Partly Cloudy, 64°
This vast blue planet on which we live—this rock we call Earth—can sure be an isolating place. We float along in orbit around the sun, our petty human concerns taking precedence, and occasionally we look to the stars, pondering the mystery of it all. Sometimes I think, as humans on this planet Earth, floating on a giant sphere, that we’re all just “Lost in Space” starring Gary Oldman, William Hurt and Matt LeBlanc.
Sometimes I think about how each of us is kind of like the Robinson family depicted in my 1998 film, “Lost in Space.” They’re just your average American family, hard-working and curious, consisting of a husband and wife, three beautiful, intelligent children, and a talking robot assistant taking a 10-year trip in suspended animation to colonize nearby earth-like planet Alpha Prime, all while avoiding the evil terrorist organization, The Global Sedition.
Think about it. Don’t we all have a trip to take—this journey known as life—to a better place? As we strive to better our society and ourselves, we also collectively make it our goal to build a kind of “hypergate,” through which human beings from the soon-uninhabitable Earth can instantaneously travel to Alpha Prime in order to colonize the new, habitable planet.
We all desire to make connections through the hypergate. That’s what makes us human.
We all also have a Global Sedition that we want to avoid. Sometimes with work, the kids, taxes, groceries, and all our other obligations, it really does seem like a dastardly intergalactic organization of space terrorists is out to get us and prevent us from saving the human race.
I mean, haven’t we all met that villainous Dr. Zachary Smith, played by Gary Oldman, a spy planted by the Global Sedition in order to ruin our expedition to the stars? These Dr. Smiths appear to be on our side at first, repairing our hyperdrives or helping us escape the gravitational pull of a black hole created out of a collapsing planet, but eventually they’re bitten by a carnivorous space spider and mutate into one themselves. Then there’s nothing to do but have Professor John Robinson, played by an excellent William Hurt, tear open their egg sac, causing them to be eaten alive by their own kin.
It’s amazing how much our lives sometimes resemble my late ‘90s film adaptation of the popular 1960’s television series, also called “Lost in Space.” In fact, it puzzles me that no one noticed just how applicable “Lost in Space” is to our daily lives, and how that applicability hasn’t resulted in my being able to make a sequel, direct another similarly publicized major motion picture or even spur a noticeable increase in DVD sales. Heck, even a notice on the street, a “we love your movie, Stephen, it speaks to the human experience in a remarkably universal way” seems warranted.
Regardless, when I’m feeling “Lost,” I turn to this late ‘90s gem that explores humanity in all its complexity. Because even when you save a second Earth from terrorists and evil space spiders, sometimes you’re sent even further into the depths of the universe, unable to enjoy the goodness you’ve wrought—just like the Robinsons of “Lost in Space.”
