeit digested by a
white blood cell). Isaac Asimov pointed out (Asimov 1980:363-364) that this was a serious logical flaw in the plot, since the submarine (even if reduced to bits of debris) would 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.
Moreover, the scene where the crew collects air from Benes' lungs after their own supply is sabotaged shouldn't work, as the air consists of normal-sized 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 story-telling and that it could still make for some intelligent reading. Plus it was known that 20th Century Fox wanted someone with some science-fiction clout to help promote the film. To his credit, aside from the initial "impossibility" of the shrinking machine, Asimov went to great lengths to accurately portray what it would actually be like to be shrunk to that scale, such as the lights on the sub being highly penetrating to normal matter, time distortion, and other side effects that are completely ignored in the movie.
Related novels and comics
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. This novel isn't 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).
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 epilogue similar that seen in some of the early draft scripts for the film.
Adaptations
1968 Animated television series
Two years after the film was released,
ABC aired an
animated series on Saturday mornings. The series was produced by
Filmation.
In the series, a different team of scientist performed their missions in a craft known as
Voyager, a submarine which featured wedge-shaped wings and large, swept
T-tail, and was capable of flight. A model kit of Voyager was offered by Aurora Model Company for several years, and has become a sought-after collectors' item since then.
Cartoon spoofs and imitations
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,
Family Guy,
Sealab 2021,
The Fairly OddParents,
Rugrats,
Teen Titans,
Invader Zim,
Jimmy Neutron,
ReBoot,
Muppet Babies,
The Magic Schoolbus,
Beetlejuice,
Dexter's Laboratory,
The Ren and Stimpy Show,
Aqua Teen Hunger Force,
Transformers,
Yin-Yang-Yo!,
Happy Tree Friends and
SpongeBob SquarePants have directly spoofed or imitated
Fantastic Voyage. Footage from the movie was used in a commercial for
General Electric, in which a surgeon daydreams in the middle of an operation and this leads to an embarrassing moment when he says "Get back to the ship."
In a rare non-animated example, the third season
Mighty Boosh episode "Journey to the Centre of the Punk" involves a spoof of the concept, complete with the miniature submarine and colourful special effects.
The Disney made Motion Simulator ride in Epcot called
Body Wars shares similar concepts. Passengers of a submersible are shrunk and placed inside a human body to meet with a scientist studying white blood cells effects on a splinter. When the scientist ends up in the blood stream passengers are taken on an emergency mission to save her.
The band
Placebo also made a music video inspired by the film for their song, "Special K".
Perhaps the most sincere imitation, however, came in the form of the 1987 film
Innerspace, directed by
Joe Dante, produced by
Steven Spielberg, and starring
Martin Short,
Dennis Quaid, and
Meg Ryan. While Innerspace doesn't depict a medical emergency, the ideas of miniaturization, the submersible, and some direct referential imitations (such as Quaid's character collecting Southern Comfort liquor as Short's character swallows it) are carried across.
Remake
Plans for a remake or sequel were in serious discussion as early as 1997, and in 2007 20th Century Fox announced that pre-production on the project was underway.
Roland Emmerich has been hired to direct while
Marianne and Cormac Wibberley are the leading candidates to write a new script.
Antibody (2002) was a spin off starring
Lance Henriksen, with a slightly more preposterous premise of a team of scientists miniaturized to find a nuclear bomb inside of a human body.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Fantastic Voyage'.
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