Dark Planet (2009)

A space traveler from the Earth of the 22th century - without wars, poverty and oppression - crashes on an unknown planet. Politically and economically that planet similar to the totalitarian human states of the 20th century.

Director:

Fedor Bondarchuk

Writers:

Eduard Volodarskiy, Marina Dyachenko

Stars:

Vasiliy Stepanov, Yulia Snigir, Pyotr Fyodorov

5 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Vasiliy Stepanov	...	Maksim
Yulia Snigir	...	Rada (as Yuliya Snigir)
Pyotr Fyodorov	...	Guy
Sergey Garmash	...	Zef
Yuriy Kutsenko	...	Vepr (as Gosha Kutsenko)
Aleksey Serebryakov	...	Strannik
Mikhail Evlanov	...	Chachu
Andrey Merzlikin	...	Fank
Anna Mikhalkova	...	Ordi
Maksim Sukhanov	...	Papa
Fedor Bondarchuk	...	Prokuror (as Fyodor Bondarchuk)
Yuriy Tsurilo	...	General
Kirill Pirogov	...	Svyokor
Evgeniy Sidikhin	...	Test
Aleksey Gorbunov	...	Shurin

Storyline

On the threshold of 22nd century, furrowing the space, protagonist from the Free Search Group makes emergency landing on an unknown planet where he must stay. People who are living on this planet have remained at the stone level of the 20th century, with its social problems, miserable ecology and shaky world...

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Plot Keywords:

dystopia | guard | 22nd century | first part | space opera | 

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

TV-PG

Did You Know?

Trivia

For about a year the movie held the title of the most expensive Russian movie ever made, which previously belonged to Nikita Mikhalkov's movie The Barber of Siberia (1998) for more than a decade. In 2010 the budget of Obitaemyy ostrov was beaten by that of another movie by Mikhalkov, Burnt by the Sun 2 (2010).

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Goofs

When Zef arrests Maxim, he orders young man to drop his belt, and he does. In next scene, we see Maxim still wearing his belt.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: The year 2157, the Noon of Mankind. Armed with the Great Theory of Upbringing, people have forgotten about wars, hunger and terrorism. Nature lives again. A breakthrough in medicine has set people free from illnesses, allowing them to use hidden resources of the human body. Earthlings are reclaiming distant planets. New generations have risen, for whom search in deep space is a routine matter. Young earthlings are brave, strong and naive. They think they are capable of everything.

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Connections

Referenced in Prozhektorperiskhilton: Pavel Lungin (2009)

User Reviews

Completely wrong approach to Strugatsky novel

The original book is a classic in Russia, and contains enough material (and in high enough quality) to create a Start Wars-like series of films. What was done instead was extremely fast-paced bullet-point-like re-telling of the classic story. No suspense, no tension that was present at all stages in the book.

The screenplay sticks to the original dialogue almost verbatim. A serious mistake in my view: the director seems to be afraid of the book fans, and doesn't dare to touch anything in the original. But the original dialogue was backed by a lot of description of internal thinking of the heroes - which cannot be shown on the screen. The result - the storyline is flat and uninteresting, instead of the intriguing and fascinating story in the book.

The actors' play is a total fiasco - except, maybe Strannik ("Strider") - but his role is relatively simple. Everybody else looks like they're reading from a phone book - which probably has to do with the fact that the dialogues were left as-is, see above.

I do appreciate the effort to create an "exoplanet" look of everyday things (cars, glasses, forks, plates, food, clothes etc). The things created would be unusable, but had the desired unusual look.

Overall, disappointing, and leaves a taste of a missed opportunity.

Details

Country:

Russia

Language:

Russian

Release Date:

1 January 2009 (Russia)

Also Known As:

Dark Planet

Filming Locations:

Crimea, Ukraine

Box Office

Budget:

$29,500,000 (estimated)

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$23,772,559

Company Credits

Production Co:

Art Pictures Studio, Non-Stop Productions, Premiere Stealth Rights

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min

Color:

Color