Jake
Among the best-made and most resourceful studio attempts at paying homage to Alien by reinforcing the extraterrestrial threats of outer space, it’s hard to overlook Life, the 2017 sci-fi horror film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds. In examining Life’s conception and production, it’s worth exploring how director Daniel Espinosa also channeled Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. It’s equally intriguing to look at how the film simulated the vastness of outer space and zero-gravity environments with the help of Industrial Light & Magic and the British FX company Double Negative. Finally, there’s the approach used to bring Calvin (the highly evolved, rapidly shapeshifting Martian that outwits and outlives the human crew aboard the International Space Station) to life. With all that, plus a few fascinating factoids about the making of the movie, here’s what happened to Life almost 10 years ago.
Development
The earliest flickers of Life trace back to November 2015, when it was announced that Daniel Espinosa, the Swedish-Chilean filmmaker who earned acclaim for his 2010 action thriller Easy Money, had been tapped to direct a sci-fi horror film for Skydance Media. While Paramount Pictures initially eyed the project for distribution, Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures stepped in by March 2016 to release the film worldwide and co-finance it with Skydance. With a script already in place by Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Life became a multiway reunion for Ryan Reynolds. Reese and Wernick had just written Deadpool, released one year earlier, while Reynolds had previously worked with Espinosa on the 2012 action thriller Safe House. Reynolds was also longtime friends with Jake Gyllenhaal, who joined the cast in March 2016.
Originally, Reynolds was slated to play the film’s lead role of David Jordan, the ISS medical officer later portrayed by Gyllenhaal. However, Reynolds’s commitment to The Hitman’s Bodyguard made that impossible, and he instead took on the smaller role of Rory Adams, an ISS engineer who meets a grisly end less than 40 minutes into the movie. The reasoning behind that shocking decision will come later, but first it’s worth addressing the casting of Rebecca Ferguson as CDC quarantine specialist Miranda North. Ferguson initially declined the role, believing her acting would undermine the screenplay and Espinosa’s vision. At the time, she was best known for The White Queen and her breakout role as Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Today, she’s one of Hollywood’s busiest stars. After a conversation with Espinosa and hearing his philosophical take on the material, Ferguson changed her mind and signed on before Reynolds and Gyllenhaal were even attached.
To shape the film’s visual language, Espinosa hired two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, whose credits range from blockbusters like The Avengers and Godzilla to prestige films such as Atonement, Anna Karenina, and Nocturnal Animals. Production designer Nigel Phelps was brought on, likely due to his work on Alien: Resurrection, while set decorator Celia Bobak and art directors Oliver Hodge and Marc Holmes, veterans of The Martian, helped bring the ISS interiors to life.
Principal Photography
With a $58 million budget, Life began principal photography on July 19, 2016, and wrapped roughly two months later in September. Most of the film was shot at Shepperton Studios in London. The Times Square sequence was filmed on location in New York City, while the final scenes featuring the escape pods splashing down were shot in Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay.
To simulate zero gravity, the actors were suspended on old-fashioned wires that were later digitally removed. Despite their buoyant appearance onscreen, the spacesuits were extremely heavy in real life, weighing over 50 pounds and posing a significant challenge for the cast.
The film’s unbroken eight-minute opening shot was created with the help of Industrial Light & Magic, using a digital ISS model rendered by Double Negative, which handled most of the film’s visual effects. According to Espinosa, the sequence was designed as “the inverse of Gravity.” Where Gravity emphasizes the vastness of space, Life focuses on claustrophobia.
To further heighten the sense of dread, Espinosa injected film noir elements into familiar sci-fi tropes. He was determined to keep audiences off balance, avoid predictability, and end the film on a bleak note. This included the deliberate decision to kill off Ryan Reynolds’s character early. Inspired by Hitchcock’s Psycho, Espinosa joked that Reynolds became his Janet Leigh, referencing Marion Crane’s infamous mid-film death.
Composer Jon Ekstrand, a longtime collaborator of Espinosa, was tasked with evoking a Bernard Herrmann-style score reminiscent of Psycho’s shrieking strings, while also drawing inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Life marked the sixth collaboration between Espinosa and Ekstrand.
Hardcore gore fans may be disappointed to learn that Rory’s death was originally far more grotesque. Prosthetic makeup designer Kristyan Mallett revealed that Espinosa initially wanted Rory’s face so mutilated that his jaw would be visibly torn apart. A mangled replica of Reynolds’s head and torso was even created, but the footage proved too extreme, and the scene was softened in post-production.
Calvin and the Visual Effects
After Calvin escapes into the ship’s ventilation system, the crew attempts to warn Earth, only for communications to fail. Russian ISS commander Ekaterina Golovkina, played by Olga Dihovichnaya, performs a solo spacewalk to fix the system and is attacked by Calvin, causing her suit to flood with water. The sequence was inspired by a real-life 2013 ISS incident involving Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, who survived a similar but less dramatic malfunction.
Calvin himself is a fully digital creation designed primarily by Double Negative, now known as DNEG. Though influenced by Alien, the team worked hard to avoid evoking H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph. Calvin’s evolution was broken into four stages, A through D, representing rapid biological advancement. Different FX teams handled each phase, resulting in a seamless transformation that remains one of the film’s most impressive technical achievements. To convey Calvin’s vision, FX company One of Us designed his perspective based on microscopic cellular movement filtered through a membrane, giving the creature a distinctly predatory feel. No animatronics or physical props were used, as they would have complicated zero-gravity filming. Instead, once concept art was approved, physical sculptures were created for reference and scanned into 3D models.
Oscar-winning makeup artist Howard Berger of KNB FX Group was consulted and suggested giving Calvin more identifiable facial features. Early designs envisioned the creature as translucent, but the idea was ultimately scrapped for being insufficiently terrifying.
Release and Reception
Life opened in North American theaters on March 24, 2017. Originally scheduled for a May release, the date was moved up to avoid competition with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Alien: Covenant. Ironically, Alien: Covenant’s shifting release date was the very reason Sony wanted to steer clear of direct comparison.
The strategy worked. Life grossed over $100 million worldwide on a $58 million budget and earned a 67 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While critics acknowledged its lack of originality, most agreed that the performances, atmosphere, and suspense made it an effective and entertaining sci-fi thriller.
Despite its financial success, Espinosa firmly opposed making a sequel, viewing Life as a standalone story akin to a dark Twilight Zone episode. Rumors that the film was a secret prequel to Sony’s Venom were later debunked, despite fan speculation sparked by a recycled Spider-Man 3 shot used in a trailer.
Although Life never became a franchise and sports a famously generic title, it remains one of the more entertaining Alien knock-offs of the past 45 years. Strong performances, solid visual effects, and Espinosa’s confident direction elevate the material and deliver genuine tension. And that’s pretty much the book on what happened to Life.
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