Galaxy Quest

Dean Parisot’s film changed shape in the cinema. It opens boxed in the old television ratio with clips from the show, moves to 1.85 for the scenes on Earth, then widens to scope when the ship arrives, which in 1999 caught out projectionists who had not opened their masking. The version that reached screens is the softened one. By the cast’s account it was cut harder first, then trimmed for a family rating: one Sigourney Weaver line was redubbed to strip the obscenity, and she made the replacement deliberately obvious. Alan Rickman’s prosthetic follows the same logic, good enough to convince the aliens and cheap enough to look self applied. Harold Ramis was set to direct and left in February 1999 over the casting of Tim Allen; Parisot took over within 3 weeks. Allen has said he built the commander less on Shatner than on Yul Brynner’s pharaoh. Justin Long and Rainn Wilson both made their feature debuts here. It won the 2000 Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation, on a ballot with The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich and The Iron Giant. A good fit if you want the actors to become genuinely capable rather than remain the joke. Not for anyone expecting a harder space comedy, because the cut in circulation is the smoothed one.