What happens when Don Jacoby’s serious science fiction horror thriller travels through the “Natural Selection” process and reaches Ivan Reitman, who modifies the “Heritable Characters” and turns the script into a deformed comedy version?
So you have not figured it out yet! “Evolution,” a horror-comedy sci-fi film released in June 2001, is the answer. Despite Reitman’s admiration for Jacoby’s story, he believes the picture has more comedic potential. It was described by Reitman as a “modern-day sequel to Ghostbusters.” As a result, he asked David Diamond and David Weissman to rewrite the script into a horror-comedy, and Jacoby was eventually satisfied with the result.
Orlando Jones and David Duchovny played two amusing professors who began looking into the materials left behind after a meteor crash in the desert. Sean William Scott plays a would-be firefighter who discovers the impact. The asteroid had leaked a sticky substance that spawned alien creatures, they discovered later. The issue arose when they began to evolve at a breakneck pace and began spawning scary alien monsters.
The picture cost $80 million to make and made $98.4 million worldwide. It was shot in California and Arizona and cost $80 million to make. Ivan Reitman is recognized for his comedic films such as “Ghostbusters,” “Kindergarten Cop,” “Stripes,” and others. Julianne Moore and Ted Lavine were among the film’s other prominent characters.
Dan Aykroyd also appears, having previously been in Reitman’s “Ghostbusters” in 1984 and “Ghostbusters II” in 1989. Duchovny is said to have turned down a position in a Star Wars episode in order to play one of the lead roles in this picture.
Tippet Studio was in charge of the design of 18 various aliens, while Sony Pictures Imageworks was in charge of the extraterrestrial worm animation. Pacific Data Image offered some of the added visual effects. Let us have a look at the evolution of the alien microbe Genus.
Have A Nice End Of The World- Evolution Released in 2001
The film commenced with a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Wayne Grey was a would-be fireman who set fire to an isolated cottage in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, with a dummy and practiced his life-saving procedures for the upcoming fire brigade exam. Soon the meteor crashed on his car and formed a deep cavern.
Next, we were introduced to the Biology Professor, Dr. Ira Kane, in the local college, who gave grade ‘A’ to almost all students and C- to two students who wrote about prison cells instead of body cells. His friend was the Geology Professor, Dr. Harry Phineas Block was seen flirting with his student. The two professors set out to take samples from the meteor crash.
Being a member of the USA Geological Service, Dr. Harry could readily get admitted at the site of the crash and introduced Dr. Ira as his assistant. They entered the deep cavern, only to find that the policemen were busy in a photoshoot in different postures with the meteor. As Ira hit the rock, a gooey substance started oozing out of the rock.
They took some samples of the fluid, and Ira looked through the microscope to find that the microscopic insects reproduced so rapidly that they eventually broke the slide. Ira concluded that these organisms were aliens from the computer data and immediately informed Harry, who became equally excited as Ira was.
The following day, the two professors took many students with them to the crash site, and this time they found yellow mushroom-like things growing on the floor. There was a foul smell inside, and eventually, they discovered that the floor of the cavern was covered with slimy, wriggling insects. They took a few samples with them and found that the worms were reproducing and evolving at a highly increased rate, but they couldn’t breathe oxygen. Harry and Ira decided to keep everything a secret as it was about to be the most significant discovery of the century.
As Ira and Harry arrived at the site on the next day, to their surprise, they found that the military had sealed the entire area, and they were not allowed to pass. After repeated requests, they were able to meet General Russell Woodman, Head of US Army Research, and Dr. Allison Reed of CDC, who had been monitoring Ira’s computer and had all the information.
Harry and Ira desperately wanted to stay involved in the research and analysis. Later it was revealed that Ira in the past used to work with US Army Research but one of his researches had terrible side effects on the soldiers leading to his dismissal from the Army.
Woodman stole all documents, data, and samples from the college lab, forcing Ira and Block to go back to the cavern for more samples. The cavern almost resembled a tropical rainforest with different forms of insects and carnivorous plants. Unfortunately, they were caught, and suddenly a bug penetrated into Harry’s body. He was taken to the OT, and the bug was taken out through his rectum.
Meanwhile, a local club owner was attacked by a bizarre crocodile-like creature, while a frog-like animal of the size of a dog attacked some ladies at their residence. But none of the creatures could survive by breathing oxygen. Suddenly, Ira, Harry, and Wayne discovered hundreds of Pterodactyl-like creatures which were dead.
Harry theorized that the animals were escaping through various cracks and crevices from the cavern. Only one creature was alive, which gave birth to a monster that, surprisingly, evolved as oxygen tolerant. The creature flew to the local shopping mall and terrorized the local people. It also carried away one of the shoppers but was hunted down by the group.
Meanwhile, the agitated governor of Arizona arrived at the sealed crash site and demanded an explanation for not informing him and wanted to know the graveness of the situation. Dr. Reed told him that, at the rate, they are expanding, they would conquer The Great Canyon in 2 days, the entire state of Arizona in a week, and in 2 months, they would conquer the USA while humans would be extinct.
As they discussed, Ira, Harry, and Wayne reached there and narrated their story. Amidst all discussion, they saw that the aliens had evolved to primate and attacked the soldiers. Woodman convinced the governor for a napalm strike.
Dr. Reed resigned from the government office and joined Ira’s group. As they planned to exterminate the aliens, Harry accidentally threw a burning matchstick which immediately triggered evolution to a minute amount of sample.
Also, Ira looked at the periodic table and realized that if Arsenic is poisonous for Earth’s carbon life-form, then Selenium might be toxic for the nitrogenous life form of aliens. The two students who got C- in their projects stated that Head and Shoulders shampoo contained Selenium Sulphide. As a matter of fact, standard Head & Shoulders does not contain Selenium Sulphide, but the intensive care shampoo contains 1% of the compound. The new intensive care shampoo was launched when the film was released.
Wayne arranged for a fire truck and filled it with shampoo, and headed for the cavern. But as they reached the cavern, the napalm strike triggered a rapid evolution converting the entire alien ecosystem to fuse into a massive amoeba-like blob. It was preparing to multiply by mitosis and create numerous such creatures.
The group drove the fire truck beneath the colossal creature and managed to spray the shampoo into the rectal area of the alien as it exploded. The group was honored by the government, while Ira and Allison started dating, and Wayne was given a job as a firefighter. The film ended with Harry, Ira, and Wayne Advertising for Head & Shoulders for hair care and also terminating the aliens.
It is not easy to make a comedy out of a sci-fi horror film, but Reitman has effortlessly achieved this feat. Orlando Jones has been outstanding in his performance and his presence and dialogues will make you laugh genuinely.
Though Reitman wanted to cast Will Smith for the role, I think Jones did an equally commendable job. All the other actors were excellent in their respective roles except David Duchovny, who appeared more confused than funny. His expressions were quite perplexing. The different forms of aliens were quite monstrous, but there was hardly any gore associated with them.
The scene in the shopping mall where Wayne was calling the flying monster by saying,” Ah Ah Ee Ee Tookie Tookie” was actually how the Tookie Tookie bird was named in George of the Jungle”. Originally, the final form of the alien was supposed to be a humanoid form, but considering the fact that it would be difficult to make it appear as a real threat as in the film, they changed it to one giant amoeba-like cell.
The Alien Microorganism Genus Explained
We are all aware of the scientific theory of evolution by Charles Darwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace proposed in the mid-nineteenth century. According to the definition, ”Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations”.
As we all know, hereditary traits are stored in the genes in the form of DNA, and variations during DNA copying are essential for the survival of any species. Evolution occurs when various processes like ”Natural Selection” and ” Genetic Drift” are applied to these variations, resulting in different physical and biological traits for better adaptation.
The evolution that has taken place on Earth for millions of years took place in the Genus microorganism of the meteor in a matter of a couple of hours or days. Later in the movie, Ira theorized that probably the Genus was dormant, but as soon as the meteor crashed into the Earth, the fire and heat generated acted as the catalyst that triggered the evolutionary process in the organism.
The DNA base pairs of the Genus were ten compared to the four base pairs of any organism on Earth. That was how Ira distinguished them as aliens. The presence of these organisms was detected when Ira observed the blue, gooey substance collected from the meteor rock. The Genus appeared as a blue, unicellular, amoeboid organism that was reproducing very fast asexually.
By the time Ira analyzed its DNA composition and went to fetch Harry, the Genus had evolved into a multicellular life form. The following day, when Ira and Harry went to the cavern with their students, they found that the cavern was filled with colonies of yellow-colored fungoid that secreted nitrogen-rich mist.
The floor of the cavern was infested with small flatworm-like creatures that survived in the nitrogen-rich mist. Thus, within eighteen hours, the Genus had evolved into flatworms-like organisms. When Ira picked up a worm, it immediately died, proving that they were unable to survive the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere.
After the area was sealed off by the military forces, and Ira and Harry had to sneak into the cavern, they were awestruck to find that the cavern almost resembled a rainforest, with different tropical insects and carnivorous plants. There was an enlarged mosquito-like organism, whose proboscis was so strong and sharp that it penetrated Harry’s special suit and skin and pierced into his body.
Soon the worm-like creatures started evolving into amphibian animals and later to Pterodactyl-like creatures. The two monstrous amphibious creatures in the lake and the pool were probably adapted to survive in the water, but they too succumbed in the Earth’s atmosphere, and so did the Pterodactyl-like creatures.
But one newborn creature from the Pterodactyl monster was able to adapt itself in the Earth’s atmosphere. The threat of the alien monsters started looming on the Earth once the creatures adapted themselves to our atmosphere and started a rampage on the planet. According to Dr. Reed’s prediction, if the aliens were not controlled, their infestation would take over the entire United States in two months.
Before they realized the Genus evolved into the primate that started attacking other people aggressively. The Military Research Head, General Woodman, decided to launch a napalm strike to eliminate the aliens but little did he know that any fire or excessive heat only triggered the rate of evolution incredibly high.
We all realized the effect of heat on Genus when a lightened match stick fell on the gooey blue sample on the Petri-dish, and immediately the microbes grew exponentially and spread over the table, wall, and the window.
Thankfully, Ira estimated from the periodic table that Selenium would be poisonous to the nitrogen-based life as Arsenic is to the carbon-based life form of the Earth. As soon as the napalm strike occurred, the entire alien ecosystem fused to form a gigantic amoeboid organism. This organism was trying to reproduce asexually by mitosis, and it was assumed that they would continue reproducing unless they took over the planet.
Who would know that Head & Shoulders shampoo had the power to save the Earth? Thanks to the two dumb students of Ira who knew the composition of the shampoo and the entire group, who took all the trouble to spray the shampoo at the right spot and right moment to finally cause the massive creature to explode.
Animated Series – Alienators: Evolution Continues
There has been an animated comic science-fiction television series titled ”Alienators: Evolution Continues” created by Louis Gassin and produced by DIC Entertainment in association with The Montecito Picture Company, DreamWorks Television, Columbia Tristar Television, and Dentsu Inc. The series consisted of 26 episodes, each half an hour in length, and were broadcasted from 15th September 2001 to 22nd June 2002.
It is supposed to be loosely based on the ”Evolution” by Ivan Reitman, with most of the characters remaining the same as Ira Kane and Harry Block. The main antagonist in the series is ”Scopes” who is extremely intelligent, arrogant, and ready to rule the universe.
Though he had taken numerous life forms like a humanoid wasp, humanoid cockroach, and many more, his most common form was a humanoid octopus. A new pet Grassie is also introduced with the team, which was originally an alien cell but was neutralized by Ira. It evolved into a slimy creature that almost behaved like a dog. He also had the ability to detect other Genus creatures.
At first, Fox Kids acquired the rights to broadcast the series in North America. Later, Lions Gate Home Entertainment signed a deal with DIC Entertainment for home media distribution, including ”Alienators”. Ira Kane is voiced by Kirby Morrow, while Harry Block’s voice belongs to Curse Mankuma. Mark Acheson’s voice was used for the antagonist Scopes. There is also an action game called ”Alienators: Evolution Continues” developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Activision. The player features Dr. Ira Kane and plays to save the world from an alien infestation.
Reasons to Watch Evolution
“Evolution” is a film that instantly lifts the mood. The intelligent comedy with witty dialogues truly makes it an excellent watch for the family. The monsters of the film also tally with the humor, especially the dog-sized amphibian, which looked so cute at first and then opened its mouth to reveal a devastating monster.
Dialogues like, ”Is the Nobel Prize paid in installments?” or ”There is always time for lubricants”, just attract you more and more to the movie. The film is for everyone and for any time. I feel it is one of those films that doesn’t need to ”struggle for existence” among the other horror films as it indeed has the qualities for ”survival of the fittest”.