The Fly (1986 film)

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Template:Infobox Film The Fly is a 1986 science fiction film produced by Brooksfilms and Twentieth Century Fox Television, directed by David Cronenberg, and starring Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz. It is a high budget remake of 1958 film of the same name, but with a substantially different plot. The soundtrack was composed by Howard Shore. This movie was shot in Toronto, Ontario.

The Fly was a box office success upon its release and was critically-acclaimed in the press.

1 Plot
2 Critical Response
3 Trivia
4 Quotes
5 Cast
6 External links

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

As with many of Cronenberg's films, The Fly deals with themes of bodily disfigurement or metamorphosis and the darker aspects of human emotions and behavior. The film also deals with the dangers of the misuse of science to terrible consequences. An underlying aspect of the story is the doomed love affair between Goldblum and Davis and the rivalry between Goldblum and Getz that results from this.

Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a brilliant, but eccentric scientist. He meets Veronica Quaife (Davis), a reporter at a convention. Brundle takes Veronica back to his place and shows her his invention: a set of devices that allow teleportation. She is highly impressed and agrees with Seth to act as a witness and document his work. Although the device can transport inanimate objects perfectly, it cannot do this with living things, turning them inside out. Seth demonstrates this with a baboon, killing it. Seth and Veronica begin a relationship, which inspires Seth. He realizes the machine is not perfectly recreating living objects but is rather "interpreting" them, and sets about adjusting his machine.

He succeeds in teleporting a baboon with no apparent harm. Flush with this success, and with his judgement impaired by alcohol and the worry that Veronica is rekindling her relationship with her boss and former lover Stathis Borans (Getz), he decides to teleport himself. Just as he's about to teleport, a fly gets into the pod with him. The computer, confused, splices together their DNA and Brundle gradually begins to transform into a hybrid (a "Brundlefly" as he calls it).

At first, Seth enjoys states of euphoria and heightened strength and endurance, especially in bed. As the metamorphosis progresses, he becomes violent and arrogant, and progressively less human in appearance, leaving sloughed-off human body parts in jars in his medicine cabinet. He also becomes incapable of eating solids and vomits digestive enzymes which dissolve food and even flesh. Eventually, he realizes that not only is his body mutating, his mind is becoming more insect-like, brutal and driven by primitive appetites.

When he learns that Veronica is trying to have an abortion to rid herself of their possibly mutated child, he abducts her and traps her in a telepod, trying to restore his own humanity by fusing with her and their unborn child. Stathis Borans goes to her rescue but is injured and almost killed by the almost fully-transformed "Brundlefly". Seth then undergoes his final transformation when his changed, more-insect-like body sheds the outer layer of decaying human flesh. However as the telepods are starting up, the wounded Borans manages to shoot the power cables connecting to Veronica's telepod so she escapes unharmed, and Brundlefly is gruesomely fused with chunks of metal from his own telepod door while trying to smash it open. As a final act of mercy, Veronica kills what used to be Seth Brundle.

The sequel is The Fly II.

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Critical Response

Upon its release, The Fly was praised for being more emotionally involving and genuinely poignant in comparison to Cronenberg's previous films, as well as having a certain simplicity and stylishness which set it apart from other, more gratuitous movies. Jeff Goldblum's tour-de-force performance was applauded as well, and many believe it to be his finest performance to this day.

The film was also widely taken to be about AIDS, although Cronenberg denies this and states that he believed the film to be about aging. He states that "we've all got the disease, the disease of being finite." This, when coupled with the tragic love-story of the plot (harking back to films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame) makes The Fly an all-too human film, albeit filled with Cronenberg's familiar obsessions and gruesome attention to detail. The spectacular "Brundlefly" make-up was given a 1986 Academy Award.

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Trivia

The 2005 Collector's Edition DVD version of the film includes a variety of deleted scenes as bonus features. Of particular note is one scene, in which Seth Brundle, already quite far along on his way to Brundlefly (in a transitional makeup stage that appears only in this one scene), attempts to splice a cat and his remaining baboon together. The resulting "monkey-cat" creature, however, comes out terribly deformed and attacks Brundle, and he ends up beating the two-headed creature to death with a metal pipe to end its misery. The scene goes on to show a disturbed Brundle scaling the wall to the roof of his lab, only to feel a pain in his side (specifically, a pain in the "Oh, look at this. What's this? I don't know." hernia-like bulge seen in the final cut when Brundle first demonstates his wall-crawling powers). He accidentally slips off the roof, lands on a metal awning, and watches as a small, fly-like leg emerges from his side. Horrified by this new appendage, Brundle amputates it with his teeth. The script additionally called for Brundle to encounter a homeless woman outside, whose face he would vomit on and consume, but this segment was written out of the script before filming.

Like the relationship in the movie, Davis and Goldblum become involved with one another. This led to their three-year marriage in 1987.

Director David Cronenberg makes a cameo as the doctor in Veronica's dream who delivers the maggot child.

It is a common misconception that in the film, Brundle simply "turns into a fly". In actuality, the final Brundlefly creature represents a true fusion of man and insect (albeit a very deformed and asymmetrical one), a new life-form somewhere in-between Brundle and fly.

Cronenberg was intrigued by Charles Edward Pogue's screenplay (Pogue was the film's initial writer), but he agreed to direct the film only if he would be allowed to rewrite the script. Producer Stuart Cornfeld revealed on the 2005 special edition DVD that Walon Green had also attempted to revise Pogue's material, but that his interpretation proved to be unsatisfactory.

The Fly was spoofed in an episode of Family Guy ("8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter"). Before the theme song, Stewie tests out his teleportation pods and is accidentally fused with Rupert, his teddy bear ("I'm a monster!!").

The film was also spoofed in the episode Treehouse of Horror VIII from The Simpsons, when Bart tries to use a teleportation machine to become a superhero half-man half-fly. However, the machine only ends up swapping his head with the fly's, much like the original 1958 film.

Much of the concept of the 1988 episode Enter The Fly in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is based on The Fly. Baxter Stockman and a fly mix their DNA together.

The last portion of Day of the Tentacle shows the three player characters to try to travel in time simultaneously. Dr Ed warns them 'Haven't you seen The Fly?'. Indeed the characters arrive in a single combined body. However much later it is revealed that all three aren't mutated, as they first thought, but that they just have been entangled in one's clothes.

The Invader Zim episode "Bolognius Maximus" pays tribute to several scenes from The Fly.

The Spongebob Squarepants episode SquidBob TentaclePants takes its entire premise from The Fly.

The "Diet" episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force involves the character Carl unknowingly ingesting great numbers of parasites (in a diet candy bar), and then displaying abilities similar to that of Goldblum's character, eventually bursting apart to reveal a centipede.

Michael Keaton was offered the role of Seth Brundle but turned it down.

Tim Burton was slated to direct the film at one point.

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Quotes

(first line)
Seth: "What am I working on? I'm working on something that's gonna change the world and human life as we know it."

Seth: "Don't be afraid."
Veronica: "No. Be afraid. Be very afraid."

(At Brundle's lab, Veronica finds him scaling the walls.)

Seth: "I seem to be stricken by a disease with a purpose, wouldn't you say? Maybe not such a bad disease after all."

Veronica: "I can't stay here."

Seth (jumps onto floor): "No, no, no! Why not? Why can't you?"

Veronica: "I can't take it...It's too much."

Seth: What's there to take? The disease has just revealed its purpose. We don't have to worry about contagion anymore...I know what the disease wants."

Veronica: "What does the disease want?"

Seth: "It wants to...turn me...into something else. That's not too terrible, is it? Most people would give anything to be turned into something else."

Veronica: "Turned into what?"

Seth: "Whadda you think, a fly? Am I becoming a hundred-and-eighty-five pound fly? No, I'm becoming something that never existed before. I'm becoming...Brundlefly. Don't you think that's worth a Nobel Prize or two?"

Seth: "You have to leave now, and never come back here. Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects...don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid...(groans)"
Veronica:"I don't know what you're trying to say!"
Seth: "I'm saying... I'm saying I-I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man...and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake."
Veronica: "No. No, Seth..."
Seth: "I'm saying... I'll hurt you if you stay."

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