In the year 2047, the Louis and Clark, a rescue spaceship under the command of Captain Miller and his first officer Lt. Starck is sent out to Neptune on a top secret mission. The troubled scientist Dr. William Weir who has joined the Louis and Clark crew on this top secret mission reveals the reason why they've been sent to Neptune and Dr. Weir reveals that they've been sent to Neptune to investigate a distress signal coming from the Event Horizon, a experimental spaceship Dr. Weir created that mysteriously vanished several years earlier during her maiden voyage and the crew's orders are to board the Event Horizon. Find and rescue it's crew. Find out where the Event Horizon has been and salvage the ship. Arriving aboard the Event Horizon, the Event Horizon crew find the ship is deserted. But, all hell soon breaks loose when the Louis and Clark's young chief engineer Ensign Justin is sucked into the Event Horizon's experimental gravity drive and is pulled out by the Louis and Clark's cocky rescue technician Cooper which Justin has fallen into a catatonic coma and the Louis and Clark is damaged. As Cooper and the Louis and Clark's arrogant pilot Smith repairs the Louis and Clark and the other Louis and Clark crewmembers continue the investigation into the ship's disappearance, Captain Miller, Dr. Weir and the crew begin experiencing terrifying hallucinations and Justin recovers from his catatonic coma and attempts suicide by ejecting himself out of the ship's airlock. But, it is soon discovered the Event Horizon's crew are all dead and that the Event Horizon had travelled to a dark dimension when Dr. Weir sees a hallucination of his deceased wife Claire who gouges out his eyes and Dr. Weir becomes possessed by the dark forces from that dimension and he destroys the Louis and Clark and murders Smith and the Louis and Clark medical officers DJ and Peters and he activates the gravity drive and intends to send the Event Horizon back to the dark dimension along with himself, Miller, Starck, Cooper and Justin.
Currently, no alternate (extended) cut of the movie is available, only censored (and thus shortened) versions. It is unlikely that an extended director's version will ever be produced. This has been explicitly stated by director Paul W.S. Anderson himself on several 'making of' documentaries and during interviews.
Normally, directors have a standard 10-week editing period to produce the first cut of a movie. However, due to the unusually short production schedule of the movie, the rapidly approaching release date, and the fact that principle photography was still not finished, Anderson agreed with the studio to an editing period of only six weeks. Given that he was still shooting during the first two weeks of editing, he effectively had only four weeks to assemble a rough cut of the movie. Feedback from test audiences was mostly negative; the pacing of the movie was slow, and they reacted very strongly to the large amount of gore. Anderson had always intended to create a balanced mix of horror and character scenes, but he only had an additional week to re-cut the movie back to a simplified version, which became the theatrical cut.
On its release, Event Horizon met with mostly negative reviews and a disappointing box office result. It was still a few years before the DVD market really took off, when deleted scenes and alternate versions as bonus footage became commonplace. Consequently, not much care was taken with unused footage from the movie. In a 2017 interview, Anderson revealed that a year after the film's release, John Goldwyn, then head of production at Paramount, admitted his regret over what the studio had done with the movie. When it started to gain a cult status, Paramount officially invited Anderson to make his intended version of the film. A team started to compile material for the special edition DVD release, and they literally had to fly all over the world for it. Some (parts of) deleted scenes were retrieved, but they were so few and in such bad condition, that restoring them into the movie was out of the question: "The material just wasn't archived very well, [...] we looked for the material, and it just doesnt exist" (according to Anderson, some footage had been stored in an abandoned Transylvanian salt mine).
As such, much of the movie as intended by the director is considered lost. In 2012, there was a spark of hope: at ComicCon, Anderson revealed that a VHS tape which presumably contained the original cut had just been found by producer Lloyd Levin. However, in the 2017 interview, he admitted that since Levin has moved to Spain, they haven't had time to watch the tape (although he is curious to see what's on it). He also implied that whatever is on the tape will probably not be of sufficient quality to be used for a director's cut.
Anderson did admit that there is always a small change of something turning up in unexpected places: "Escape from New York, they discovered a whole new cut of it in some shoeboxes somewhere, so you know, maybe". The same was true for Clive Barker's Nightbreed (1990), which was restored as a director's cut after a full copy was unexpectedly found in 2014 in a storage facility.
Normally, directors have a standard 10-week editing period to produce the first cut of a movie. However, due to the unusually short production schedule of the movie, the rapidly approaching release date, and the fact that principle photography was still not finished, Anderson agreed with the studio to an editing period of only six weeks. Given that he was still shooting during the first two weeks of editing, he effectively had only four weeks to assemble a rough cut of the movie. Feedback from test audiences was mostly negative; the pacing of the movie was slow, and they reacted very strongly to the large amount of gore. Anderson had always intended to create a balanced mix of horror and character scenes, but he only had an additional week to re-cut the movie back to a simplified version, which became the theatrical cut.
On its release, Event Horizon met with mostly negative reviews and a disappointing box office result. It was still a few years before the DVD market really took off, when deleted scenes and alternate versions as bonus footage became commonplace. Consequently, not much care was taken with unused footage from the movie. In a 2017 interview, Anderson revealed that a year after the film's release, John Goldwyn, then head of production at Paramount, admitted his regret over what the studio had done with the movie. When it started to gain a cult status, Paramount officially invited Anderson to make his intended version of the film. A team started to compile material for the special edition DVD release, and they literally had to fly all over the world for it. Some (parts of) deleted scenes were retrieved, but they were so few and in such bad condition, that restoring them into the movie was out of the question: "The material just wasn't archived very well, [...] we looked for the material, and it just doesnt exist" (according to Anderson, some footage had been stored in an abandoned Transylvanian salt mine).
As such, much of the movie as intended by the director is considered lost. In 2012, there was a spark of hope: at ComicCon, Anderson revealed that a VHS tape which presumably contained the original cut had just been found by producer Lloyd Levin. However, in the 2017 interview, he admitted that since Levin has moved to Spain, they haven't had time to watch the tape (although he is curious to see what's on it). He also implied that whatever is on the tape will probably not be of sufficient quality to be used for a director's cut.
Anderson did admit that there is always a small change of something turning up in unexpected places: "Escape from New York, they discovered a whole new cut of it in some shoeboxes somewhere, so you know, maybe". The same was true for Clive Barker's Nightbreed (1990), which was restored as a director's cut after a full copy was unexpectedly found in 2014 in a storage facility.
Surprisingly yes. Especially in the short time depicted in the movie, a person would theoretically survive the exposure to the vacuum of space quite unharmed. Although not every aspect of the scene is correctly depicted, a lot of it is.
Most people would think that a body immediately freezes in space, which is a fair assumption, since the temperature there is well below -200 degree Celsius (-328 degrees Fahrenheit). Paradoxically, this isn't true. The reason is that there is no gas in the space vacuum that can carry sound or absorb heat; most body heat would disperse as radiation, which takes a while longer. So the fact that Justin doesn't freeze is correct; however, his screams would no longer be heard as soon as the airlock door opened and the gas dissipated.
The absence of outside pressure would cause the gasses in our lungs and gastrointestinal tract to expand rapidly, which is why critical damage can be delayed by exhaling before the exposure (which is what Miller correctly orders Justin to do). Normal air pressure on Earth keeps liquids such as water in liquid form; a vacuum causes the water in the skin and muscles to vaporize and expand, causing small superficial arteries to burst and several body parts to swell. However, the human skin is resilient and will be able to withstand the internal pressure build-up from a drop in pressure of 1 atmosphere. So the excessive bleeding which happens to Justin would probably not occur, he would probably survive with some subcutaneous haemorrhaging. Also, the blood that leaves his body remains in liquid form; in reality, it would immediately evaporate.
The loss of pressure outside the body causes nitrogen in the blood to expand as well, and form bubbles inside the blood vessels and tissues. This occurs most often in the joints, and causes decompression sickness, also known as 'the bends' or caisson disease, which can be painful but is rarely lethal. As unbelievable as it sounds, the first 10 seconds or so in space would be uncomfortable, but you could still manage to work with full mental capacity and attempt to take countermeasures; there is still enough oxygen in the blood to keep the brain working, as long as the blood remains circulating. After those 10 seconds, oxygen gradually stops entering the brain (hypoxia), the skin turns blue from oxygen deprivation (cyanosis), and the person would begin to lose consciousness. Convulsions would occur due to lack of oxygen in the brain, but the heart will continue to beat for a while. All negative effects up until that point are generally reversible. It is not until an estimated one-and-a-half minutes that the vacuum would start to affect systemic blood flow, the heart stops, and freezing becomes a serious problem. If a person gets back into a pressurized environment with plenty of oxygen within that time frame, resuscitation is a very likely outcome with only minor injuries. So the fact that Justin is still alive and conscious after the rescue is realistic, only the injuries are probably a bit exaggerated.
Most people would think that a body immediately freezes in space, which is a fair assumption, since the temperature there is well below -200 degree Celsius (-328 degrees Fahrenheit). Paradoxically, this isn't true. The reason is that there is no gas in the space vacuum that can carry sound or absorb heat; most body heat would disperse as radiation, which takes a while longer. So the fact that Justin doesn't freeze is correct; however, his screams would no longer be heard as soon as the airlock door opened and the gas dissipated.
The absence of outside pressure would cause the gasses in our lungs and gastrointestinal tract to expand rapidly, which is why critical damage can be delayed by exhaling before the exposure (which is what Miller correctly orders Justin to do). Normal air pressure on Earth keeps liquids such as water in liquid form; a vacuum causes the water in the skin and muscles to vaporize and expand, causing small superficial arteries to burst and several body parts to swell. However, the human skin is resilient and will be able to withstand the internal pressure build-up from a drop in pressure of 1 atmosphere. So the excessive bleeding which happens to Justin would probably not occur, he would probably survive with some subcutaneous haemorrhaging. Also, the blood that leaves his body remains in liquid form; in reality, it would immediately evaporate.
The loss of pressure outside the body causes nitrogen in the blood to expand as well, and form bubbles inside the blood vessels and tissues. This occurs most often in the joints, and causes decompression sickness, also known as 'the bends' or caisson disease, which can be painful but is rarely lethal. As unbelievable as it sounds, the first 10 seconds or so in space would be uncomfortable, but you could still manage to work with full mental capacity and attempt to take countermeasures; there is still enough oxygen in the blood to keep the brain working, as long as the blood remains circulating. After those 10 seconds, oxygen gradually stops entering the brain (hypoxia), the skin turns blue from oxygen deprivation (cyanosis), and the person would begin to lose consciousness. Convulsions would occur due to lack of oxygen in the brain, but the heart will continue to beat for a while. All negative effects up until that point are generally reversible. It is not until an estimated one-and-a-half minutes that the vacuum would start to affect systemic blood flow, the heart stops, and freezing becomes a serious problem. If a person gets back into a pressurized environment with plenty of oxygen within that time frame, resuscitation is a very likely outcome with only minor injuries. So the fact that Justin is still alive and conscious after the rescue is realistic, only the injuries are probably a bit exaggerated.
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