Zathura is a
2005 fantasy film
directed by
Jon Favreau, based on the
illustrated book of the same name 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 features a sister named Lisa;
introduced a derelict astronaut to the plot; and a large number of
Zorgons and Zorgon ships.
Plot
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). One day, when their father
(
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 will 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—leaving him
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 notices Danny has
illegally moved his piece forward, and forcibly moves it back while
berating Danny. The game interprets only Walter's action as
cheating and he is punished by being sucked out into space, but 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 film 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 presumably as food.
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 misidentifies 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 the Zorgon is 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 apologizes
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, but 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 had drifted off into space and can be seen in
several parts of the film, falls back to the lawn
Cast
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. 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". 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." 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. 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. 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".
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.
The soundtrack to the film is an original score by John Debney and
is available on CD.
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 mostly positive reviews
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 only #2
for the weekend, far behind Disney's
Chicken Little. 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,
still not enough to recover the film's budget. 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".
References
- Soundtrack info
External links
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