Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movie  Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962).

Ever wondered, what Solaris would become, if you let blockbuster test audiences to decide, how to change the story. If you have, then you should check this movie. Solaris the book was published year before this. It is hard to say was it inspiration or was this story just something that was on the air at the moment. Both stories are so similar I would almost say Hollywood version of Solaris would look like this. Almost, because Solaris(2002) doesn't look like this.

This time spaceship goes to Uranus. Uranus the planet, you funny guys. Before ship lands to Uranus, alien intelligent takes control of the crew. When ship lands, everything around the ship looks like on Earth. Not just any place on Earth. Everything looks lake places crew members used to live on Earth. It is mix of different crew members memories. When crew members thinks about something, it soon appears next to crew. Soon crew realizes also people from their memories can appear. Some crew members take advantage of situation and start to think about their lovers.

Crew discovers earth like area is surrounded by force field. Air beyond force field is freezing cold. Crew go through force field and find what they expected to find. In this movie Uranus has solid icy ground. They find alien intelligent. This time alien doesn't use their pleasant memories. Crew barely survives the nightmarish creature. Their time is running out, if they want to get back to Earth. They make a plan to kill alien intelligence. Lovers sabotage the plan, but crew manages to kill alien. On their way back to ship they take one of lovers with them. Not everyone is happy about it, but it is captain's lover. When they get further from planet, lover disappears in front of their eyes.

When I talk about Solaris, I mainly mean Solaris (2002). I have seen Solaris(1972) few times, but don't remember much about it. I know about book, that it exists, but nothing more. Solaris doesn't explain where family members came from. There were no alien to fight against. Solaris left things much more open. This didn't leave things open. In Solaris they weren't sure what happened, if they took one of the family members back to Earth. They never do that. In this movie they take one back and it disappears after they got outside alien's range. In Solaris crew was unable to do anything. In this movie they could use violence to solve their problem.

Movie is low-budget movie. You see it in few special effects, but that doesn't matter. It is still worth watching. Science is not best possible and crew doesn't always act like crew you would sent to another planet. There are changes to nitpick, but the story is interesting. If you know Solaris, you might enjoy this more.

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