One of the biggest question marks of the 2017 movie slate is Life. Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick, the writing duo behind Deadpool, penned this near-future sci-fi thriller about astronauts aboard the International Space Station who find life on Mars. But even though Ryan Reynolds is also in a starring role, making for a three-way Deadpool reunion, things are more dangerous than comical.
We’ve seen a trailer, but it still left much to the imagination. So, here’s what we were able to piece together from our own mission to Mars (er, the London set).
1. Who’s the crew of the ISS?
According to producer Dana Goldberg, director Daniel Espinosa (who worked with Reynolds on Safe House) and his crew wanted to be as realistic as possible — “and on the International Space Station not everybody’s an American.” We spoke with the cast about their roles.
Engineer Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds): “He's an engineer, sort of a generalized mechanic. My specialty is the space walk and the mechanical arm, which extends beyond the ISS and serves as a giant catcher's glove, basically. That's my mission up here, is to operate those things... and to just fix crap that breaks.”
Doctor David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal): “He's a doctor, sort of the internist on the ship and he's been there the longest. He's the bad guy... no I'm just kidding. He's just the doctor and makes sure that everybody's healthy.”
Center for Disease Control expert Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson): “My job is basically to, whatever we find, to protect Earth from it and to protect it from us… I have to make sure firewalls are up. Everything is safe.”
Russian commander of the ISS Katerina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya): “I'm a commander and I think I'm the protector but sometimes I make mistakes. So it makes the story more interesting.” (To get into character, the producers pointed out Dihovichnaya shaved off most of her hair.)
Flight engineer Sho Kendo (Hiroyuki Sanada): “I'm an experienced astronaut. Maybe this is the fourth mission? And maybe the last mission because I have a newborn baby during the mission. I have a baby on the Earth. I'm chatting with my wife via tablet.”
Microbiologist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare): “I analyze the specimen and I bring my findings to the team… [He’s] very excited about the specimen.”
Half the characters wear brown spacesuits (denoting science and medical divisions) and the others sport gray. “Dumdum. Gray suit. Smart guy. Brown suit. That's how we sort of break it down,” Reynolds joked.
Said set decorator Celia Bobak, “We’re trying to give all the characters a backstory because it’s very hard to get the character through, with people moving around in space.”
2. So, what is the life in Life?
Well, that we still don’t know. Beyond the first glimpse of Derry analyzing the creature in a petri dish in the trailer, the only other thing we have to go on is that it’s a single-celled organism the crew tries to cultivate. Because the film had an R rating straight from the get-go, we can assume the life isn’t that friendly.
The producers first pitched a core concept to the writers before Rheese and Wernick came back with a fully fleshed-out script: “What if the [Mars] Curiosity Rover discovered life on another planet — you know, a single-celled organism — and brought it back to the ISS for analysis and once you introduced it to an environment it started to display signs of intelligence?” producer David Ellison said.
3. How is this different from Alien?
Unlike Alien, the film “isn’t set 100 years from now or 75 years from now,” Goldberg explained, “and this crazy thing could happen one day.”
Realism was an important part of Life, which was inspired by NASA’s current explorations. “I think one of the things that set it apart is that we want this movie to feel very real. So much of what you’re going to see in this film, from the design of the actual ship to what is going on there, is very realistic, incredibly realistic and numerous consultants have ensured that.”
He added, “NASA had tweeted out that the next Mars mission, the goal was to bring back intelligent life, the goal was to find life on Mars. And so [Rheese and Wernick] were very proud because they were like, ‘See?! We’re right at the edge! We are ahead of the curve but not too far ahead of the curve.’ And that’s what we think is gonna really differentiate this film.”
4. How is this different from near-future sci-fi movies like The Martian, Interstellar and Gravity?
Two words: zero gravity.
Life attempts to maintain it throughout the entire movie through an ambitious plan to use wires, camera angles, practical sets and movement choreography rather than green screen like those other films.
Wires: Goldberg called Life “physically demanding.” Reynolds explained, “If you're not on wires, you sort of have to maintain this annoying type of ‘float’ that's happening in everything that you do, and when you are on wires, the work is sort of off your back but you're suspended from — well, I'm suspended from my good testicle,” he joked. “They wrecked the other one.”
Choreography: To get that “float,” the actors worked with movement coach Alex Reynolds to map out how each character would uniquely move in a weightless space, especially during chase or fight scenes.
Cameras: “With the rigging that we have, the actor can stay this way and the camera can come around them and make them be upside down or sideways or whatever it may be, and then on wires we can also turn people. So we have a lot of flexibility,” Lynn said.
Sets: Much of the ISS was re-created and tweaked as environments for the actors to interact with. Producers built two different sets simultaneously for easy scene transitions. “We’ve got to be so careful because of zero gravity that everything is Velcroed down or tied on to try to convince the audience that it is zero gravity,” said production designer Marc Holmes. “Everything had to be made to look like it didn’t sag or weigh much.”
5. Is Life inspired by other sci-fi movies?
While we weren’t able to speak with Espinosa about the film’s cinematic influences, Goldberg said, “My assumption is his answer is gonna be, ‘everything that he could get his hands on from James Cameron to documentary filmmaking.’ I mean, I think it’s gonna run the gamut.”
In terms of the sets, Holmes said, “We took a little bit of influence from films like Contagion and The Andromeda Strain, where it’s quite simple, quite stylized, got a clean and sterile environment, it has special doors and special ventilation.”
Life will open in theaters on March 24.
