Some of us have made it a habit of championing movies that flopped at the box office in a pretty big way, but we usually do it for a good reason since some of these stories didn’t get a fair shake for one reason or another. The most frustrating part of this is that these movies tend to have some of the greatest collections of actors and decent stories, but for one reason or another, they get downplayed and tossed into the archives to collect dust and be called flops. When it comes to a movie like Virus though, it might be time to just start over and see what can be done with the story, since it’s not a bad idea really, though it might need a few tweaks here and there just t to make it more appealing. It might even be a good idea to see if Jamie Lee Curtis might be down to star in the reboot or possibly have a cameo that could help the picture to actually get off the ground. As of now, there’s been no real word of this movie since it’s one of those that a lot of people might have wilfully forgotten. But it still bears some discussion.
Let’s put it this way, the idea is sound, the actors were good enough, but the dialogue and the story kind of went off the rails at one point and didn’t come back to a level that might have made it possible to salvage the movie in any way. Essentially the movie is about a top secret Soviet vessel that is in contact with the Russian space station Mir. When a sentient wave of energy hits Mir and kills the cosmonauts it transports itself down to the ship, where it begins to wreak havoc by killing the crew and taking over anything that’s electronic in nature, which means that the Intelligence, as it’s credited, controls the ship entirely.
Where things really appear to go south is hard to pinpoint since there are a lot of turning points that could have been used to keep this movie on track to becoming something great. But one thing that doesn’t make sense is why the sentient energy would see fit to need human parts when everything that it might use would be in a constant state of decomposition since it killed the entire crew. There’s something to the story, there’s no doubt of that, but the plot points that were created still feel a little ‘meh’ sometimes, and could likely be bolstered in a very big way that might make it even more impressive. Plus, with so many things being wireless these days, it stands to reason that the story could be updated and turned into something that might be even more impressive since it could very easily become a matter of more than a salvage ship finding a top secret vessel apparently dead in the water on the high seas. It could become something that might be considered very ‘hush-hush’ and thereby involve more than those that were on the ship, and those that find the ship. In fact, it might even pay to alter the sentient energy just a bit to be far more dangerous and also be in possession of several other individuals apart from the crew members, though again, what it would do with the crew is kind of hard to say.
But the idea that alien life is out to eradicate humanity is a common trope among science fiction and fantasy movies, and this movie digs hard into that idea since the energy is all about killing humans more efficiently and harvesting their spare parts in order to make itself even more intimidating and powerful. In other words, the Intelligence was attempting to make itself appear even more fearsome and was trying to find the best way to kill people. That’s kind of odd for any lifeform that’s traveling through space, but it’s not the only alien life form that has done this over the years obviously. Predator showed us an alien being that hunted for sport, while in Aliens the xenomorphs had no qualms about taking over, though they weren’t exactly an invading force since they depended on the stupidity of others.
But sentient energy, that’s an idea that can be built up in a manner that might actually be kind of terrifying since so long as it’s not grounded out it could be a real threat, and with so many different ways that it could be transferred, it’s fair to state that it would make an interesting movie if this reboot did manage to gain some traction. It doesn’t feel too likely that it will happen anytime soon, but one never knows. It would need a new cast obviously, but perhaps a couple of people who are still around could be persuaded to make it happen.
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