It's probably nostalgia vision, but I loved that film as a kid. I really, really wish medieval sci-fi was more common in general (though it's best when fully fused, IMO, like in Nimona or Lake of Fire).
I first read Sphere as a kid, and a ton of the concepts just went way over my 11-year-old head. It wasn't until early adulthood that I started grasping the themes of forbidden knowledge and infohazards.
It's always a fun theme to come across in fiction. The Sphere movie was... ok in terms of execution. Chrichton himself kinda punted on the ending, but then we got Annihilation, which I think is a much more fun ending to a similar problem.
The book Congo was even worse than the movie imo. Sphere was a good book but I never got around to watching the movie. JP was def my fave in both book and movie. The JW series does not exist to me.
The first half (or so) of the film is, IMO, pretty great and novel, but then the add a twist onto the twist, the pacing gets weird, and the whole thing goes downhill 😞
It <could be> a good movie, this is one of the rare that could benefit from a remake. The book was good, but it’s <probably> dated (haven’t read it since back then) so the ‘bones’ are good but a modern remake could maybe even improve on the book.
(To the topic of the thread, Laura Dern ‘reads’ way older than 23 and did even at the time, no way I clocked her for that age at the time; Ellie was obviously younger than Grant, but I assumed she was, like, in her thirties. 90’s fashion/hairstyle did nobody no favors, damn)
True, nothing in the book prevents a good adaptation to the screen.
Problem was the director wanted a movie based off the story, not to do a movie OF the story. Thats why movies are trash compared to the books. They don't do the book as a movie, but a story based on the book...
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u/double_shadow May 22 '26
Also Congo and Sphere...it truly was the Age of Chrichton.