Ira Cane: "If I was a giant nasty alien bird in a department store, where would I be?
Harry Block: "Lingerie?"
Ira Cane: "Not you, the bird!"
Harry Block: "Lingerie!"
-A conversation between two of our protagonists while hunting an alien in the scene's most memorable sequence, Evolution
Something Niche.Blogspot.com Presents...
Stranger
Sinema
Come one, come all to a midway of the most bizarre in pictures! Journey into the unknown through the deepest depths of celluloid film! Bear witness to some of the most unique and peculiar stories and characters! Dive into a rabbit hole a leave behind your mundane world for a glimpse into the upside-down world...of Stranger Sinema!
Welcome back, Young and Young-at-Heart explorers, to Stranger Sinema! The show on Something Niche where we take a deep dive into the strange world of cult cinema, discovering the most madcap, bizarre, or just strangely obscure parts of the film world!
Ever wondered what would happen if Fox Mulder were to team up to hunt aliens with the kid from American Pie and the magazine guy from Office Space? Well, if you did, congratulations, you're the first person to ever have that thought! Also, you'd get today's subject; Evolution!
Brought to us by the late great Ivan Reitman, the same man who sent Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd out to fight the supernatural in New York City, Evolution follows a very similar premise with two professors from a lowly Arizona community college, a young wannabe firefighter, and a U.S. government scientist. Only in this case, the ghosts are swapped out for aliens!
Now, if you're thinking to yourself "Hang on, didn't that already happen with Men in Black?", and admittedly, you'd be forgiven if you'd pass this off as a mere imitation of that movie. And for many years, a lot of people did pretty much the same.
However, in recent years, a lot of people have revisited this sci-fi comedy, and have come to enjoy it on its own merits, me included! It's energetic cast and sophisticated-for-the-time special effects give way for set pieces that appear to pay homage to the old alien invasion movies of yore, granting them a New Millenium makeover wrapped up in raunchy jokes and surreal sight gags. You could honestly consider this film a companion piece to the likes of Men in Black!
But how did this film suddenly gain a growing cult fanbase in the past few years out of the blue? Well, be sure to pack plenty of water, and slap on some much needed sunscreen, as we prepare to witness the natural wonders of Evolution!
"Did You Fall for a Shooting Star?"
Evolution begins one seemingly ordinary evening in the Arizona desert. We meet a striking young lad named Wayne Grey, played by Sean William Scott. Wayne is an aspiring firefighter who works at a local country club while training for his final exams. He parks out in the dark desert in order to set up and perform a mock rescue mission in a nearby abandoned shack.
All of the sudden, the unthinkable happens; a large meteorite plummets towards the earth and touches down nearby. The impact is even enough to topple over poor Wayne's car, much to his chagrin. Little does Wayne know that things are about to go from strange to stranger within a mere matter of days.
We then cut to a local community college in the nearby town of Glen Canyon, where science professor Dr. Ira Cane (David Duchovny) is giving his usual lectures for the day. In another room, his pervy co-worker Harry Block (Orlando Jones) is trying his best to be a ladies' man, but to little avail. However, the news about the previous evening's meteorite crash reaches Ira and Harry's ears soon after, and they set out to investigate, only to get blocked off by government forces.
Eventually, however, Dr. Cane manages to bring his class over to the crash site for a field trip, where they run into a frenzy of gloppy, earthworm-like creatures that strangely shrivel up and die when exposed to oxygen. They manage to get a sample of the creatures with some of the atmosphere that was found with them (which keeps them alive), only to find that they have the ability to reproduce asexually by multiplying.
Soon after, things start to go from weird, to really weird! A cornucopia of strange creatures starts to show up around town. An otter-like creature is encountered by Wayne, swimming in a water tank while he's out making the rounds at his day job. A green, blobby creature who's initially mistaken for a strange looking dog breaks into an elderly lady's home. And the crash site soon starts to become overrun with a collection of insect-like creatures.
Eventually, things go from bad to worse, as the creatures start to grow more aggressive and eventually develop a tolerance to oxygen, causing havoc to wreak across the town. Ira, Harry, and Wayne must now join forces to take back the town and neutralize the alien threat. Along the way, the receive assistance from government scientist Dr. Allison Reed (Julianne Moore) and attract the ire of the cantankerous Brigadier General Russell Woodman (convicted fictional serial killer Ted Levine), all while enduring an ever-escalating cascade of zany situations!
Nature Takes Shape
Although production on Evolution was foreseen by the late great Ghostbusters co-creator Ivan Reitman, most of the credit for the movie's original concept can be given to Don Jakoby, a Columbia University graduate of physics, and the screenwriter of the 1990 spider-based horror comedy (and potential future topic for Stranger Sinema) Arachnophobia. Despite his past with comedic films, however, Jakoby didn't initially plan to make the film a comedy. In fact, it was meant to be more in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the other 50s sci-fi thrillers that seem to have indirectly inspired it, with a much darker tone.
"I know how inheritably dramatic it is to watch people think", Jakoby reflected shortly after the film's release. "There's no alien mastermind controlling it [The army of rapidly-evolving creatures in the film]. That's really the issue I wanted to address. Life, left to its own devices, will move in the direction of greater complexity, which is really, mind-blowing."
It was when Mr. Reitman came upon the initial story when the film morphed into its metaphorical final form as a comedic adventure. Reitman felt that the film would have even greater potential as a comedic parody, rather than a mere by-the-book alien invasion thriller, and he hired the screenwriting duo known as the Two Davids in order to get this vision realized.
Ok, that's not actually their official pseudonym, but they are two guys who share the same name! They are David Diamond and David Weissman, and they had just come hot off their success with the Nicolas Cage led dramedy The Family Man the previous year.
Diamond and Weissman first came across the project at a meeting with Mr. Reitman, done for a movie they had written called Minutemen, which-oddly enough-ended up becoming a made-for-tv movie for The Disney Channel!
"Ivan felt that we had captured the tone of Ghostbusters in our movie," David Diamond reflected in a 2021 interview with Forbes, "which was a huge compliment to us, because we were basically trying to rip-off Ghostbusters! He said "Read these two scripts and see if you could do something that would sort of be the tone of Ghostbusters with this premise. We read the scripts, and we responded to the premise, then went back in there and told him how we would do it and he hired us."
Although not much of Jakoby's original tone was retained for the final cut of the movie, Jakoby seemed to have been happy to compromise, agreeing that much of the original script was a tad bit too daunting to bring to film, at least for the filmmakers he had become acquainted with.
"The sucker trap for the filmmaker is that this thinking process is rarely done so well." Jakoby explained. "In the end, they rely on the idea that scientists have emotions, because that's easier to show, but they lose what really makes them fascinating, which is that they have brilliant minds."
The Next Stages
After the Two Davids finished work on the film's script, casting immediately went underway. Initially, Michael J. Fox (who we coincidentally just saw in our last episode on The Frighteners) was offered a role in the film, rumored to be that of Wayne Gray. However, (as discussed in our aforementioned look at The Frighteners) Fox was starting to experience the worse of his battle with Parkinson's Disease and was consequently unable to commit. Will Smith, who starred in the similarly toned Men in Black, is rumored to have been considered for Harry Block.
The X-Files star David Duchovny was cast in the role of Dr. Ira Block, after John Cusack said no, seeing it as an opportunity to break out into more comedic roles. He notably turned down a currently unspecified role in Star Wars Episode II in order to star in the film, plainly noting in an interview with ABC at the time "I'm a fan of Star Wars, but I'm not sure of having the time to act in it." He was also filming the last few seasons of The X-Files at the time, which further complicated his schedule.
Orlando Jones and Seann William Scott were ultimately chosen to play the remaining two members of the main trio, Harry and Wayne, respectively. Julianne Moore ultimately received to role of Dr. Allison Reed after Jennifer Aniston declined. The rest of the cast included the aforementioned Ted Levine as General Woodman, Modern Family's Ty Burrell in an early role as military man Colonel Flemming, future Nickelodeon alum Jerry Trainor as one of Ira's students, and an early cameo by Sarah Silverman as Ira's jilted ex. Reitman also re-united with former Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd, who played the fictionalized Arizona's worrywart of a governor Mr. Lewis.
The film was produced with the assistance of The Montecito Picture Company, and was released in the United States by the Steven Spielberg-founded DreamWorks Pictures. For the film's international release, distribution was handled by Columbia Pictures, who had also distributed Reitman's Ghostbusters duology (and, coincidentally, also distributed the Men in Black films that the film is often compared to!).
Filming was done in late 2000. Although much of the film was filmed in the real Arizona, production also moved to California for a few of the film's set pieces. These included the Tumbleweed shopping mall, where one of the movie's most memorable scenes was filmed (more on that later), which was filmed in a mostly abandoned mall that had new displays and facades set up.
The special effects crew included a who's-who of genre veterans. Much of the film's CGI was manned by Phil Tippet and his studio. Tippet was already a legend of the industry at the time, having worked on other now-legendary special effects extravaganzas like Jurassic Park. KNB FX, who would later go on to work on The Walking Dead, handles some of the film's practical effects, while a pack of ape-like creatures who turn up late in the film were crafted Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr., who had worked on some of the later installments of the Alien franchise and would go on to work on It and other projects.
Everything seemed to be shaping up well for Evolution. But unfortunately, there was a storm on the horizon.
Crippled by Natural Selection
Evolution officially invaded theaters on June 1, 2001. Unfortunately, the film's metaphorical maiden voyage went down in flames. Like The Frighteners and many of the other movies we will be discussing on this show going forward, the film underperformed at the box office, in spite of having a legion of well-respected names behind it.
The film sadly couldn't escape unfavorable comparisons to Ghostbusters, often being described as basically being a pale imitation of that movie, just with aliens. And much of the general public also felt that this concept had already been done a few years earlier with Men in Black, and to much greater success. These comparisons led to divisive reviews amongst the critics.
Furthermore, it had the misfortune of going up against a crowded summer schedule, with its biggest competition ironically being another release by DreamWorks; the story of green ogre who managed to find love and live happily ever after. A movie that, even if they haven't seen a full frame of the movie, will certainly be familiar to the iPad kid generation via its presence within internet culture over the past couple of decades. A little film you may have heard of called Shrek.
And as the summer of '01 continued, Evolution would face even more predators out in the wild, including the likes of The Fast and The Furious, Legally Blonde, Scary Movie 2, and other more popular releases.
The film's climax was also subject to heavy criticism (spoilers, btw!). Dr. Cane ultimately discovers that selenium sulfide proves to be deadly for the alien creatures and finds out that a particular household product contains it as a major ingredient. The household product; dandruff shampoo. Specifically, the real-life brand Head and Shoulders. The group then fills a fire truck with the stuff and manage to kill the rest of the aliens with it. This plot point caused the film to face criticisms of shameless product placement, not helped by the fact that film literally ends with a humorous commercial for the shampoo brand starring the main trio.
Ultimately, while the film still managed to recoup it's $80 Million budget with a $98 Million gross, the studio ultimately labeled Evolution a flop, instantly aborting what could have been a promising franchise. The film still managed to receive a follow-up in the form of Alienators: Evolution Continues, a cartoon produced by the DIC Corporation, the same company best known for giving us Inspector Gadget and The Super Mario Bros Super Show, among other such nostalgic classics. However, even that show had an unsuccessful run, only lasting a single season on Fox Kids before being given the ax, no doubt due to the film's initial lack of popularity.
Adapting and Overcoming
However, in the past couple of years, it has become apparent that while Evolution may have been knocked down upon its initial release, it wasn't out.
Although the film still has yet to achieve the same amount of mainstream recognition as other cult films have, it seems to have attained a small, but very dedicated fanbase. The film has notably had a sizeable resurgence on YouTube, where many members of the sci-fi community have dedicated a growing number of editorials on the film and claiming that the film has plenty of memorable moments.
And it certainly does! All of the creature designs-while admittedly somewhat derivative of other films-are still pretty memorable, and while a lot of the CGI is a bit on the dated side nowadays, said datedness does retroactively provide a small air of vintage charm to the film.
The film also has plenty of genuinely fun sequences involving these creatures and effects; the bloblike alien attack at the old lady's home, the final battle against the massive alien mass. But the biggest standout of the movie is without a doubt the mall scene. It has all of film's best moments of both action and comedy as the group hunts down a newly born pterodactyl-like creature. The visuals are striking (in a 2000s cheese sort of way, anyways), and the scenery is used perfectly! And in recent years, it even doubles as a nostalgic time capsule of the first decade of the New Millenium, particularly for me, personally (I spent a decent amount of time around malls as a kid, as my father worked at one).
The characters also each get their moments to shine, with the main trio in particular standing out as surprisingly likeable, with a lot of the movie's best jokes and lines (though some of Harry's character moments admittedly can come across as a bit outdated by today's standards). Wayne in particular stands out to me as another addition to my list of "literally me" characters. As an adult who-while not without a few accomplishments to his name-is on the brink of 30 and still has yet to achieve a lot of my end-life goals, Wayne's dedication to achieving his dream job despite his gradually disappearing youth almost brings a tear to my eye. Despite being something of a loser and messing up on more than a few occasions, he still refuses to accept substitutes and keeps fighting tooth and nail until he's made his dream a reality. It's characters like these that inspire me to keep going in a world that seems to actively be against me in a time like this; they're like the older brother figure I may have needed growing up!
Sure, the movie isn't exactly high art, but it's really not trying to be. It's just trying to be a fun and silly sci-fi action comedy. And I've even personally noticed that it may even be paying tribute to an era of bygone entertainment; the cheesy sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s!
Indeed, long after they had stopped becoming a major nostalgic cash cow during the 1980s, Evolution comes in and takes the tropes of classics like Invaders from Mars, adds their own spin and edgy style of humor to them, and brings them into the New Millenium. I can always admire a film that tries to keep the past alive for new generations!
Freakish Fun Facts
Now that all of the important stuff is out of the way, we once again come to Freakish Fun Facts! This is the part of the show where, just before we wrap up, we share a few additional fun facts about the movie and its production! Many of these facts are very distinct and curious and are certain to leave you bewildered!
- When Evolution was shooting in Arizona, it was close to Christmastime! As a result, the production crew advised the town to not put up decorations until filming had wrapped, so as to not break the immersion of the film. Once filming was completed, the crew paid for the town to be decorated just in time for Christmas.
- However, in the diner scene, you can clearly see a display of Thanksgiving-themed decorations behind the cast, implying that the film may be set around early-to-mid November. With this in mind, I guess you could call Evolution an accidental Thanksgiving movie in the same way you can call Die Hard or Lethal Weapon accidental Christmas movies (Which actually makes it perfect viewing for this time of year!).
- While the Head and Shoulders usage during the film's climax was criticized as product placement, it was actually added into the movie without the knowledge of Head and Shoulders! As a result, no reimbursements were provided to the company, with all of the screen-used bottles being purchased directly by members of the crew.
- While filming his scenes, Dan Aykroyd got friendly with several of the town's locals. He carded guests at a local bar, unofficially worked as a greeter at the local Walmart, and event went to some local's homes to share some coffee with them! What a nice guy!
- The film's most iconic symbol, a smiley face with three eyes, was adapted from a marketing symbol used in many advertisements and other works of popular culture that dates back to the 1950s. The original smiley face is actually copyrighted, being owned by the London-based Smiley Company.
- The film contains several callbacks to Ghostbusters, which, as mentioned before, was another project that director Ivan Reitman made. For instance, the selenium element present in the shampoo used to kill the aliens was also one of the material's used in the foundation of Dana Barrett's apartment building, and the introduction of Aykroyd's character is very similar to the Governor of New York's introduction.
- Ira Kane coincidentally share's his name with Kane County, Utah, which is directly adjacent to Page, Arizona, where the majority of the movie was shot.
You Guys Just Earned Your A's!
Ultimately, while Evolution may not exactly be high art, as I've said before, it's really aware of that fact and just rolls with it. And in the process, it manages to establish itself as a fun sci-fi comedy with its own bizarre charm that only could've come from the 2000s era of fantastical comedies. It has charmingly cheesy special effects, likeable enough protagonists, and a genuine amount of surprisingly well-planned out set pieces! It also manages to pay indirect homage to the sci-fi B-movies of the Atomic Age, keeping their memory alive for newer generations. It's Arizona town setting also adds a nice element of Americana to the setting, capturing the hot, somewhat secluded desert life of the state that I've always visualized in my head like no other film has!
Sure, the film's recent growing cult status may just be the result of rose-tinted nostalgia, but there are still many people who continue to look back upon it as an enjoyably cheesy oddity of the 2000s. And if nothing else, much of the cast and crew definitely look back fondly on their time on the film, with Seann William Scott seemingly being a particular case.
"They [Duchovny and Jones] really took Seann under their wing like a little brother,", recalls producer Daniel Goldberg in an early production interview on the film, "which is much like their relationship in the movie. But most of the time, it was a trap; They were setting him up for another one of their practical jokes. They were relentless, but Seann loved it, and everyone, including him, had a lot of fun."
In fact, much of the crew looked back on it so fondly, that in spite of the film not being a hit, Ivan Reitman actually explored the notion of developing a sequel back in 2013. Sadly, Reitman passed away in 2022, causing any plans for a follow-up to become less likely.
Despite that, many other members of the production crew still continue to share their own ideas for a potential follow-up, particularly Diamond and Weissman.
"We've really come a long way since then." Weisman reflects. "I mean, they destroyed that thing, but could they have cleaned up ALL the genetic material?" Diamond also adds, "I think that's what it would be; they missed a spot! Evolution 2: They Missed a Spot!" The Two Davids have also suggested moving the battle to a larger stage, including major cities like New York or Las Vegas, which could be a good start!
Perhaps Ivan's son, Jason, could come on board to write his own vision of a legacy follow-up to his father's work, like he did with Ghostbusters: Afterlife! Future sequels could even see Ira and company venture on a worldwide expedition to exterminate creatures in London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo and other major cities! Eventually, they could even travel into space to fight invaders from Mars and/or other planets in the Solar System! Granted, giving Hollywood's hit-or-miss track record with legacy sequels as of late, producing one for Evolution would certainly be a very high risk!
But what about you? Did you grow up watching Evolution? Were you one of the lucky people who saw it in theaters before it was cool? Do you consider it a hidden gem or completely overrated? What ideas would you have for potential future adventures with Dr. Cane and company? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below! And don't forget to keep your Head attached to your Shoulders and make sure you don't miss a spot!
Dedicated to Ivan Reitman
Sources:
Chismire, Bryce. “Evolution (2001) - Guilty Pleasure.” The Screened Word, The Screened Word, 10 Mar. 2021, www.screenedword.com/post/evolution-2001.
Com, Cinema. “Evolution: Production Information.” Cinema.Com, 2001, www.cinema.com/articles/458/evolution-production-information.phtml.
Goodale, Gloria. “A Science Guy’s.” The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 June 2001, www.csmonitor.com/2001/0608/p19s1.html.
News, ABC. “Duchovny Snubs Lucas.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 11 Oct. 2000, abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=114711&page=1.
Weiss, Josh. “The Writers of ‘evolution’ Reflect on the Film’s Adaptability 18 Years Later.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 7 June 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/joshweiss/2019/06/08/the-writers-of-evolution-reflect-on-the-films-adaptability-18-years-later/.
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