FANTASTIC VOYAGE

'''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.^[1]

Contents

Plot summary

Logical flaws

Cast

Production

Reuse of sets and props

Related novels and comics

Cartoon spoofs and imitations

Remake

References

Plot summary

The United States and the Soviet Union have both developed technology that allows 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 is 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. He then tries to run them down, but crashes and is trapped in the wreckage. After Duval successfully removes the clot, they swim desperately to one of the eyes, to escape via a teardrop. Michaels is killed when he grows large enough for white blood cells to detect and attack him.

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 atoms 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) should 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 should not 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.

Cast

★ Stephen Boyd as Grant ★ Raquel Welch as Cora ★ Edmond O'Brien as General Carter ★ Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels ★ Arthur O'Connell as Colonel Donald Reid ★ William Redfield as Captain Bill Owens ★ Arthur Kennedy as Dr. Duval

★ Jean Del Val as Jan Benes ★ Barry Coe as Communications aide ★ Ken Scott as Secret Service ★ Shelby Grant as Nurse ★ James Brolin as Technician ★ Brendan Fitzgerald as Wireless operator

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 is 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 go-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 is some evidence that the set design techniques for the brain set were developed for the 2nd episode of Lost in Space as the interior of the alien derelict in the episode "Derelict in Space".
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.

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 is not 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 epilog similar that seen in some of the early draft scripts for the film.

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'', ''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".
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. ^[2]

References

★ In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954-1978, , Isaac, Asimov, Avon, 1980,
1. Lot description for Dali's ''Le voyage fantastique''
2. Emmerich to captain 'Voyage'