Poseidon (film)

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Movie
German title Poseidon
Original title Poseidon
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2006
length 99 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Wolfgang Petersen
script Mark Protosevich
production Mike Fleiss ,
Akiva Goldsman ,
Duncan Henderson ,
Wolfgang Petersen
music Klaus Badelt
camera John Seale
cut Peter Honess
occupation

Poseidon is a disaster film by the German director Wolfgang Petersen from 2006. It is a remake of Ronald Neames Die Höllenfahrt der Poseidon (1972) and was produced by film studios Warner Bros. , Radiant Productions, Next Entertainment Inc., Walt Disney Company , among others and the Virtual Studios . The film celebrated its world premiere on May 10, 2006; the German theatrical release was on July 13, 2006. It is based on the novel Shipwreck by Paul Gallico .

action

The New Year's Eve celebrations on the "Poseidon", which is on her Atlantic crossing to New York , are in full swing. The twenty-story passenger ship , equipped with 800 sumptuous cabins and thirteen passenger decks, is named after the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon . Over 335 meters long and holding 4,000 people, it is one of the largest and most luxurious cruise ships of its time. While most of the passengers listened to Captain Bradford's New Years address in the elegant ballroom and welcomed the year with the traditional Scottish piece of music Auld Lang Syne , the first officer on the bridge notices something unusual on the night horizon. On closer inspection, the strange object turns out to be a huge, fifty meter high monster wave approaching the ship at breakneck speed. The attempt of the crew to maneuver the Poseidon into a more favorable position fails and the cruise ship is hit with full force by the huge wall of water on the starboard side . The luxury liner lies on its side and capsizes a few seconds later. Passengers and crew fall in free fall and are injured or killed by flying interiors and debris. Water seeps in through the broken windows, while broken gas and oil pipes start fires on board. At the same time, almost all of the power on the Poseidon fails and most of the ship, floating keel up on the ocean, is plunged into darkness and plunged into chaos.

As if by a miracle, several hundred people survived the accident in the still intact ballroom, which is now below the surface of the water. Although Captain Bradford appeals to passengers to wait for rescue in the ballroom, professional gambler Dylan Johns ignores instructions. When he reports to the young Conor James about his plan to escape from the capsized ship on his own, he alerts his single mother Maggie about the plan of the fellow traveler. The excited discussion between mother and son soon found a hearing with Robert Ramsey, a former firefighter and mayor of New York City. Ramsey is looking for his 19-year-old daughter Jennifer, who wanted to spend the New Year's Eve party with her boyfriend Christian in the on-board disco, which is one deck above the ballroom after the ship capsizes. They are joined by the hard-drinking player Lucky Larry and the gay man in his fifties Richard Nelson, who with his cynical remarks encourages the group to leave the ballroom as soon as possible. Nelson was supposed to have started the voyage with his great love, but who left him for another man. While he was preparing to end his life by jumping over the railing alone on deck, he saw the huge wall of water and fled to the ballroom. The initially very selfish Dylan refuses to take responsibility for the handful of people and so Ramsey slips into the role of the leader. With the help of the resourceful ship waiter Valentin, whom the mayor offers to pay more than double his annual income, he wants to lead them safely through the labyrinth of hallways outside.

Before the ballroom implodes and the people who stay there die, Ramsey and the rest of the group manage to find Jennifer and Christian in the smoking ruins of the nightclub. Panicked Jennifer, who had secretly got engaged to her boyfriend hours before, desperately tries to free Christian, who is buried under metal parts. She is supported by the shy Elena. Unable to pay the cost of a trip to New York, where her brother is in the hospital, the southern woman had sneaked the passage on the Poseidon through the ship's waiter Valentin . The woman, suffering from claustrophobic panic attacks, joins the Ramseys group like Jennifer and Christian. Together they make their way through the decks littered with rubble, fire and corpses as the Poseidon slowly begins to sink. It is a dangerous path that they can only get through if they help and trust each other. Dylan gradually overcomes his selfishness, especially when it comes to Maggie and Conner.

On the way out they lose first Valentin, who falls in an elevator shaft, then Larry, who is killed by a falling engine of the ship, and finally Elena dies trying to free herself from a tangle of cables underwater and with them kicks its head fatally against a metal edge.

The remaining survivors finally reach the bow thruster , but have to find out that the propellers are still running and thus block their way to the water surface to save them. Robert then sacrifices himself for the group and swims to the control room, where he tries to turn off the propellers. At first he can still hold his breath, but the propeller emergency shutdown no longer works. Just before he drowns miserably, he can still operate the switch for reversing the propeller direction. The propeller rotating in the opposite direction creates a suction effect, which now makes it possible to throw an object into the propeller in order to block it. Dylan managed to throw a gas bottle into the propeller at risk of death due to the increasing suction effect, which exploded and brought the propeller to a standstill.

Eventually they will get safely to the surface of the water. There they can get to safety on a life raft . Suddenly the ship begins to tip over and threatens to pull the six survivors down with it. But they bring themselves out of the danger area of ​​the suction by quickly rowing forward. When the ship has made the turn, the survivors see the upper deck again. After that, the Poseidon finally sinks into the Atlantic Ocean. Dylan fires a distress signal with a flare gun that was on the life raft. A little later they are discovered and rescued by the searchlights of two helicopters.

History of origin

Poseidon is based on Paul Gallico's novel Schiffbruch (The Poseidon Adventure) , which was published in the United States in 1969. At the time, Gallico's work received little attention and only came to fame through Ronald Neame's 1972 disaster film Die Höllenfahrt der Poseidon (The Poseidon Adventure) . The production starring Gene Hackman , Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters was in the favor of critics and cinema audiences and received the award for the best movie song and the special Oscar for the special effects as well as seven other nominations at the 1973 Academy Awards . Gallico had been inspired to the story by an Atlantic crossing with the RMS Queen Mary . He was with other passengers of the luxury liner of Cunard - Reederei been surprised at breakfast by a huge wave struck the ship. The writer had already learned of an incident that happened to the Queen Mary in World War II: the ship, converted as a troop transport, was on its way to Europe with American soldiers when it was hit by a gigantic wave in the North Atlantic capsized the Queen Mary she would have rolled onto her side only five inches more.

After Das Boot and Der Sturm , this is the third film in which Wolfgang Petersen takes on the sea as the setting for the action. The German director, who celebrated his international breakthrough in cinema in 1981 with Das Boot , describes water as the most dangerous, dramatic and unpredictable of the elements. Monster waves , so-called freak waves , were considered pure inventions until the mid-1990s. However, radar images from a North Sea oil field documented almost 500 giant waves in the past twelve years. The European space organization ESA does not rule out that they could also be responsible for the sinking of 200 super tankers and cargo ships in the last twenty years, including that of the German LASH carrier Munich .

Shooting for the production, which is scheduled to run for a hundred days, began on June 18, 2005 in the Warner Bros. film studios in Burbank , California , and in Los Angeles , where the disco scenes in the LA Staples Center nightclub were created. Wolfgang Petersen relied on veteran mimes such as Kurt Russell and Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss as well as on young actors such as Josh Lucas , Jacinda Barrett , Emmy Rossum , Mía Maestro or Mike Vogel for the acting ensemble . The expensive interiors, which, in contrast to Poseidon Inferno, were based on the modern Queen Mary 2 , were set up in a Warner Bros. studio in two variants, the original equipment and the inverted, capsized version. All film sets were set up on five stages, including the famous Stage 16 water tank, where Petersen had worked on The Storm five years earlier and where the destroyed ballroom has now been installed. In the neighboring Studio 19, the ballroom was set up shortly before it capsized. The Poseidon was completely animated on the computer after it became clear that no existing passenger ship could serve for the visions of Wolfgang Petersen, who saw the Poseidon as the newest, best, largest and most luxurious ship of its time. Thanks to the American special effects company Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), who were already responsible for the water animations for Der Sturm , it was possible to stage the twenty deck high ship and the incoming giant wave with a new image rendering technique . The use of CGI technology resulted in more than 600 visual effects scenes, for which the head of the visual effects department, Boyd Shermis , was responsible. The film crew was supplemented by cameraman and Oscar winner John Seale and film editor Peter Honess , who had already worked with Petersen on The Storm and Troy . The German film composer Klaus Badelt was responsible for the film music . Screenwriter Mark Protosevich took a trip on the Queen Mary 2 to prepare to work on Poseidon .

reception

Before its release, Poseidon was one of the most important productions of the 2006 cinema year alongside Superman Returns . The US $ 160 million disaster film celebrated its world premiere on May 10, 2006 in the Philippines , two days later the American theatrical release was scheduled. Poseidon received a PG-13 rating beforehand , which recommends that Wolfgang Petersen's film should only be made available to young people aged 13 and over. The film rose to number two in the US box office on May 14, 2006 with grossing US $ 22 million, behind Mission: Impossible III . The great financial success did not materialize, however, and Poseidon only had sales of 46 million US dollars by May 28. American critics praised the visual effects of the film, but noted weaknesses in the film script, including the fact that the plot contained too many clichés . Poseidon has been in German cinemas since July 13, 2006, with moderate success. In addition to conventional cinemas, the film was also released in IMAX film theaters , where it is available in digitally revised picture and sound quality using the IMAX DMR process .

Reviews

“The hectic and overloaded remake of the dramatic catastrophe film Die Höllenfahrt der Poseidon (1972) turns into a hollow and untouched cliché adventure in which the external aspects of a ship disaster kill any deepening of the characters. A prime example of how a talented director can fail because of a bad script and the uniformity of today's special effects films. "

- Lexicon of international film

"... a water-flooded, dispensable remake of the tasteless blockbuster from the 1970s heyday of disaster films."

- Ebert & Roeper

"(An) excellent, undemanding, entertaining remake."

- Entertainment Weekly

"Its intensity is undoubtedly physical, the intended emotional meaning submerged in a callous assault of death, danger, and audacity as a bunch of mostly annoying, self-centered passengers fighting their way to the surface."

- Hollywood Reporter

"You'll be entertained when you forgive the clichés and let Petersen's visual effects captivate you, from the water avalanche in the ballroom to the eerie sight of the flooded lower deck, where pipes take the form of deadly tentacles."

- Rolling Stone

“Poseidon is a soggy story, with a script that's flooded with clichés. He's almost drowning under the burden of his own wet tedium. "

- USA Today

" Petersen's boat trip - big waves, lots of water, little draft."

- TV movie

background

  • During the New Year's Eve party, the ship's band is led by Stacy Ferguson aka Fergie , singer of the hip-hop band Black Eyed Peas . As on-board entertainer Gloria , Ferguson interprets the traditional Auld Lang Syne as well as the ballad Won't Let You Fall and the dance number Bailamos .
  • In order to appear as authentic as possible in his role as ship's captain, actor Andre Braugher received instruction on the propulsion of ships and their navigation, as well as safety exercises.
  • A crew of 100 people spent five months building the 22-meter-high, five-story lobby. About 350 tons of steel were used.
  • 65 dummies made by the KNB Efx Group also took part as passengers . The company was also involved in the fantasy production The Chronicles of Narnia: The King of Narnia (2005).
  • During the shooting, professional divers were always present to be able to intervene in an emergency. Actors like Josh Lucas and Kurt Russell did most of their stunts without a double.
  • The film was a very modest success commercially. He was just able to recoup the production costs of around $ 150 million.
  • In 2005 there was already a TV film entitled The Poseidon Attack , the plot of which is also based on the novel by Paul Gallico.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Poseidon . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2006 (PDF; test number: 106 548 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Poseidon . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Poseidon. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ Film review in Entertainment Weekly
  5. ↑ Film review in Rolling Stone
  6. ↑ Film review in USA Today
  7. ^ Poseidon - Film review on the Internet presence of TV Spielfilm , accessed on March 29, 2011.