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44 facts about the movie fantastic voyage.

Written by Minny Towne

Modified & Updated: 05 Mar 2024

Reviewed by Jessica Corbett

In 1966, the science fiction film "Fantastic Voyage" took audiences on an extraordinary journey into the human body, captivating them with its groundbreaking special effects and imaginative storytelling. As we delve into the fascinating world of "Fantastic Voyage," we'll uncover 44 intriguing facts that shed light on the movie's production, impact, and enduring legacy. From the visionary concept of miniaturized exploration to the remarkable behind-the-scenes innovations, this cinematic adventure continues to inspire and enthrall both science fiction enthusiasts and movie buffs alike. Join us as we embark on a remarkable voyage through the captivating universe of "Fantastic Voyage."

Key Takeaways:

• “Fantastic Voyage” is a timeless classic that takes audiences on a thrilling journey into the human body, inspiring curiosity and wonder about science and the marvels of the human anatomy.
• The film’s innovative storytelling and captivating premise have left an indelible mark on popular culture, sparking discussions about the intersection of science, adventure, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.

The movie "Fantastic Voyage" was released in 1966.

This science fiction film, directed by Richard Fleischer, takes viewers on a mesmerizing journey into the human body, where a team of scientists and a submarine crew are miniaturized to microscopic size and injected into a dying man in a desperate attempt to save his life.

The film features an outstanding cast.

"Fantastic Voyage" stars renowned actors such as Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, and Donald Pleasence, who deliver captivating performances that bring the thrilling narrative to life.

The movie won two Academy Awards.

At the 39th Academy Awards, "Fantastic Voyage" received recognition for its exceptional visual effects, earning Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Special Effects.

The film's unique premise captivated audiences.

The concept of miniaturizing a submarine and its crew to navigate through the human body struck a chord with viewers, sparking their imagination and curiosity about the inner workings of the human anatomy.

The production of "Fantastic Voyage" was a technical marvel.

Crafting the intricate visual effects to depict the inner workings of the human body posed a significant challenge, but the filmmakers successfully brought this imaginative concept to the silver screen with stunning realism.

The movie's legacy endures.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" continues to captivate audiences and inspire discussions about the intersection of science, adventure, and the human body.

"Fantastic Voyage" has left an indelible mark on the science fiction genre.

The film's innovative storytelling and imaginative premise have solidified its place as a timeless classic in the realm of science fiction cinema.

The film's impact extended beyond the silver screen.

"Fantastic Voyage" sparked a renewed interest in science and medicine, prompting discussions about the potential for miniaturized technology to revolutionize medical treatments.

The movie's success led to novel adaptations.

The captivating narrative of "Fantastic Voyage" inspired literary adaptations, further expanding the reach of the film's compelling storyline and captivating characters.

The film's visual effects set a new standard for cinematic innovation.

The groundbreaking visual effects showcased in "Fantastic Voyage" pushed the boundaries of what was thought possible in filmmaking, earning accolades for its pioneering approach to storytelling.

"Fantastic Voyage" continues to inspire future generations of filmmakers.

The film's enduring legacy serves as a testament to its profound impact on the science fiction genre, influencing subsequent generations of filmmakers and storytellers.

The movie's compelling narrative resonates with audiences.

The gripping storyline of "Fantastic Voyage" continues to enthrall viewers, drawing them into a world of adventure, discovery, and the awe-inspiring wonders of the human body.

The film's success paved the way for future explorations of the human body in cinema.

"Fantastic Voyage" set a precedent for exploring the mysteries of human anatomy in cinema, inspiring subsequent films to delve into the intricacies of the human body with newfound creativity and imagination.

The movie's enduring popularity is a testament to its timeless appeal.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" remains a beloved classic, captivating audiences with its timeless tale of adventure, exploration, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.

"Fantastic Voyage" continues to spark discussions about the intersection of science and storytelling.

The film's thought-provoking premise has ignited conversations about the fusion of scientific innovation and cinematic artistry, prompting audiences to ponder the limitless possibilities of storytelling within the realms of science fiction.

The film's impact on popular culture is undeniable.

"Fantastic Voyage" has left an indelible mark on popular culture, influencing various forms of media and inspiring creative endeavors that explore the wonders of the human body and the marvels of scientific exploration.

The movie's legacy lives on through its enduring influence on the science fiction genre.

"Fantastic Voyage" has solidified its place as a pioneering work in the realm of science fiction, leaving an indelible legacy that continues to inspire filmmakers, writers, and audiences alike.

The film's imaginative premise continues to capture the imagination of audiences worldwide.

"Fantastic Voyage" remains a source of wonder and fascination, inviting viewers to embark on an extraordinary journey into the microscopic world within the human body.

The movie's themes of discovery and exploration resonate with audiences of all ages.

"Fantastic Voyage" transcends generations, captivating audiences with its timeless themes of curiosity, bravery, and the unyielding human spirit in the face of extraordinary challenges.

The film's enduring appeal lies in its ability to transport audiences to a realm of scientific wonder and adventure.

"Fantastic Voyage" offers a captivating escape into a world of scientific marvels, inviting viewers to embark on a breathtaking expedition through the inner workings of the human body.

The movie's impact on the science fiction genre continues to reverberate through cinematic history.

"Fantastic Voyage" remains a touchstone of cinematic innovation, leaving an indelible imprint on the landscape of science fiction storytelling and inspiring future generations of filmmakers to push the boundaries of imagination and creativity.

The film's legacy is a testament to its timeless relevance and enduring impact.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" remains a beacon of cinematic excellence, captivating audiences with its visionary storytelling and groundbreaking exploration of the human body at a microscopic scale.

"Fantastic Voyage" has inspired a sense of awe and wonder in audiences worldwide.

The film's portrayal of the human body as a breathtaking landscape of scientific discovery has sparked the imagination of viewers, instilling a sense of wonder and appreciation for the marvels of biological intricacy.

The movie's innovative approach to storytelling has left an indelible mark on the history of cinema.

"Fantastic Voyage" stands as a testament to the boundless creativity and ingenuity of filmmakers, pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling and inspiring future generations to embrace bold, imaginative narratives.

The film's enduring popularity speaks to its universal resonance with audiences around the world.

"Fantastic Voyage" transcends cultural and geographical boundaries, captivating viewers of diverse backgrounds with its universal themes of exploration, courage, and the unyielding pursuit of scientific discovery.

The movie's impact extends beyond the realm of entertainment.

"Fantastic Voyage" has sparked a renewed interest in scientific exploration and medical innovation, prompting audiences to contemplate the remarkable potential for advancements in miniaturized technology and biomedical research.

The film's legacy continues to inspire curiosity and fascination with the wonders of the human body.

"Fantastic Voyage" serves as a source of inspiration for scientific curiosity, igniting a sense of wonder and appreciation for the intricate complexities that exist within the human body.

The movie's enduring legacy is a testament to its enduring relevance and impact on the science fiction genre.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" remains a touchstone of cinematic excellence, leaving an indelible mark on the landscape of science fiction storytelling and inspiring future generations of filmmakers to push the boundaries of imagination and creativity.

The film's legacy endures.

"Fantastic Voyage" continues to captivate audiences with its timeless tale of adventure, exploration, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.

The film's impact on the science fiction genre continues to reverberate through cinematic history.

The movie's enduring legacy is a testament to its timeless relevance and enduring impact..

In conclusion, "Fantastic Voyage" has left an indelible mark on the science fiction genre, captivating audiences with its groundbreaking visual effects and imaginative storytelling. The movie's enduring legacy is a testament to the creativity and innovation of its creators, as well as the timeless appeal of its premise. With its awe-inspiring journey into the human body, "Fantastic Voyage" continues to inspire wonder and fascination, reminding us of the boundless potential of the human imagination.

What makes "Fantastic Voyage" a significant film in the science fiction genre? "Fantastic Voyage" is considered a significant film in the science fiction genre due to its pioneering special effects, compelling narrative, and innovative premise. The movie's exploration of the human body on a microscopic scale was groundbreaking for its time and continues to be revered for its imaginative storytelling.

How did "Fantastic Voyage" influence subsequent science fiction films and popular culture? "Fantastic Voyage" had a profound influence on subsequent science fiction films and popular culture by setting a high standard for visual effects and pushing the boundaries of imaginative storytelling. Its impact can be seen in the way it inspired filmmakers and storytellers to explore new frontiers in science fiction, leaving an enduring legacy in the genre.

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Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Isaac asimov’s fantastic voyage from film to novel, thursday, march 25, 2021 mark r. kelly comments 4 comments.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov First Edition: Houghton Mifflin, March 1966, Cover art Dale Hennesy (Book Club edition shown)

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov Houghton Mifflin (239 pages, $3.95, Hardcover, March 1966) Cover art Dale Hennesy

Isaac Asimov’s early novels were published over a period of just eight years, from Pebble In the Sky in 1950 to The Naked Sun in 1957, with linked collections like I, Robot and the Foundation “novels” along the way. Some of his early short stories, published in magazines as early as 1939, weren’t collected into books until the 1960s, but for the most part Asimov had stopped writing science fiction by the late 1950s, perhaps because of the collapse of the SF magazine market, or perhaps because he’d discovered that writing nonfiction books was more lucrative and easier. As Asimov fans were painfully aware of at the time, a spell of some 15 years went by before he published his next original novel, The Gods Themselves in 1972, to great acclaim and awards recognition. (And then yet another decade went by before Asimov returned to regular novel writing, with Foundation’s Edge and a string of following novels derived from his Foundation and Robot universes.)

—Except for a book called Fantastic Voyage , in 1966, which was a novelization of a movie script. Such novelizations are by now a virtually extinct species, I think, but they were quite common in the 1970s especially where, once a movie left theaters, there was no way to experience it again except via proxy novel versions (and perhaps revival house movie theaters), especially of SF films. (Until the 1980s, when Video Cassette Recorders became widespread, and lots of old movies were issued on videotape, and novelizations became redundant.)

The year 1966 was early in the history of movie novelizations. Theodore Sturgeon had done Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea back in 1961, and by 1967 James Blish was doing narrative versions of Star Trek episodes, gathered into collections of 6 or 8 per book. There were other books associated with several TV shows in the mid-1960s, by Murray Leinster, Keith Laumer, and others, but these were not based on actual scripts and so are better described as “ties” or “tie-ins.” (If “novelizations” passed in the 1980s, there remain to this day hundreds of such “ties,” especially set in the Star Trek or Star Wars universes.)

Anyway, Isaac Asimov did the novelization of Fantastic Voyage , a big-budget film with spectacular special effects for its time. Why? The story is recounted in various places, but essentially his publisher asked, and talked him into it. Despite that Asimov had not written a novel in years. Despite that Asimov considered the job essentially hackwork. Nevertheless, Asimov agreed, on condition the book be published in hardcover (not just as an original paperback), and on the condition he could correct various scientific impossibilities in the film’s plot. He wrote the book quickly and so it was published some six months before the film opened, leading some to believe the film was based on Asimov’s novel. But it was the other way around.

Unlike my post about Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man , another story about miniature people, here I will explicitly revisit both the film and the book. Both to reconsider the idea of how miniature people makes sense or not, and to examine to what extent Asimov improved or otherwise changed the film’s narrative and rationale.

With that in mind, I’ll step through the film, and along the way comment on where Asimov expanded scenes, provided additional background, and offered scientific rationalization.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov Bantam Books, October 1966, Cover art from movie poster (Scholastic Books edition shown)

Full disclosure: According to my records, the paperback edition of Asimov’s novel, shown here, was the first science fiction book I ever purchased. It’s an edition from Scholastic Book Services that provided, back in 1966, mail-orders from school classrooms, with delivery several weeks later. Editions for Scholastic at that time were identical to the publishers’ (paperback) editions, except that the price and publisher ID numbers were left off. I didn’t see the film until years later, in the VCR era.

To destroy a blood clot in the brain of a scientist whose mind holds the key to breaking a Cold War stalemate, a submarine with a crew of five is miniaturized to microscopic size and injected into the scientist’s body. As the sub travels to the brain to destroy the clot there with a laser, it experiences a series of accidents and attempted sabotages; the suspense is as much whether the mission will succeed (of course it will) but who of the five is the saboteur.

The film has spectacular special effects in its depictions of the interior of the human body, impressive even now, though the story is a suspense thriller with a one-crisis-a-minute plot. The Asimov novelization tries to rationalize the implausibility of miniaturization, expands on the mild sexual innuendo of the film (involving the one female crewman), adds analysis of the potential motivations of the saboteur, and finishes with a couple scenes confirming the success of the mission and about a potential romantic relationship.

Walkthrough of film and novelization, with [[ comments ]]

The film Fantastic Voyage ( Wikipedia ) was announced as “the most expensive science-fiction film ever made” (as of 1964 or 1965), with a budget of $5 million; its box office was $12 million. The film was notable not just for its special effects, but for the appearance, early in her career, of “international sex symbol” Raquel Welch ( Wikipedia ), and for its atonal score by Leonard Rosenman, with no music at all in the first four reels of the film, until the submarine enters the scientist’s body. Other stars in the film were Stephen Boyd, Edmond O’Brien, Donald Pleasance, Arthur O’Connell, and Arthur Kennedy, all familiar from other films of that era.

For this walk-through I’ll use Asimov’s chapter headings as dividers, but describe the film first, then Asimov’s version of the same scenes. A summary of the principal differences between film and book is at the end.

• Movie: We see an airline in the night sky, descending toward landing.
• General Alan Carter [Edmond O’Brian in the film] talks with Colonel Donald Reid [Arthur O’Connell]. Each wears a CMDF insignia. They fret about there being only 72 minutes before the plane lands. The agent in charge is Grant [Stephen Boyd]; the target is Benes . Both sides are evenly matched [[ this is very Cold War-ish, but only in terms of “Ourselves” and the “Others” ]]. Benes is bringing new knowledge to end the stalemate, if he makes it.
• [[ Since I’d read the book first, I’d thought that Benes was pronounced “beans.” I was 11 years old! In fact it’s an eastern European name, pronounced in the film as “ben-esh.” ]]
• Reid then visits Dr. Michaels [Donald Pleasance], of the medical division, who babbles about the complex circulatory system. He has heard of Benes’ research and is skeptical. Maybe lying, maybe mistaken. They discuss the surgeon Duval [Arthur Kennedy] as an arrogant son of a bitch. He’s a brain surgeon, always busy with his work. His assistant is Miss (Cora) Peterson [Raquel Welch], 25yo. Her specialty is laser work. They debate whether Benes’ work is for good, or if it would just increase the probability of world destruction.
• [[ This is a running theme in Asimov, unexamined in the film. What is the greatest danger? For both sides, or only one side, having this miniaturization technology? ]]
• Cpt William Owens [William Redfield] rides in a limousine flanked by motorcycle escorts, coming to the airfield. He chats with the secret service agent, Gonder. Owens is confident he will recognize Benes, rather than a double agent impersonating him.
• With no dialogue (and no music), we see the plane land, then two big trucks with troops move in, along with motorcycles and three limos.
• Out of the plane come two men: and old man, Benes; and the younger agent, Grant. Benes shakes hands with Grant in thanks, then rides away in a limo. Grant remains behind.
• The cars and motorcycles drive through the dark city, a warehouse district. Suddenly an attack car emerges from an alley, hits the corner of the limo containing Benes, and then bursts into flames. Frantically, the agents drag Benes to another limo, while gunshots are heard as the agents attack the enemy.
• Asimov: Benes greets Owens, recalling a drinking episode some years ago (which Grant sees as confirming Benes’ identity). And then the attack scene as in the film.
• We see Benes, from above, unconscious in a hospital bed.
• Then we get the film credits. Titles appear with teletype sounds. We hear electronic pings — very much like the electronic pings we heard in ‘60s TV shows like Lost in Space . There’s even a steady sound like that used for the Jupiter 2 flying in space, heard here as the Proteus shrinks. As in films of this era, full credits run at the beginning of the film. (As film credits became increasingly bloated, they’ve moved to the end of films, for decades now.) We never hear these electronic sounds again in the rest of the film.
• Since I haven’t mentioned until now, the film credits four writers, most notably Jerome Bixby (author of SF novels and stories, such as “It’s a Good Life”), along with Otto Klement, David Duncan, and Harry Kleiner.
• We fade to a city street at night. Finally we hear some dialogue: Grant is riding in a limo, accompanied by an agent, who apologizes for waking him up so early. In a deserted warehouse area, the limo stops, the other men in the car step out, Grant told to stay inside. The limo, on a hidden elevator pad, descends into the ground.
• The elevator stops; a large door slides open, and we see a huge underground complex of well-lit corridors and people busily walking around. A man on a scooter appears; Grant gets on board, and they ride through the facility. The initials CMDF are everywhere. The scooter drives up ramps that parallel escalators. They pause at a security station, then Grant is dropped off at an office. General Carter greets him, takes him into an observation room, where they look down at Benes in a hospital bed on the level beneath them. Carter quickly explains that Benes has a brain injury and they have to operate. He turns on two monitors to introduce Duval and his assistant on one, Dr. Michaels on the other. Grant is needed for security purposes — Duval is suspected of being an enemy agent. Carter tells Grant to take orders only from Dr. Michaels. Grant remarks about Miss Peterson’s good looks
• Follows the film closely, except that Grant is not told to follow Michaels’ orders; Asimov develops this differently in the next chapter.
• Grant wonders what CMDF stands for. Consolidated Mobilization of Delinquent Females? Grant explains: Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces. They can reduce anything, put an army in a match box. Both sides have it, but it can’t be controlled. That was Benes has discovered.
• Grant, flabbergasted, tries to refuse; he doesn’t want to be miniaturized!
• They come to a briefing room, where Dr. Reid is objecting that Duval insists on taking his assistant along; a woman doesn’t belong on a trip like this! Duval says she volunteered. “So did every male technician in this unit!” Reid gives in, but disapproves.
• Michaels proceeds with the briefing, turning on an overhead projector to display a crude diagram of Benes’ body on a screen. The injury can’t be reached from the outside, so a submarine will be reduced to the size of a microbe and injected into the body. Benes’ body will be slowed down, lowering heartbeats and respiration. No danger of turbulence, because they’re not going through the heart. Michael indicates their path, where the laser will be used, and then where the sub will head for removal. Communication will be by wireless, and since the sub is nuclear-powered, it can be tracked from outside. But they must be out in 60 minutes, when the miniaturization reverses; as they grow, there’s danger from white corpuscles and antibodies.
• [[ I’ll note that during this scene, and many later scenes in the Control Booth, we see General Carter and one other character light up cigars, just as so many Asimov characters did in his early novels. ]]
• Grant’s guess about CMDF is Consolidated Martian Dimwits and Fools.
• Asimov attempts some rationalization of the miniaturization process, giving Michaels some long speeches about the miniaturization controversy some time back, how the idea was dismissed on theoretical grounds. There were two ideas for how to reduce size: push the individual atoms closer together; or discard a certain proportion of atoms. Neither is plausible, Michael explains; another technique was developed, and the idea went underground (thus the secret CMDF facility): “We are miniaturized, not as literal objects, but as images; as three-dimensional images manipulated from outside the universe of space-time.” He goes on about hyper-space. (p40)
• Whereas the film states flatly that the miniaturization lasts only 60 minutes, Asimov explains that the length of miniaturization is proportional to its degree. To get as small as required for a mission inside the body, the miniaturization will begin to revert after 60 minutes. (Benes’ discovery is that he can beat this limitation, to maintain miniaturization indefinitely.)
• The briefing room scenes proceed, with Grant twice trying to decline the mission, and being told he’s not a volunteer. Asimov states that the ship will be reduced to three micra, just under a ten-thousandth of an inch. And significantly, Grant is given the authority to make executive decisions. (Rather than merely keep an eye on Duval, who is not specifically suspected in the book.)
• The crew walks out, crosses a concourse, passes through a big security door and into a computer room overlooking the operating room. [[ The TV monitors are ovoid and black and white, very primitive looking; meanwhile the computers flash patterns of meaningless white lights, like every other Hollywood computer of this era. ]]
• The crew passes through a purple-lit sterilization corridor, then into a big room where the sub awaits. It’s white, horseshoe-shaped with an upright tail and a glass dome on top. They climb a ladder and enter from the top.
• Inside is a chart table, a wireless station, and four seats beneath the captain’s perch under the dome.
• Grant helps Cpt. Owens lower a heavy, battery-sized device into a niche in the floor — a “particle,” Owens explains, a microscopic bit of nuclear fuel that will be all they need to power the ship once miniaturized.
• Owens explains how the sub was built as a research vessel to study the spawning of deep sea fish.
• [[ And yet with all those windows and a glass dome, this sub doesn’t seem to be designed for deep-sea work. ]]
• Grant then makes a remark about needing to “spawn” a message on the wireless. Miss Peterson, who has been determinedly business-like in attitude so far, notices the wordplay and smiles, just slightly.
• So Grant sends out a message, and in the control room it’s read out: “Miss Peterson has smiled.”
• Asimov omits the planting of a nuclear “particle.”
• As they settle inside Michaels, who admits himself he likes to talk, speculates to Grant about who might be a secret agent — not Owens, because he would never sacrifice his ship. The least suspicious is him, Grant.
• Asimov plays up the attempted innuendo between Grant and Cora; he keeps making remarks that allude to her looks, or just the fact that she’s a woman. She reproves him and tells him to treat her like any other crewman. But when she tests her laser and asks him to move his hand, he says “When near you hence-forward I shall be careful where I place my hand.” And she smiles, just a bit. So he sends the message, “Miss Peterson has smiled.”
• Cpt. Owens shows Michaels a “repeater” in the cockpit, which will display whatever chart Michaels has out below.
• Grant asks Miss Peterson about how she is around the house, if she can cook. She ignores him and tests the laser. [[ Asimov moved the laser test into the previous chapter. ]]
• They prepare for miniaturization. They all strap in. Outside, the miniaturizer, a huge disk at ceiling height, is slid in above the sub.
• From the Control Room, Reid orders Phase One. We hear whining. From above light glows onto the ship.
• From inside, the crew sees the world through the windows expanding and growing farther away.
• The sub becomes matchbox-sized on the red tile, the “Zero Module,” in the center of the room.
• Much the same, though Asimov adds further interchanges between Grant and Cora, especially as she discusses her place in a man’s world. [[ Gradually as the novel proceeds, “Miss Peterson” becomes “Cora” both in the narrative and in Grant’s speech. ]]
• While Michaels and others are nervous about all this, Duval blandly remarks that he has “the consolations of religion. I have confessed, and for me death is but a doorway.” The film has a scene or two in which Duval expresses near-religious awe, even presuming the existence of a creator, but Asimov makes Duval’s religious faith explicit.
• Phase Two. A precision handling device is slowly wheeled in. Zero Module is elevated — the hexagonal tile slides up from the floor, to chest height. Carefully, a technician guides a fork at the end of an arm of the device underneath the ship, and lifts it. Zero Module descends, and in its place a huge glass cylinder rises. The handling device lowers the sub onto the surface of the water.
• Inside, Owens orders Grant to open a couple valves, for the ship to submerge.
• Outside, we see the tiny sub drifting downward in the glass cylinder.
• Michaels has a panic attack, saying he can’t breathe, climbing up to the hatch and trying to open it. The others pull him down; he calms down, and apologizes.
• Phase Three. Now the entire cylinder shrinks. Full reduction is achieved. The timer on the wall starts: 60 minutes and counting. Inside, the ship powers up.
• Asimov refers to the handling device as a waldo, and alludes to a 1940s sf story without naming it.
• Asimov has the sub crew perceive the people outside as slowly-moving, as if the subjective time at miniaturization may be longer than an hour. [[ Perhaps Asimov’s way to make more plausible how many events the crew endures in a single hour. ]]
• Phase Four. Zero Module is elevated again; the handler moves in, and in two steps, a plunger and then a needle are attached to the ends (by nurses wearing white uniforms with caps).
• The handler moves over to Benes, whose bald head is now lined in a grid, and who has a big X marked on his throat. An array of tiny radar antennas is positioned around his head.
• Asimov has the crew recognize that the slight vibrations they feel are Brownian motion.
• Cora is optimistic they can wrap this up in 15 minutes, then it doesn’t matter (if the ship suffers from the vibrations). Michaels angrily explains that it *does* matter, because if they wreck the ship before being extracted from Benes, he would still be killed by the expanding debris. [[ This is Asimov’s first allusion to they key flaw of the film, which Asimov takes pains to correct. ]]
• Grant accepts Owens’ assurance that the ship will survive 60 minutes of such vibrations. So they will proceed. [[ This is Grant’s first executive decision, given the role Asimov assigns him. ]]
• We see the ship sliding down through the water, at a downward angle, with a gushing sound – and then they’re out, into relatively calm waters, inside the body.
• [[ —And here is where the film’s music begins. It’s by Leonard Rosenman (composer of many films from East of Eden to Star Trek IV ), and it’s atonal, though not 12-tone (there’s a repeated four-note motif in almost every scene). It’s appropriately otherworldly for a science fiction film about a place no one has ever seen before. There’s an 11-minute suite of the score at YouTube here , complete with electronic pings and teletype noises. (The first instance of the four-note motif is at 1:10)
• (YouTube also has this 17-minute documentary about the making of the film here , which reveals where those various electronic sounds came from: created by a sound editor named Ralph Hickey for a 1957 Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn film called Desk Set , as sounds an advanced computer would make.) ]]
• The ship’s crew looks out at huge red and blue blobs floating around them—corpuscles. Duval gets philosophical: “…man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity between outer and inner space.” He sees something he doesn’t recognize — maybe a protein? — and wants to stop for a sample, but they have no time.
• They expect a branch in the artery in two minutes, but Cpt. Owens finds himself struggling against some kind of current. The ship plunges into a whirlpool. The crew straps in, but are pressed outward by centrifugal force.
• Abruptly, the sub emerges through an arterial wall into calm. But where are they?
• In the book Duval calls the view “God’s handiwork.”
• At the end they realize they’ve passed through an arterio-venous fistula, a small connection between artery and vein, perhaps caused by the initial accident Benes was in.
• Michaels is the expert on Benes’ circulatory system; shouldn’t he have known this fistula was there? Or perhaps it was too small to be noticed?
• Control realizes Proteus is off course, in the jugular vein.
• In the sub, Michaels explains about the fistula. They’re headed for the heart, and they can’t go through it. Michaels wants to call off the mission, at 51 minutes. In Control, the General insists they keep going, and asks about stopping the heart. How long can it be stopped? And how long for Proteus to get through? 60 seconds, and 57 seconds respectively. He orders the surgical team to prepare for cardiac shock.
• As the sub approaches the heart, the crew hears heartbeats, and feels the ship jerking with each one. As they reach the valve — a huge three-sided thing — Owens hits the gas and they enter the abruptly quiet heart.
• Outside the General watches his stopwatch. Inside the sub glides through the calm, through tendrils, spotting the semi-lunar valve, and just as the heart starts again, is whisked into the pulmonary artery.
• No significant difference.
• So now the sub is headed toward the lungs. They enter a capillary, and watch how corpuscles release CO2 in return for oxygen; refueling, and changing color.
• Duval: “One of the miracles of the universe.” Michaels: “Just an exchange of gases; the end product of 500 million years of evolution.” Duval: “You can’t believe that all that is accidental, that there is a creative intelligence at work?”
• But then an alarm sounds. The air pressure is dropping, due to a short that Owens quickly fixes. But they’ve lost too much air to go on. Grant observes they’re right along the lung, plenty of air there. Are there snorkels on board? Yes. Michaels, always ready to abandon the mission, reluctantly agrees to Grant’s plan.
• Then Grant notices the laser has half fallen out of its cradle. How did that happen? Cora is sure she strapped it down.
• But for now the four of them put on suits to go outside. The camera lingers on Raquel Welch as she partially disrobes.
• Outside, the ship lowers legs to sit on the capillary wall.
• In Control, they wonder why the sub has stopped again.
• In the capillary, two of the crew, and then another two, exit the bottom of the sub.
• Duval: “Look at the God-given wonder of it.” And so on, the exchange a bit expanded, the time period changed to 3 billion years.
• Asimov realizes there’s a problem with miniature people breathing un-miniaturized air. (Which is to say, the movie implicitly presumes all the atoms and molecules are the same size and can interact with each other.) Asimov imagines, rather implausibly, that the sub has a small miniaturizer on board, and the crew jury-rigs a system of tubes to get full-sized air through it before refilling the sub’s tank.
• Outside the sub, in snorkeling gear, Grant pulls on a big rubber hose attached to the sub. They see the lung through a thin wall, with bits of rock (dust).
• Duval ties Grant’s lifeline to the sub; we see him doing it.
• Grant pushes through the wall into the lung, pulling the hose. Sound of wind. In the sub, the pressure meter rises until full. In the lung, Grant slips and is blown away from the ledge where he pushed in. He tumbles through the air, lands, climbs back up, and pushes through.
• The sub sails on (this scene as on the cover of the hardcover, top).
• Essentially the same.
• Back in the sub, Cora finds a broken trigger wire in the laser. End of laser. Michaels, yet again, suggests ending the mission immediately.
• But Grant has an idea: he can get a replacement wire from the wireless. Michaels of course objects; they’ll be cut off from the outside world! The others calm him down, and a last message is sent to Control: “Cannibalizing wireless to repair laser.”
• Cora holds up the replacement wire. It’s too thick. Duval, the surgeon, will try scraping it down to size.
• This location or term wasn’t mentioned in the movie; Asimov has the crew mention they can move forward through the pleural lining.
• As Duval and Cora work to repair the laser, Michaels wonders to Grant if Cora herself sabotaged the laser. And what about the lifeline? Did Duval try getting rid of him, Grant, for paying attention to Cora? Michaels admits he might have known about the fistula. Clues here seem to point everywhere.
• The sub sails on. Grant confides to Michael: there have been attempts at sabotage. Could it be Duval?
• The sub is going through the lymphatic system, which looks like a tunnel of netting, with fibers draping over the ship, like seaweed. They observe antibodies destroying the invaders.
• [[ Of all the otherworldly landscapes and objects the film imagines as the inside of the human body, the antibodies are especially striking effects: little bundles of fibers that skitter quickly through the water, clinging and shaping themselves to the perceived intruder. ]]
• Is there another route, to avoid these fibers? Duval suggests the inner ear. Michaels warns it’s dangerous — any noise from the outside world would be a disaster for the sub. Grant points out, they’re tracking the sub, they’ll see where we’re going and will understand.
• Asimov has Cora explain what the lymph system does, what antibodies do. The fibers cause the engines to overheat. They watch as antibodies attack a bacterium and squeeze it to death. They acknowledge the risks of going through the ear, but figure those outside will understand. Grant specifically makes the decision to go ahead.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov Bantam Books, October 1966, Back cover image from film (Scholastic Books edition shown)

• In Control, realizing where the Proteus is heading, Reid makes an announcement (over a loudspeaker) that everyone is to remain completely silent.
• The sub heads along a blue-green tunnel, settling onto a ledge. The vents are clogged with puffy seaweed. Grant, and then Michaels and Cora, suit up to go outside and pull the fibers off the ship. Duval stays inside to repair the laser. [[ The sub on the ledge as three pull off fibers is shown on the back cover of the paperback edition, above. ]]
• In Control, the frazzled general, drinking cup after cup of coffee, reaches out to crush an ant, hesitates, and withdraws.
• As the surgical team stands silently, one man’s forehead twitches with sweat. A nurse, seeing this, reaches out for a towel behind her, and as she pulls it off the table, knocks a pair of scissors onto the floor.
• In the ear, chaos ensues, as the sounds echoes through the ear, sending the sub crew tumbling. [[ But why for so long? The sound was sharp but not reverberating. ]] Cora, tossed away, gets caught in some kind of fibers (the Cells of Henson, Michaels later mentions), which in turn attracts antibodies. Grant pulls her out, but the antibodies catch up to them, clinging to Cora. The two climb inside the sub, Cora gasping that she can’t breathe. They open the airlock prematurely; water pours onto the deck, as three of the men struggle to pull the antibodies off her. And discover they quickly crystalize, and snap into shards.
• At the end of this last scene, Asimov has Cora burst into tears.
• Asimov has Reid hand-write a warning to be completely quiet, which is carried around to each member of the surgical crew.
• Later, when Carter and Reid realize the sub has stopped, they have a nurse put cotton in Benes’ ears.
• Asimov omits the ant scene.
• Here, as in some earlier scenes, the panic with the antibodies brings to Grant phrases from his college years: peptide chains, Van der Waals forces.
• In Control, the General notes 12 minutes left. He runs out of sugar.
• Inside, the sub glides through green light; they realize it’s light from the eardrum.
• Duval has repaired the laser and Michael argues that it must be tested. Duval refuses; it will or will not work, he says, and perhaps only for a short period, and he doesn’t want to waste any of its capacity on a test.
• They enter the brain: an enormous lacework with flashes of light moving up and down.
• Duval is moved to quote: “Yet all the suns that light the corridors of the universe shine…”
• A quote which Grant finishes.
• Duval goes on about the soul and the infinite and God.
• A Google search suggests that the lines of verse in the film were made-up. Asimov substitutes lines from Wordsworth: “Where the statue stood of Newton with his prism and silent face…” Which Duval begins and Grant, belying his military background, completes.
• The sub crew sees the blood clot ahead — a huge dark red mass amid the latticework of the brain. Michaels as usual warns they don’t have time; they have only 6 minutes left, and it takes 2 minutes to reach the removal point. Michaels insists on abandoning the mission, heading for the removal point at once. Cpt. Owns says, OK, since Michaels is nominally in charge. But Grant, in response, flips switches on a control panel to depower the sub, and directs Duval to get his laser.
• Michaels and Grant argue as Duval and Cora exit.
• Duval begins firing the laser at the clot. Pieces of the clot, like moldy cloth, fall away.
• Inside the sub, Michaels tells Cpt. Owens that there’s something wrong with the escape hatch. Owens comes down to investigate, and as he leans over, Michaels picks up a wrench and clubs Owens on the head. (At last, Michaels is revealed as the saboteur.)
• Michaels quickly turns on power, climbs into the control dome, and pilots the sub toward the clot.
• Duval, Cora, and Grant have seen the clot is sufficiently destroyed. Cora notices the sub is moving quickly toward them. Grant grabs the laser and fires it at the sub, cutting a swath through its hull that sends water flooding the inside. The sub lurches and crashes into a bundle of fibers. White corpuscles appear, converging on it. Can Michaels and Owens be saved? If not they’ll be ingested.
• Grant climbs into the wrecked sub, finds Owens conscious, and Michaels trapped in the dome by machinery trapping his hands. Overhead, a white corpuscle, a huge mass of white foam, penetrates the dome and engulfs Michaels’ head, as he screams. Grant and Owens escape.
• As the ship arrives at the clot, Michaels insists Duval is the enemy agent; Grant fires back that he, Michaels, is the enemy agent.
• Owens escapes the sub by himself — actually Michaels suits him up, allowing him to escape — and joins the others. Michaels calls the others from the sub, ranting about saving mankind (from the danger of both sides having controllable miniaturization technology), before being taken out by the laser.
• The ship crashes and the survivors realize they have to leave now. What’s the quickest way? Out through the eye.
• The survivors swim to the corner of the eye. The sub has been engulfed by the white corpuscle.
• In Control, time is up, the sub crew has to be removed. The order comes: trepanation. The radar rack is removed, and a surgical team gathers around Benes’ head.
• And then the general stops them. He thinks the ship may already be destroyed, and the crew is on their way to the nearest exit point, the eye.
• Reid walks down to the operating room, leans over Benes, and looks into his eye. He sees a spot. He asks for a glass slide, pulls a teardrop with that spot onto the slide, walks it over to the red hexagon in the miniaturization room, sets it down, stands back. And the four survivors grow from nothingness to full size as everyone watches.
• [[ The music here becomes more tonal, complete with chimes. ]]
• As the crew reaches full-sized, Reid smiles and nods to them. They shake hands. In the control room, all the staff sitting at those computer consoles get up and rush down to the operating floor, forming a crowd, welcoming the crew back. Then end.
• [[ Thus, we presume Benes is OK and the mission was a success, but we’re not told or shown so. ]]
• At this point Asimov addresses the problem of the wrecked sub, and the dead Michaels, a problem the film ignored. They will deminiaturize too, or their fragments will, and would kill Benes. So Asimov has Grant attract the attention of the white cell that engulfed the ship by stabbing it with a knife, and so lures it to follow him as he swims with the others toward the eye.
• As they swim, and start de-miniaturizing, they see their surroundings getting small; they are getting bigger. They escape through a duct, the white cell following.
• The survivors then expand to full size next to a heap of metal fragments. Where’s Michaels? Grant explains: “Somewhere in [the wreckage] you’ll find whatever’s left of Michaels. Maybe just an organic jelly with some fragments of bones.”
• And then, past where the movie ends, Asimov provides some concluding, confirmational scenes.
• Grant wakes after sleeping 15 hours. He speaks with Grant and Reid, discussing how Michaels wasn’t a story-book villain; he was sincere in his way, worried about the spread of dangerous technology. There have been people like this since the atomic bomb; yet his mission was futile because Benes’ secret would have been discovered eventually by someone else.
• Grant explains how he came to suspect Michaels. How each apparent accident wouldn’t have been sabotage by the obvious suspect. Michaels always argued for the end of the mission after each accident. His initial fear gave way to calm, since he figured the mission would fail; then he got angry as each accident was overcome. [[ This is the kind of analysis typical of most Asimov novels. ]]
• Grant decides to find Cora. She is just leaving Duval’s office. Grant appears. Still “Cora”? And he’ll be Charles. May they admire each other? Of course.
• They visit Benes, eyes open. He remembers what he came here to say. His secret is secure.
• And so Grant and Cora depart, “hand in hand, into a world that suddenly seemed to hold no terrors for them, but only the prospect of great joy.”

Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain by Isaac Asimov Doubleday, September 1987, Jacket illustration Ron Miller

To summarize film and book and the changes Asimov made:

• A sub enters a human body to repair a clot in the brain, and suffers one calamity after another, some perhaps accidents, some perhaps due to the work of a saboteur or double agent. But the mission to destroy the clot succeeds.
• Asimov addresses the problem of how miniaturization would work, dismisses two obvious methods, and settles on familiar sfnal double-talk about hyperspace. (Asimov wrote a later novel, Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brian , not a sequel to the movie or his novelization of it, but his own independent treatment of the idea. But it’s twice as long as the novelization here, and I haven’t checked to see what its miniaturization rationale is.)
• Asimov adds scenes at the beginning (to introduce characters) and end (to confirm the success of the mission), but otherwise follows the movie’s plot very closely.
• Asimov ramps up Grant’s sexual innuendo with Cora, to a point that would be unacceptable today; but as the story goes on, their relationship becomes more respectful, and by the end of the book is the implication of a serious relationship.
• And Asimov considers the motives of the saboteur: not a cartoon villain, but whose motives are sincere, if misguided.
• Finally, despite the one-crisis-a-minute plotting, both film and novel remain impressive as an imaginative journey, and for the film’s visualizations of the interior of the human body (which much of the time looks like paintings by Paul Lehr).

Mark R. Kelly’s last review for us was of Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man . Mark wrote short fiction reviews for Locus Magazine from 1987 to 2001, and is the founder of the Locus Online website, for which he won a Hugo Award in 2002. He established the Science Fiction Awards Database at sfadb.com . He is a retired aerospace software engineer who lived for decades in Southern California before moving to the Bay Area in 2015. Find more of his thoughts at Views from Crestmont Drive , which has this index of Black Gate reviews posted so far.

I also read that fairly early in my SF reading career. I still have never seen the movie.

Too bad you didn’t have Seinfeld to give a hint to the pronunciation of Benes’ name! (Or, in my latter day case, Cardinals’ pitchers Andy and Alan Benes.) Of course those Americanized names are pronounced BEN-uhs, with an “S” sound, not “Sh”.

I don’t know when movie novelizations became very popular, but I have novelized editions of plays (from the first decade of the 20th Century), and of movie serials (or series of shorts) from 1915 or so. I think the earliest feature film novelization can be traced to the very early ’20s. I do think they became far more popular by the ’60s.

Point taken — Paul Di Filippo emailed me about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoplay_edition .

Another great, detailed review! A real trip down memory lane for me, too: when sf films were thin on the ground, it was an event any time this was broadcast on TV. And that was even before I was old enough to realize why Raquel Welch was a big deal.

I had a few novelizations on my regular reread list as a kid, and this was one of them, partly because I was an obsessive Asimov fan. But I think Asimov was actually good at capturing the dry, worldly tone of spy novels and mysteries. His plain, matter-of-fact style is the prose equivalent of Jack Webb’s radio voice.

I remember thinking that this book almost seemed like a prequel to Asimov’s “Let’s Get Together”, a robot espionage story set in a future where the Cold War never ended. Although I haven’t read either for a long time.

About the history of novelizations… There was one by Achmed Abdullah of the 1924 Thief of Bagdad. King Kong got one in 1933 and I know of one to The Creature From the Black Lagoon in 1954, so I’m guessing there were probably quite a few early ones.

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Fantastic Voyage

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Cast & crew, richard fleischer, stephen boyd, raquel welch, edmond o'brien, donald pleasence, arthur o'connell, photos & videos, technical specs.

In 1995 Czech scientist Jan Benes escapes from behind the Iron Curtain and is brought to the United States for interrogation. U. S. scientists are able to reduce objects, including people, to the size of bacteria, but the miniaturization can be sustained for only 60 minutes. The Czech scientist has learned the secret of prolonging the miniaturization; but before he reveals this knowledge, he sustains a severe brain injury which can be treated only from within his body. A plan is conceived whereby a crew of five will be placed in an atomic-powered submarine, miniaturized, injected into the scientist's bloodstream, and set on a course through the arteries to the brain. In addition to American secret agent Grant, the crew consists of Dr. Duval, the surgeon who will perform the operation; Cora Peterson, his assistant; Dr. Michaels, a circulatory expert; and Captain Owens, the sub's pilot. To save some of the 60 minutes, the group decides to stop the scientist's heart to allow the submarine to pass through the heart. Then Grant and the crew leave the sub, and by means of a snorkel tube attached to the patient's lungs, replenish their oxygen supply. As they near their destination, a nurse in the operating room drops a pair of surgical scissors, and the sound causes tremendous vibrations in the sub that hurl the crew from their positions. With only 6 minutes left, Dr. Michaels reveals himself to be an enemy agent intent on sabotaging the mission. The remaining crew members escape as white corpuscles envelop and digest both the submarine and Michaels. The operation is successfully performed by removing a blood clot with a laser beam, and the four survivors leave the scientist's body by swimming along the optic nerve and emerging through a tear duct.

William Redfield

Arthur Kennedy

Jean del val.

Shelby Grant

James Brolin

Brendan fitzgerald, l. b. abbott, jay lewis bixby, art cruickshank, david dockendorf, margaret donovan, david duncan, bernard freericks, harper goff, dale hennesy, ollie hughes, harry kleiner, otto klement, emil kosa jr., richard kuhn, ernest laszlo, doris mchale, michael mclean, william b. murphy, national screen service, stuart a. reiss, leonard rosenman, ad schaumer, marvin schnall, walter m. scott, jack martin smith, eric stacey, bruce walkup, fred zendar, photo collections.

Hosted Intro

Best Art Direction

Best special effects, award nominations, best cinematography, best editing, best sound editing, best sound effects sound editing.

Yet all the suns that light the corridors of the universe shine dim before the blazing of a single thought - - Dr. Duval

- proclaiming in incandescent glory the myriad mind of Man... - Grant

Very poetic, gentlemen. Let me know when we pass the soul. - Dr. Michaels

The soul? The finite mind cannot comprehend infinity - and the soul, which comes from God, is infinite. - Dr. Duval

Yes, well, our time isn't. - Dr. Michaels

The medieval philosophers were right. Man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity between outer and inner space, and there's no limit to either. - Dr. Peter Duval

Isaac Asimov was approached to write the novel from the script. He perused the script, and declared the script to be full of plot holes. Receiving permission to write the book the way he wanted, delays in filming and the speed at which he wrote saw the book appear before the film. Asimov fixed several plot holes in the book version, but this had no effect on the film (see the Goofs entry).

The scenes of crewmembers swimming outside the sub were shot on dry soundstages with the actors suspended from wires. There was some additional hazard involved because, to avoid reflections from the metal, the wires were washed in acid to roughen them, which made them more likely to break. To create the impression of swimming in a resisting medium, the scenes were shot at 50% greater speed than normal, then played back at normal speed.

As a college student, director Fleischer was a pre-med student for a time.

When filming the scene where the other crew members remove attacking antibodies from Ms. Peterson for the first time, director Fleischer allowed the actors to grab what they pleased. Gentlemen all, they specifically avoided removing them from Raquel Welch's breasts, with an end result that the director described as a "Las Vegas showgirl" effect. Fleischer pointed this out to the cast members -- and on the second try, the actors all reached for her breasts. Finally the director realized that he would have to choreograph who removed what from where, and the result is seen in the final cut.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States July 1966

Released in United States Winter January 1, 1966

Released in USA on video.

CinemaScope

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Film / Fantastic Voyage

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A 1966 Science Fiction film, directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Stephen Boyd , Raquel Welch , Edmond O'Brien, and Donald Pleasence , about a shrinking machine used to send a mini submarine and its crew inside the body of a defecting scientist.

During the Cold War , both the United States and " The Other Side " have discovered the shrinking technology, which is limited in practicality because of how short-lived the effect is. But the scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) had discovered how to overcome the limit, and enemy agents will stop at nothing to prevent the secret from escaping from behind the Iron Curtain. Benes, wounded in an attack, is comatose and dying from a externally inoperable bloodclot, so the U.S. miniaturization taskforce organizes an expedition to be shrunken to remove the clot from the inside, operating on it at the cellular level.

But for the same reason they need to save the scientist, they have a time limit to get out of the body (or they'll grow back to normal size while inside of it). Even further, an enemy agent is trying to stop them; the protagonist Charles Grant (Boyd), who smuggled the scientist from behind the Iron Curtain, has to make sure the mission succeeds while not knowing who he can trust on the crew.

The film also received a novelization by Isaac Asimov , as well as an Animated Adaptation . Very often homaged or parodied — see "Fantastic Voyage" Plot .

This film and its novelization provide examples of:

• And several years later he wrote a from-scratch "remake"-slash-"sequel", Fantastic Voyage 2: Destination Brain , that attempted to clean up even more of the science and plot problems.
• Asimov also wrote an essay discussing the science problems brought by the premise of the movie, as among others how to miniaturize the sub and its crew, to be able to see when wavelengths of visible light are larger than the eyes of the crew, and getting air from the lungs when molecules are not much smaller than the submarine.
• All for Nothing : In one version of the script, the team saves Benes, but Benes suffers from amnesia and does not remember how to achieve unlimited miniaturization .
• all lowercase letters : The opening and closing credits for the film.
• It isn't clear if the whirlpool was a freak accident or if Michaels knew about it somehow and navigated the Proteus there on purpose.
• Grant insists his snapping safety line in the lungs must have been tampered with. This serves to increase the suspicion around Duval. But it could have been an accident, especially since the forces were described as "incredible," and because it's not clear when (or why) Michaels might have tampered with it.
• Did Michaels deliberately navigate them through the lymph system, hoping that it might clog the engines? Or simply slow them down? Or did it have nothing to do with sabotage, and Michaels was earnestly concerned about the (justified) dangers of going through the ear?
• One sexist example: antibodies tend to flood an area and attach themselves at random to anything they can. They wouldn't distinguish Cora from Grant, and would attack them both. Apparently, they wanted a Damsel in Distress moment instead.
• Bald of Evil : Michaels
• Bigger on the Inside : Played With — The Proteus was built as a single set, with removable exterior panels to allow filming. However, some have argued that the remaining volume is insufficient for the air tanks, engines, etc.
• The Big Board : A vertical diagram of the scientist's body, where the location of the Proteus is marked.
• Big "NO!" : Carter gets a few of these when things look bad.
• Blob Monster : The White Cells
• The Brigadier : General Carter, the commander of a scientific research division, who sends them into the body to save Benes and his knowledge.
• Buried Alive : Michaels attributes his claustrophobia to having been trapped beneath rubble during the Blitz.
• The Chains of Commanding : Carter is determined to have them get through the body, and takes some great risks to do so, but is clearly torn up over it.
• The Coconut Effect : Deoxygenated blood is actually maroon , not blue. Blue is simply how systemic veins look from the outside when seen through human skin, and how deoxygenated blood vessels are illustrated to distinguish them from their oxygenated counterparts. But of course the film's lava lamp blobs - er, erythrocytes - turn from blue to red as they pick up oxygen in the lungs...
• Communications Officer : Grant's cover
• Cool Ship : The Proteus
• Defector from Commie Land : Benes, who holds the secret to unlimited miniaturization.
• Determinator : It's far more pronounced in the book, but Carter will do anything within reason he can to see the mission succeed, even induce cardiac arrest so they can travel through Benes' heart safely.
• Elaborate Underground Base : CMDF HQ
• Energy Weapon : The surgical laser, it has a constant beam and slices cleanly through what it's aimed at — but would a doctor really be using a rifle for brain surgery?
• Fanservice : Raquel Welch is in the movie, wearing a skintight Latex Space Suit . 'Nuff said.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot : The Trope Namer
• Future Spandex : Under the neat white jumpsuits. Justified, both for the Fanservice, and because they're neoprene diving suits.
• Giant's Droplet, Human's Shower : A variation. The crew inside Benes's body must make a quick exit before they grow back to their normal size, taking one of the tear ducts as their only possible route. The supervising scientists then discover them swimming in Benes's tears as if they are in a pool.
• Got Volunteered : Grant is not happy to be selected for the mission once he finds out what it entails, but he isn't given much choice.
• Government Agency of Fiction : C ombined M iniature D eterrent F orces (CMDF).
• Hammer and Sickle Removed for Your Protection : The Soviet Union and its allies are only referred to as "The Other Side".
• High-Tech Hexagons : The shrink ray room had hexagons all over the floor. The ship rose up on one of them once it got small enough, so that it could be shrunk one more time, and then readied for insertion into the guy's body.
• Hollywood Atheist : Michaels. Does it come as any surprise to the 1960s audience that the non-believer turns out to be the traitor?
• If I Wanted You Dead... : In the novelization, Grant eventually figures out the identity of the mole by realizing that the acts of sabotage that seem to implicate various crew members would have been far more effective if those crew members had in fact committed them using their specialized skills note  Owens could have sabotaged the ship in a way that could not be fixed, Cora could have sabotaged the laser in a way that would not be visible, but would either prevent its use or make it so inaccurate that Benes would be killed, Duval figures out a way to save Grant when he is lost in the lungs, and could have just let him die . The one exception is Michaels, the only one who could have mis-navigated them into a circulatory whirlpool that nearly destroyed the ship.
• Incredible Shrinking Man : The whole plot to the story involves a surgical team and their sub being shrunk to microbe size to laser away at the life-threatening clots Benes developed.
• Insufferable Genius : Duval, the surgeon. In the novel he's more of a Dr. Jerk with No Social Skills .
• Latex Space Suit : As Homer Simpson has been known to observe, the crew get to wear skintight diving suits when venturing out of the sub. This is actually quite justified, in that wetsuits are less complex than space suits and do indeed have to be quite figure-hugging — but any movie that gets Raquel Welch into a costume on those lines may be suspected of fanservice .
• Played straight, however, in the heart scene. "60 seconds" of cardiac arrest actually lasts for over 3 minutes of film, probably to draw out the dramatic tension and the special effects.
• Mega-Microbes : Inverted — Tiny Humans, normally sized Microbes...
• The Navigator : Dr. Michaels, who steers the vessel through the body, being the member of the group who is most aware of what goes where in anatomical terms.
• No Ending : The film ends with the Proteus destroyed, Michaels gobbled up by a white blood cell, and the rest of the crew escaping the scientist's brain through his tear duct, de-miniaturising on a microscope slide. There is no explanation for what actually happens afterwards. There was an extra scene at the end of the film that explained what happened next but for whatever reason it was cut out. See "Shaggy Dog" Story below.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup : Benes apparently did not keep any notes of his process. Justified in that he probably destroyed any notes he took to keep The Other Side from getting hold of them before he defected.
• Nothing Is Scarier : Specifically, a lack of soundtrack is frequently used to build suspend. The first bit of "soundtrack" music comes after Acts I and II. There is no soundtrack at all in the ship's approach to the dangerous heart. The soundtrack is similarly absent while the crew are in the ear, to heighten the suspense around needing "complete silence."
• Race Against the Clock : After miniaturization, the team has 60 minutes to complete their mission before they start to de-miniaturize.
• The Radio Dies First : Technically, the laser dies first — the wireless is cannibalized to fix it.
• Scenery Porn : The body interior sets, built full scale.
• Seeker White Blood Cells : White blood cells are mentioned but not seen until the near end; antibodies make an earlier appearance.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story : In the original screenplay, Dr. Benes awakens from the operation having recovered, but is unfortunately unable to remember how to make the shrinking process work indefinitely due to the blood-clot , rendering the heroes' efforts all for naught (other than having saved his life). This was included in the Asimov novelisation and surviving production stills suggest this was how the film was supposed to end as well, but it was removed - perhaps to prevent audiences from feeling that the heroes' efforts - and therefore the audience's time - had been wasted.
• Shrink Ray : The non-portable variety, used chiefly as a research tool due to the time limit making military uses non-viable (it's also the variety that can expand as well as shrink note  The novel notes the potential of entomologists using the tech - "Ants blown up to the size of locomotives for easier study" ).
• The Smurfette Principle : Cora is the only female member of the team (and the only female speaking part in the movie). Colonel Reid complains that a woman has no place on such a dangerous mission.
• Square-Cube Law : Why Isaac Asimov was initially reluctant to write the novelisation — he thought that being miniaturised was impossible because of this. Nevertheless, he decided it would make for some good writing and came up with a novelisation that is almost as hard as science fiction can be, ignoring the physical impossibility of miniaturisation.
• Stating the Simple Solution : It takes a bit before Carter thinks to put cotton in Benes' ears to lessen the risk when they are traveling through the eardrum.
• In the novelization, the mole is played with more subtlety. Michaels avoids the blatant panic attacks of his movie incarnation, and serves as Grant's mentor about miniaturization; the two even discuss possible suspects throughout the story — including themselves. (Grant admits that Michaels' theory that The Other Side could have let Grant escape with Dr. Benes to build his reputation is reasonable, if nothing else.)
• To the Batpole! : The Elevator to CMDF HQ.
• The War Room : The CMDF Operating Theater
• What Happened to the Mouse? : A number of elements that should be problematic are ignored: the wreckage of the Proteus , and Dr. Michaels' body, after being eaten by the white blood cell — somehow that keeps them from re-enlarging once time runs out. This is one of the most memorable plot holes of the film, and Asimov made sure to close it in his novelization. Massively averted by the novelization, which accurately depicts, as well as we know (or, at least, as well as we knew in 1966), what it would be like if humans could in fact be miniaturized to this degree. Even Brownian Motion (random molecular motion of a fluid or gas) is noticed and commented on. Most of the flaws of the movie are explained or elaborated on so as to be acceptable to reality, making the book as much a corrective Retcon as a novelization.
• The World Is Just Awesome : Well not the world , but this describes Duval's feelings about their journey though the body.
• Zeerust : Varies — Being set 20 Minutes into the Future in 1960s, some elements, like the laser rifle don't hold up well, while the Proteus itself varies from a sleek futuristic but practical exterior, to an interior that could be considered Used Future . What dates the film most of all are the '60s contemporary elements, such as computers, cars and uniforms.
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Fantastic voyage.

1966 Directed by Richard Fleischer

A Fantastic and Spectacular Voyage... Through the Human Body... Into the Brain.

In order to save an assassinated scientist, a submarine and its crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into his bloodstream.

Stephen Boyd Raquel Welch Edmond O'Brien Donald Pleasence Arthur O'Connell William Redfield Arthur Kennedy Jean Del Val Barry Coe Ken Scott Shelby Grant James Brolin Brendan Fitzgerald Brendon Boone James Doohan Kenneth MacDonald Christopher Riordan

Director Director

Richard Fleischer

Producer Producer

Writers writers.

Otto Klement David Duncan Jerome Bixby Harry Kleiner

Editor Editor

William B. Murphy

Cinematography Cinematography

Ernest Laszlo

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Ad Schaumer

Art Direction Art Direction

Jack Martin Smith Dale Hennesy

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Stuart A. Reiss Walter M. Scott

Special Effects Special Effects

Art Cruickshank Emil Kosa Jr. L.B. Abbott

Title Design Title Design

Richard Kuhn

Composer Composer

Leonard Rosenman

Sound Sound

Bernard Freericks David Dockendorf

Makeup Makeup

Hairstyling hairstyling.

Margaret Donovan

20th Century Fox

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English French

Releases by Date

24 aug 1966, 30 sep 1966, 14 oct 1966, 20 oct 1966, 28 nov 1966, 23 dec 1966, 13 jan 1967, 23 jan 1967, 05 sep 2000, 22 dec 2003, 12 jan 2005, 05 jun 2007, 08 oct 2013, 18 oct 2013, releases by country.

• Physical L Fox
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical T
• Theatrical 15
• Physical 15 DVD release
• Physical 15 Blu-ray release
• Theatrical PG
• Physical PG Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea / Fantastic Voyage DVD Double Feature
• Physical PG DVD Release
• Physical PG Blu-Ray Release

100 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★★ 2

It's one of my all time favorite sci-fi films! I was hooked on the tv series Voyage to the bottom of the sea and then Fantastic Voyage came out with a submarine navigating the human body and I about went out of my ever livin mind!

I was glued to the screen, slack jawed and drooling! I'm describing my recent viewing not my experience as a kid! The film is absolutely mind boggling!

Sure it's kitschy, that's part of its charm, come on cut it some hard earned slack, it's nearly 50 years old and for its day it was quite a technical marvel! It was just as exciting today as the day it was released!

Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★½

I really loved how well thought out this movie was, making the miniaturization of people , and the medical application of the miniaturization, almost seem scientifically plausible.

The opening credits were beautiful.

Raquel Welch was beautiful. 😍

I'm glad to have finally crossed Fantastic Voyage off my list of shame.

Review by russman ★★★ 6

Insane in the membrane

Review by Travis Lytle ★★★★½ 6

Richard Fleischer's "Fantastic Voyage" is a fun yet serious-toned slice of 1960s science fiction. Earnest where it could have been silly, and scientifically minded where it could have been overly far-fetched, the film is a neatly assembled, semi-plausible, and engaging adventure.

Starring Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, and Donald Pleasance, the film is built around the fantastic voyage of a team of scientists that is miniaturized and injected into a man's body in order the save his life. The story is split between the minuscule team, maneuvering through arteries and organs, and its handlers in a secret, underground, government complex. The story is told seriously and treated without any whimsy that could have turned the tale hokey. As the team is…

Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★ 6

If you've seen that episode of The Magic School Bus this isn't terribly different. It's 60's sci-fi, so there's a laser beam and pervasive fear of communism, but otherwise it's pretty much the same. A group of scientists enter the human body to fix it from the inside. The sets both inside and outside the body are absolutely magnificent in every sense of the word, and the special effects are obvious by today's standards but not without their unique charms. The screenplay is a bit simplistic which robs the movie of most of its tension ( apparently Isaac Asimov said it was full of plot holes), and too much of it is just actors staring at special effects, but for the…

Review by noir1946 ★★★★ 2

“The other side got to him.”

I saw Fantastic Voyage when it was released and enjoyed it with reservations. I watched it again many years later but don’t’ recall any reaction other than those same reservations. On this third viewing, having acquired many more layers of pulp in the interim, I enjoyed it more than ever, though those darn reservations keep lurking around.

What’s fun about Fantastic Voyage includes the outlandish premise. Our hero, Grant (Stephen Boyd), is summoned to this secret government facility in the middle of the night, yet dozens of employes are strolling around, an awful lot of folks to be trusted not to spill the beans to The National Enquirer . Grant learns what’s so secret and…

Review by Justin Decloux ★★★½

"Oh shit, did we forget the sub in the guy?"

[Man explodes]

Review by ᴬⁿᵗʰᵒⁿʸ ⛧ ★★★

One of my favorite opening credits of all time. 💉 

Review by Ben Hibburd ☘🏀 ★★★½ 17

It feels like an eternity since I last reviewed a classic Sci-Fi film on my account. I've been feeling a little lost these last couple of months. My interest in writing and this site have been waning whilst other hobbies such as reading and drawing have been taking precedent.

Anyway, I read Issac Asimov's novelisation of this film a few months ago and stumbled across this movie upon my bi-weekly trip to my local video store. So I thought it would be fitting to get back to my early roots of this account and review a schlocky 50's, although in this case 60's science fiction film.

I'm sure by now the gist of this story is well known in pop…

Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★½

Got deja vu when watching this, because shrinking is involved just like when I was watching Spies in Disguise that same afternoon...

Review by Tanner ★★★ 1

Well, no Ant-Man for me this weekend because my movie buddy got sick and I don't want to go without them. Yes, I'm still excited for it despite the reception. So I decided to to turn to a couple of alternatives for my shrinking entertainment needs.

A Cold War, not of nuclear arsenals but of a fantastic new technology — the ability to miniaturize matter but only for the duration of an hour. Dr. Jan Benes has perfected the technology, allowing for it to be used indefinitely. The only problem being that both sides know about it. When he defects to the U.S., an assassination attempt leaves him comatose and with a blood clot threatening his life. With the secrets…

Review by Brian Formo ★★½

The production design, the sheer look of Fantastic Voyage , is fantastic. And I don’t just mean the pillowy flutters of the ear canal. I’m actually probably more taken by the base camp, with its honeycomb shrinking floor, banking tube shoots full of liquid, and a giant red and blue Operation-styled mock-up of the body. This is the perfect movie to have on behind folks, playing silently during a party, because everything exciting here is in the background. The story foreground—of shrunken scientists racing against their own body clocks to save the head scientist who's in a coma—is a vinyl clad shrug. Because the infighting and sci-fi dialogue in the ear canal is pretty staid. The landscapes are livelier than the…

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Fantastic Voyage

• When a blood clot renders a scientist comatose, a submarine and its crew are shrunk and injected into his bloodstream in order to save him.
• Scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val), who knows the secret to keeping soldiers shrunken for an indefinite period, escapes from behind the Iron Curtain with the help of C.I.A. Agent Grant (Stephen Boyd). While being transferred, their motorcade is attacked. Benes strikes his head, causing a blood clot to form in his brain. Grant is ordered to accompany a group of scientists as they are miniaturized. They have one hour to get to Benes' brain, remove the clot, and get out. — Brian Washington <[email protected]>
• The battle being waged by the super powers is who can perfect miniaturization. Now both sides are stumped as to how to control it. So far, they can miniaturize anything, but up to sixty minutes only. Scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val), who is believed to have solved it, was about to give it to the Americans when an attempt is made on his life. Fortunately, he is not dead, but he is in a coma and any conventional means to operate on him could be fatal. So a plan is made to miniaturize a vessel, send a team of doctors into his body, and that they will go to the damaged area and fix it. The problem is that there is a report that someone on the team could be working for the other side. So they send C.I.A. Agent Grant (Stephen Boyd) to make sure everything goes okay. — [email protected]
• Brilliant scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) develops a way to shrink humans and other objects for brief periods of time. He, who is working in Communist Russia, is transported by the C.I.A. to America, but is attacked en route. In order to save him, who has developed a blood clot in his brain, a team of Americans in a nuclear submarine is shrunk and injected into his body. They have sixty minutes to fix the clot and get out before the miniaturization wears off. — Jwelch5742
• A commercial airliner lands at JFK Airport in New York. A Secret Serviceman (Ken Scott), backed by a large Army contingent, greets the plane. After it taxis to a stop, Lieutenant Charles Grant USN (Stephen Boyd) steps out onto a mobile boarding ramp, verifies the Secret Service escort, and then signals to the other passenger, Jan Benes (Jean Del Val), to deplane with him. Benes walks down and gets into the Secret Service car, but not before warmly shaking Grant's hand one last time. But as the motorcade enters a run-down section of New York, a car hurtles out of an alley and broadsides Benes' car. Hastily the Secret Service transfer Benes to another car, which then must make a quick escape as the Secret Service contingent fights a gun battle with several other assailants in the surrounding buildings. Benes is taken to the underground headquarters of the Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces (CMDF) and given a full physical examination, including an EEG. The results are dire: he has suffered a stroke on the left side, in an inoperable spot. The doctors induce a coma so that his brain will not damage itself, while they decide what to do. The original Secret Service man then picks up Grant and delivers him to an alley, instructing him to stay in the car and wait. Then the car, with Grant alone in it, descends to an underground complex. A small scooter bearing the CMDF logo, which he does not recognize, picks him up and delivers him to the Medical Section. There, Grant meets CMDF's commandant, Lieutenant General Alan Carter USA (Edmund O'Brien). General Carter first shows him Benes, in a coma and on a litter. Then he introduces him to the surgeon, Dr. Peter Duval (Arthur Kennedy), and his assistant Cora Peterson (Raquel Welch), who will operate on Benes, and also to Dr. "Mike" Michaels (Donald Pleasence), who is somehow expected to watch Duval to make sure that Duval does not try to kill his patient while operating. Then Carter explains what CMDF means, and about the miniaturization technique that is at the heart of it all. The problem: the USA (and the USSR) can miniaturize any object, to any size, but cannot hold an object miniaturized for more than 60 minutes. Benes knows how to extend the time, and Grant is the one who brought Benes out when he sought to defect. Now Carter reveals why Grant is there: CMDF will reduce a small submarine to microscopic size, and deliver Duval, Miss Peterson, Michaels--and Grant--into Benes' body, to operate on Benes from the inside. Grant hates the idea. Worse yet, CMDF Medical Officer Col. Donald Reid (Arthur O'Connell) does not want a woman to go along on such a hazardous mission. Duval insists that he will have Cora or no one at his side. Grant also meets Captain Wilfrid Owens (William Redfield), designer and pilot of the submarine. The plan: reduce the submarine with all aboard and inject it into the left carotid artery. They will follow this to the site of the stroke, where Dr. Duval will use a hand-held laser to dissolve the clot. Then they travel back along the left internal jugular to the base of the neck, where they will be removed. The problem: if they stay in longer than 60 minutes, they will grow to a size that the immune system will notice, and Benes' own defenses will mobilize to destroy them. Grant barely has time to take in a briefing before Michaels leads him, Duval, Cora, and Owens to a "sterilization room." There they dress in white SCUBA wetsuits, with white overalls over this, all bearing the CMDF logo, and pass through a corridor that irradiates them gently with UVA to kill any germs on their bodies. As Carter and Reid make their preparations, the crew then climbs aboard their submarine (USS Proteus, U-91035) and make preparations for getting under way. Owens and Grant install a tiny reactor containing a microscopic radioactive particle, that will power the sub once they are shrunk. (Radioactive material cannot miniaturize.) Grant tests the ship's wireless, which will be his station. Owens tells Michaels how he will be able to read Michaels' details charts of Benes' circulatory and lymphatic systems. Cora mounts and tests the laser, while also teasing Grant about his still-obvious fear of being "shrunk." (Grant has, throughout, tried to cover his fear with bad jokes and worse innuendo, and doesn't fool Cora for one second.) Cora also reveals that she is a five-year veteran of CMDF and has worked with Duval all that time. Carter radios them to "prepare for miniaturization." So the crew pull out their seats, strap in, and settle in. Everything goes well, except for the time that Michaels, suffering an attack of claustrophobia, tries to get out through the topside hatch (after they are already submerged in an outsized hypodermic syringe), forcing Duval and Grant to restrain him and calm him down. (Duval and Grant have taken their first shot at working together, as they cooperate with Owens to accomplish the submersion.) With the second miniaturization step, the Proteus can now generate its own power. Eventually, the surgical team injects them into the carotid artery. And then the problems begin. At first the view is fascinating, But then Proteus drifts into a strong current, then into a whirlpool. It catches the crew unaware, so that though Michaels and Duval can regain their seats, Grant and Cora cannot. Michaels' shoulder belts pop, and Duval struggles to hold him in. Cora is dragged into a bulkhead, and only Grant's iron grip on her stops her from breaking her neck. Finally the Proteus comes out of the whirlpool--but now the blood cells surrounding them are blue, not the red they remembered. They realize (as do Carter and Reid, watching from outside) that Proteus has gone through an arterio-venous fistula from the carotid artery into the jugular vein. Now they are headed toward the superior vena cava, and will go through the heart--which will smash them. Michaels urges immediate removal, but the authorities, under Carter's leadership, have another idea: to put Benes into cardiac arrest and let Proteus swim through as fast as her drive can propel her. This they do, and Proteus dives into the right ventricle and goes out through the pulmonic valve, with three seconds to spare. Now they head into the lungs, where they observe oxygenation of the blue corpuscles that surround them. Just then, Proteus develops an air leak, which Owens stops, but only after Proteus has lost so much air that she cannot continue. Grant offers a solution: he will take the boat's snorkel and enter an alveolus to take the air that Benes breathes. Owens insists that everyone else aboard except himself join Grant in the dive, for safety reasons. As they put on their SCUBA gear, Grant discovers that the laser has broken loose and gotten knocked around. He firmly tells Duval and Cora to wait on testing the laser until after Grant finishes his snorkel operation. Grant succeeds in pulling in the air--but then his safety line snaps and he finds himself sucked into a bronchiole with Benes' next breathe-out. When Benes breathes in again, he luckily finds the original alveolus, after which he races to safety, with Duval strenuously pulling him back out into the bloodstream. Proteus gets back underway, heading into the pleural cavity. During this time, Cora disassembles the laser and discovers a smashed transistor and a broken trigger wire. Grant supplies replacements for both by cannibalizing the wireless and sending one last message, to the consternation of Carter and Reid. The transistor is of a good size, but the trigger wire is far too large--but Duval believes that he can scrape it down. Grant also takes time to discuss with Michaels a hard reality: someone has tried to sabotage the mission at least twice. Grant knows that Cora had indeed fastened the laser securely--so someone must have unfastened it, just as someone tampered with Grant's safety line. Michaels protests that he cannot think so ill of Duval, the logical suspect. Proteus enters the lymphatic system and passes through a lymph node. The boat blunders into several reticular fibers, and Owens warns that if they keep running into the seaweed-like fibers, they'll block the water jet intakes, and Proteus' engines will overheat. The crew also observe a stray bacterium, and antibodies attacking it and squeezing it to death. Grant is frustrated with the delay and the slow progress. Duval then suggests going to the inner ear--a very hazardous path, because the slightest noise will kill them, and they cannot warn the operating team. Grant expresses confidence that the surgical team, once they see where they are headed, will keep the required silence. Michaels is still dubious, but reluctantly agrees to navigate to Benes' left ear. Inside the ear, Owens must stop--the engines have overheated. Grant, Cora, and Michaels make another dive to pull the reticular fibers out of the intakes. Topside, a nurse (Shelby Grant) gets the idea of plugging Benes' ear with cotton--but then drops a pair of scissors to the floor. With the result that Proteus and her crew are badly shaken up. Cora gets the worst of it--she is carried into the Organ of Corti and finds herself trapped among the Cells of Hensen. She cries out for help, and Michaels and Grant race to her rescue--but Grant orders Michaels back aboard Proteus when he cannot go any further. Grant frees Cora from the hair cells, and they race back to the airlock--but as they wait for it to re-flood (after Michaels used it), antibodies attack Cora and fasten onto her. Grant hastily guides her into the airlock, closes the hatch--and then raps on the door when Cora makes plain that she simply cannot breathe. Michaels, Duval, and Owens open the airlock before it is fully evacuated, pull Cora out, and, with Grant's help, start pulling the antibody molecules off her body. Soon they start crystallizing and come off easily, so Cora is saved. Proteus gets back under way, passes through the middle ear, and then passes through the endolymphatic duct back into the vascular system. Now they penetrate into the brain and reach the clot. During that passage, Michaels and Duval argue about whether Duval, having repaired the laser, should test it. Duval insists on using the laser as-is, not wanting to strain it. Eventually they reach the clot. But with so little time remaining, Michaels wants Owens to take Proteus back out. But now Grant shuts down the power and insists that Duval and Cora go out and operate. Michaels strenously objects, but Grant firmly overrides him, saying that Duval simply does not fit the profile of a fanatic. Now Grant makes his near-fatal mistake: instead of remaining aboard, he goes out to see if he can "help" Duval and Cora. Duval manages to clear the clot, at least enough to get the blood flowing again and relieve the pressure on a key nerve. But aboard Proteus, Michaels knocks out Owens, and then restores power, takes the helm, and sends Proteus on a collision course for the nerve. Grant asks for the laser, and fires a wide-angle beam at Proteus, raking her port side and sending her away from the nerve and into several nearby dendrites. White corpuscles respond immediately, so Grant slips back aboard, through the tear in the hull, to rescue Michaels and Owens if he can. Owens is only now regaining consciousness, so Grant tells him to suit up as fast as he can. But when he tries to untangle Michaels from the wrecked helm station, a white cell settles over the helmsman's dome, breaks through, and suffocates Michaels. Grant and Owens then abandon ship, before the white corpuscles crush it. Duval keeps the white cells at bay long enough for Grant and Owens to escape, before the laser quits for good. Topside, Carter and Reid reluctantly order the removal of Proteus, because time has run out. Inside Benes' body, the four remaining crew swim as fast as they can along the optic nerve, toward Benes' left eye. Carter allows the attending surgeon to make preparations for a trephination procedure--and then deduces what the crew might do and stops the attending in mid-motion. Reid, too, realizes how they crew can still escape, and rushes down to the operating room and asks for a large magnifier. Through this, he looks into Benes' left eye, in time to make out four members of the crew swimming in Benes' tears. He calls for a microscope slide and uses it to lift out a teardrop, with the crew inside. Then he asks the staff to open the door, and as quickly as he dares, walks out into the miniaturization room and sets the slide gently down on the center hexagon. The crew then grows to full size, and the rest of the staff warmly greet them and assure them that the operation is a complete success. NOTE: The film, as it played, had a number of scientific inaccuracies and plot holes. Isaac Asimov, who wrote the novelization from the final shooting script, repaired these and at least tried to produce a scientifically consistent narrative. The key differences are: * The time limit on miniaturization is not a uniform sixty minutes. Instead, the rule is that energy of miniaturization (which is a function of the proportion of normal size to reduced size), when multiplied by duration of miniaturization, is equal to Planck's constant divided by two times pi. In simpler terms, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle governs the maximum time of miniaturization at any given size. Benes' secret is another set of variables that the original pioneering scientists overlooked. The sixty minutes that apply to this narrative are a special case of that model. * Grant's role and authority are broader than as depicted in the film version. In the novel, Grant, not Michaels, has the ultimate authority on policy decisions, and is another brain and pair of hands in an emergency. Cora, sensing right away that the CMDF brass put him on board because they suspect Duval of murderous intent, at first resents him bitterly, and then softens toward him and almost pleads with him to understand Duval's politics, that have caused CMDF to doubt him. Those politics are that the Two Sides in the Cold War ought to share scientific discoveries freely, without regard to strategic sensitivity. But Duval is not the saboteur, a thing Grant comes to deduce by process of elimination. * When Grant makes his first dive with the snorkel into Benes' lungs, Owens uses the on-board miniaturizer that Proteus carries, to reduce the air to a size compatible with Proteus and her crew in their shrunken state. Otherwise, Grant would have been trying to draw in oxygen molecules large enough to see. * When Grant's safety line parts, sending him up the bronchiolar tree, Duval suggests that Owens orient the Proteus to face the alveolar wall and shine the boat's headlight into it. That allows Grant to find the right alveolus again. Otherwise he would have been hopelessly lost. * As Carter and Reid watch Proteus enter the inner ear, they do not use their PA system to announce to the surgical team the hazard against making noise. Instead, Carter writes a note and sends an orderly to walk into the OR in his stockinged feet to hand it to the attending. When, later, he wants to suggest plugging Benes' ears, he sends another note the same way. (The nurse does not take that upon herself, but acts only when she gets Carter's second note. And when the scissors fall, she steps on them so that they won't rattle and thus risk more damage than they might already have caused.) * When Cora falls into the organ of Corti and finds herself wedged among the hair cells, the antibodies take time to "taste" her before they come swarming. Benes' body would never have had antibodies specific to her at the moment of contact. This is still a stretch, because the immune system is now known to take much longer than that to raise antibodies to anything, and through a process that is much more complex than that depicted in film or novel. * When the crew pull Cora back aboard, they only have to give one good tug at one clinging antibody molecule, before realizing that all the antibodies crystallize at once, and all they need do is brush them off. The air on board "hits" the antibodies and denatures them immediately. So the dramatic (and suggestive) grabbing procedure is not necessary. * When Duval and Cora make their dive to attack the clot with the laser, Cora wears her wetsuit inside out, in order not to present a recognizable target to any stray antibodies that might be lurking about. Benes might not have been "immunized" against her before, but he is now. * After clubbing Owens, Michaels, unaccountably, bundles him into a wet suit and drops him out the airlock. Perhaps Michaels takes no chances that Owens might come to himself and try to take his ship back. With the result that Grant's quick rescue operation becomes unnecessary. * After the Proteus crashes into the dendrites, Duval worries that the damage that Michaels has done might start a new clot. This apparently does not happen, but at least Asimov acknowledges the possibility, which the original script does not even talk about. * After the white corpuscles eat the Proteus, Grant knows that they can't just leave her in place. Even when crushed, Proteus will grow to a size to kill Benes. (Michaels also realizes this at the last instant of his life, which is why he bursts out laughing as the white corpuscle collapses the glass dome over his head.) So Grant takes out his dagger and slashes at the white cell to attract its attention and induce it to follow them out. Of course, that releases chemotaxins that bring a swarm of white cells, so the crew must swim for their lives to get out ahead of them. (Furthermore, the medical team topside do not stop tracking Proteus even as they prepare for the trephination procedure. When the monitoring techs realize that Proteus seems to be moving again, Carter stops the preparations. That's when Reid realizes that the crew are using an escape route he did not at first consider.) * The crew, swimming toward the eye, do not drop the laser. Instead, Cora tries to carry the laser out. When Cora inevitably starts flagging, Grant takes the laser and its power pack away from her so that she can swim unencumbered. * Finally, when Col. Reid extracts the crew, he does not try to walk with the slide into the miniaturizer room. Instead, he sets the slide on the operating-room floor where he stands and orders everyone out of the room, including Benes, whom the staff wheel out on his litter. When the crew re-magnify, General Carter takes a quick muster with his eyes and realizes, with a sickening feeling in his gut, that Michaels and the Proteus are both missing. Grant stops him and assures him that the pile of metal fragments next to the crew is what's left of both. The novel has a few more dramatic differences--offering a more detailed explanation of the science of miniaturization, and making more of the professional (or personal) relationships between General Carter and Colonel Reid, between Reid and Michaels, between Grant and Benes on the flight in, between Duval and Cora, and especially between Cora and Grant during and after the trip. (See above.) Grant also has a scene with Carter and Reid in which he acknowledges his mistake in going out on the dive with Duval and Cora, instead of remaining on board after he, in effect, had placed Michaels under arrest. The novel ends with an inspiring scene in which Grant, fully grown once more, pays a visit to Benes, who by now has regained consciousness and can even talk to him. BENES: And now I must remember what I came here to tell. It's a little fuzzy, but it's still all in there. GRANT: You'd be surprised to know what's in you, Professor.

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Fantastic Voyage

Time Out says

Very nearly a corking sci-fi lark, kicking off from the premise that when a top scientist defecting to the West suffers brain damage in an assassination attempt, the only answer is to inject a miniaturised submarine and medical team through his bloodstream to deal with the clot on his brain. The voyage through the fantastic landscapes of the body is brilliantly imagined, with the heart a cavernous vault, tidal waves menacing the canals of the inner ear (caused when a nurse drops an instrument in the operating theatre), cyclonic winds tossing the sub helplessly about as the lungs are reached. The script, alas, is pretty basic, expending half its energies on delivering a gee-whiz medical lecture, the other on whipping up suspense around the mysterious saboteur who lurks aboard (and is so sweatily shifty-eyed that there isn't much mystery). An opportunity missed, therefore - especially as the imaginative sets are slightly tackily realised - but fun all the same.

Release Details

• Duration: 100 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Richard Fleischer
• Screenwriter: Harry Kleiner
• Edmond O'Brien
• Stephen Boyd
• Raquel Welch
• Arthur Kennedy
• Arthur O'Connell
• Donald Pleasence

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Fantastic Voyage Reviews

With such titles as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes, the 1960s proved to be a particularly rich decade for science fiction cinema, and Fantastic Voyage stands as one of the period's most imaginative efforts.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 23, 2023

…even if the process work is poor by today’s standards, this voyage still seems fantastic today…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 9, 2023

The science is shaky at best but the imaginative spectacle is marvelous: scuba diving surgeons battle white blood cells, tap the lungs to replenish the oxygen supply, and shoot the aorta like daredevil surfers.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2023

A nonstop adventure of sizable proportions.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 24, 2020

Technically, the film is only too obviously under all kinds of strain, as if trying to live up to a budget which it never wanted in the first place.

Full Review | Apr 2, 2020

Ignoring the painfully slow first third, the rest of the film is an enjoyable, basic sci-fi adventure. It won't wow you, but it will entertain you.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 7, 2019

"Fantastic Voyage" is a fun adventure with some incredible sets representing the inside of the human body. What it lacks in reality is made up by beauty and skill.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 14, 2013

Not be as suspenseful as it once was, because we've seen many shots of the body's interior and we no longer have the undercurrents of the Cold War that made life itself an edge-of-the-seat affair. But it's still a fun sci-fi excursion.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 11, 2013

Despite the film being nearly 50 years old, it's still pretty impressive what they were able to accomplish using practical photography. Sure it's campy, but it's the kitschy design that makes it so much fun to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 7, 2013

That it carries the viewer along is thanks largely to its kitsch charm, its energetic pace and the stunning sets designed by Harper Goff.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2013

Half planetarium, half lava lamp

Full Review | Feb 6, 2010

Fascinating still, but suffers from lack of more sophisticated special effects. Still...imagine Raquel Welch moving around inside.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 14, 2009

Their voyage through the body's bloodstream past assorted organs was created by inventive special effects that make this one of the more visually interesting science fiction films of its era.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 4, 2007

The lavish production, boasting some brilliant special effects and superior creative efforts, is an entertaining, enlightening excursion through inner space -- the body of a man.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2007

This special effects extravaganza from 1966 has proved surprisingly enduring, despite a technical quality crude by contemporary standards; perhaps it's the screwball poetry of the plot.

...our own human interior was revealed, like a Jacques Cousteau travelogue, in screen-filling vistas of surreal canals and chambers filled with floating psychedelia and the amorphous Jell-O colors of a Jimi Hendrix concert.

Full Review | Jun 3, 2007

An opportunity missed, therefore -- especially as the imaginative sets are slightly tackily realised -- but fun all the same.

Full Review | Jan 26, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2005

Well directed science fiction

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 13, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 1, 2005

Den of Geek

Why Hasn’t Fantastic Voyage Been Remade Yet?

As we mourn the passing of ‘60s icon Raquel Welch, we ponder why her breakthrough sci-fi classic, Fantastic Voyage, has not received a full-on upgrade.

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When 1960s and ‘70s icon Raquel Welch died last week at the age of 82 , much of the media focus was on her (well-deserved) status as one of the most memorable and gorgeous sex symbols in movie history. A lot of the coverage, in fact, noted that the Chicago native’s substantial talents as an actress, singer, and dancer (she appeared in 30 films, numerous TV series, and hosted a handful of her own variety specials), were overshadowed by her status as one of the era’s premiere pinups.

While she may be best remembered for her turn as a skimpily-clad cavewoman in 1966’s One Million Years B.C. , her breakout role came earlier that year in the 20th Century Fox sci-fi spectacle Fantastic Voyage . The film was Welch’s fourth, but the first in which she had a lead role. She played Cora Peterson, one of five members of a medical team who are miniaturized, along with a small submarine, and injected into the body of a defecting Soviet scientist in order to remove a clot from his brain and save his life.

With only 60 minutes in which to work, since that is when the miniaturization process will subside and they’ll revert to full size, the team makes its way via the patient’s bloodstream through various marquee organs—the heart, the lungs, the ear—each with their own dangers and challenges. Meanwhile the crew’s security officer (Stephen Boyd) begins to suspect that someone on board is a saboteur, installed on the mission by the enemy government to kill him from the inside.

Welch doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the movie, but for the era, she’s no wallflower either. Her character is a capable technician charged with assisting the surgeon who’s going to perform the procedure. Welch and the rest of the cast, which also includes reliable character actors like Boyd ( Ben-Hur ), Donald Pleasance ( Halloween ), and Edmond O’Brian ( Seven Days in May ), all acquit themselves reasonably well considering that they spend most of the movie either on wires or in the cramped submarine set.

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Like many movies of its time, Fantastic Voyage is best remembered for its audacious (if scientifically ludicrous) premise and its technical presentation of the inner workings of the human body, which were recreated through the use of large sets , animation, and rear projection. The 57-year-old movie looks shakier today in visual terms—although one has to wonder how far we’ve really come from matte images to, say, the Volume—but watching it begs the question: Why hasn’t this been remade?

A Sci-Fi Spectacle of Its Time

Directed by Richard Fleischer, whose other sci-fi outings included the Disney submarine classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and the seminal Charlton Heston overpopulation thriller Soylent Green (1973), Fantastic Voyage was conceived by writers Otto Clement and Jerome Bixby (the latter wrote the classic “It’s a Good Life” episode of The Twilight Zone and penned two of the original Star Trek ’s most famous segments , “Mirror, Mirror” and “Day of the Dove”).

The story was adapted by David Duncan ( The Time Machine ) and the final screenplay penned by Harry Kleiner (yes, they had multiple writers on films back then too!), with science fiction titan Isaac Asimov approached to write the novelization. Because Asimov penned the book at a fairly rapid pace, leading it to come out ahead of the movie due to the latter’s production delays, it was a common misconception for years that Asimov himself came up with the premise and story.

Many of the internal organs that the submarine (dubbed the Proteus) travels through were created as full-sized sets, in which a five-foot model of the craft would sail. A full-sized set of the Proteus interior was also built, along with other versions of various sizes. Fox had announced prior to production that Fantastic Voyage would be the most expensive sci-fi film made to date, and with a final budget of $6 million (about $56 million when adjusted for inflation), the picture certainly lived up to that billing.

Critical reception at the time was mostly kind, and Fantastic Voyage won Oscars for Best Special Effects and Best Art Direction . Looking at it now, it moves more slowly than modern VFX-driven blockbusters (as do most films made before, say, the mid-1990s), and as mentioned the effects have not aged all that well. But there is absolutely a sense of wonder and even awe still present in the film, the imagery is colorful, imaginative, and psychedelic, and its ticking-clock narrative still builds in suspense and tension.

With Hollywood always on the lookout for another IP to remake or reinvigorate, it stands to reason that Fantastic Voyage would be ripe for rediscovery. The basic story remains sound, from a genre point of view, and the capabilities of modern VFX houses would no doubt be able to bring the interior of the human body to life in ways that the makers of the 1966 movie could have only dreamed about.

So what’s the holdup? The truth is that Fantastic Voyage has been on the remake “to-do” list for years, but even some heavyweight genre filmmakers have been unable to get it to the starting gate, never mind across the finish line.

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Decades of Development Hell

Although there was a short-lived Saturday morning animated kids’ series that ran in 1968 on ABC, it wasn’t until 1984 that development of a new Fantastic Voyage movie , at the time as a sequel, began in earnest. Isaac Asimov was asked in 1984 to pen a sequel novel that could be then turned into a movie. His book, titled Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain , came out in 1987 and featured an entirely different story and characters, but the movie itself was never made.

The IP went dormant for more than a decade after that, until no less an auteur than James Cameron expressed an interest in remaking the original film. With his experience in working with water and sets both massive and cramped, as well as his ongoing exploration of the bleeding edge in visual effects, it’s enticing to imagine what Cameron could have done with this material.

Cameron did get as far as writing a screenplay, but after completing Titanic , his mind began to turn toward the development and creation of Avatar . He decided not to direct Fantastic Voyage , although he was willing to produce a film based on his script.

Next up was Roland Emmerich , the king of Z-movies disguised as blockbusters, who actually began pre-production on the movie in 2007. But Emmerich also rejected Cameron’s screenplay and commissioned a new one. We’ve had our issues with Cameron as a writer for sure, but this is still the guy who wrote Aliens and The Terminator , and the idea of the fellow who directed The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day: Resurgence rejecting Cameron’s script makes us both laugh and cry.

The new script got bogged down thanks to a Writers Guild strike, and Emmerich exited the project to make sure that 2012 could meet its title release year. Paul Greengrass ( The Bourne Ultimatum ) and Shawn Levy ( Free Guy ) both spent some time after that on Fantastic Voyage ’s increasingly not-so-fantastic development process, and both eventually dropped out with no results either.

Enter Guillermo del Toro . Everyone’s favorite genre filmmaker was announced to be in talks about the movie in 2016 , with David S. Goyer ( Batman Begins ) coming aboard to pen a new version of the script in collaboration with neuroscientist Justin Rhodes. While Greengrass and Levy were not especially exciting prospects, del Toro was easily the most intriguing since Cameron’s tenure on the film. While the latter would probably have brought a great deal of scientific rigor to a new Fantastic Voyage , we could easily see Del Toro turning the inside of the brain into a Gothic memory palace while making microbes and white blood cells into nightmarish Lovecraftian monsters. Alas, del Toro reportedly put the project on hold in mid-2017 to focus on completing The Shape of Water , intending to return to it in the spring of 2018.

That date came and went, and in the intervening five years, del Toro has developed, written, and directed both Nightmare Alley and his stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio , released late last year. His next two projects are another stop-motion film , The Buried Giant , and an unnamed live-action effort, but is there any chance it could be Fantastic Voyage ?

It seems unlikely at this point. Following Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox in 2019, the fate of many projects in the Fox pipeline became murky or lost in development limbo, if not canceled outright. As far as we can ascertain, no one’s ever said a word about any of the scripts that were commissioned for the film, with the exception of David Goyer, who told The Scriptlab in 2015 that he and Justin Rhodes were striving to make it as “realistic” as possible.

Whether the remake ever gets made or not, Fantastic Voyage is still a landmark in the subgenre of movies about shrinking people, which stretches from 1936’s The Devil-Doll to the 1957 masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man , to comedies like 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and 2015’s Ant-Man . Its influence on the latter is considerable, and aside from 1987’s Innerspace (which owes an enormous amount to Fantastic Voyage ) it remains the only live-action sci-fi movie to travel inside the human body.

But one thing that all those movies, and any potential remake, doesn’t have is the luminous presence of Raquel Welch, perhaps Fantastic Voyage ’s greatest visual effect.

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

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Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Genre: scifi / adventure, duration: 100 minuten, alternative titles: strange journey / microscopia, country: united states, directed by: richard fleischer, stars: stephen boyd , raquel welch and edmond o'brien, imdb score: 6,8  (20.796), releasedate: 24 august 1966.

This movie is not available on UK streaming services.

Fantastic Voyage plot

"A Fantastic and Spectacular Voyage... Through the Human Body... Into the Brain." Scientist Benes, who has important information for America, is taken to the CMDF after an attack in which he ends up in a coma. This body masters the technique of reducing objects and people to microscopic size. When it turns out that the only way to save Benes is to remove a blood clot in the brain from the inside, a team is assembled to fight the clot. They will be given a modern nuclear submarine, which will be reduced in size together with the team, after which it will be injected into Benes.

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Trailer Fantastic Voyage

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• 4344 messages

Dit is een erg sterk staaltje science-fiction. Fantastic Voyage weet heel goed een sfeer neer te zetten en heeft vrij weinig moeite met het opbouwen van spanning. Ik kan me weinig keren herrineren dat ik zo oprecht in spanning heb gezeten om wat er zou komen. Vooral leuk aan deze film is het gegeven van een reis door het menselijk lichaam. Ondanks dat we met een kleine wereld te maken hebben voelt het toch als een gaaf en groot avontuur aan. Zeer geslaagde film die de tand des tijds goed heeft doorstaan.

This is a very strong piece of science fiction. Fantastic Voyage knows how to create an atmosphere very well and has very little trouble building tension. I can't remember many times when I was so genuinely anxious about what was to come. Especially nice about this film is the fact that it takes a journey through the human body. Despite the fact that we are dealing with a small world, it still feels like a cool and big adventure. A very successful film that has stood the test of time well.

• 4168 messages

Fantastic Voyage was op zich wel een charmante jaren '60 scifi, maar alles bij elkaar toch een lichte tegenvaller. Het is weer eens wat anders dan de ruimte; zoals een van de karakters op een gegeven moment opmerkt, ze gaan naar 'inner space', oftewel geminiaturiseerd het menselijk lichaam in. Dat is een leuk gegeven waar een verder vrij dertien-in-een-dozijn verhaaltje aan opgehangen wordt met een 'spannende' missie, onverwachte tegenslagen, een saboteur aan boord en een vrouwelijke expeditiedeelneemster van wie we voornamelijk haar decollete zien. De medische expeditie brengt de crew op een zwerftocht, waarin we allerlei delen van het lichaam van binnen te zien krijgen met elk weer haar eigen uitdagingen. Maar uiteindelijk klinkt het toch leuker dan het werkelijk is. De verschillende lichaamssystemen en hun gevaren zijn best leuk gedaan en zijn zeker voer voor een fascinerende tocht door de mens, dat is waar. Maar het verhaal blijft toch wel erg standaard, met verder houterige acteurs die geforceerde teksten opdreunen, en soms charmante maar vaak ook erg knullige special effects. Best vermakelijke cult hoor en dit soort scifi heeft z'n charme, en ik neigde zo af en toe ook nog wel naar de 3.5*, maar daar verveelde het uiteindelijk toch te vaak wat te veel voor.

Fantastic Voyage was in itself a charming '60s sci-fi, but all in all a minor setback. It's something different than space; as one of the characters points out at one point, they go into 'inner space', i.e. miniaturized into the human body. That's a nice fact that builds an otherwise pretty dime-a-dozen story with an 'exciting' mission, unexpected setbacks, a saboteur on board and a female expedition participant whose main character is her. see cleavage. The medical expedition takes the crew on a ramble, in which we get to see all kinds of parts of the body inside, each with its own challenges. But in the end it sounds nicer than it really is. The different body systems and their dangers are quite nicely done and are certainly fodder for a fascinating journey through the human being, that's true. But the story remains very standard, with otherwise wooden actors chanting forced texts, and sometimes charming but often also very clumsy special effects. Pretty entertaining cult, and this kind of sci-fi has its charm, and I also gravitated to the 3.5* every now and then, but in the end it was too often too much for that.

wendyvortex

• 4985 messages

Deze blijft toch erg fijn, al wordt het natuurlijk pas echt spannend als ze het lichaam ingaan. En dat zit met lavalamp-blobs, kleurtjes, lichtjes en een hoop vitrage. Maar wat een briljant idee voor een film, in de jaren 80 ooit nog eens gedaan als Innerspace maar toen moest er humor bij. Donald Pleasence en Raquel Welch ... sixties dream movie stuff. FX zijn soms doorzichtig, maar wat een creativiteit, die scène met die lasers, onvergetelijk ... klassiek.

This one remains very nice, although of course it only gets really exciting when they enter the body. And that's with lava lamp blobs, colors, lights and a lot of net curtains. But what a brilliant idea for a movie, once done in the 80s as Innerspace but then humor had to be added. Donald Pleasence and Raquel Welch...sixties dream movie stuff. FX are sometimes transparent, but what a creativity, that scene with those lasers, unforgettable ... classic.

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Screen Rant

How many fantastic beasts movies are there (& how many are left).

How many Fantastic Beasts movies have there been already, and how many will there be in total? Here's what we know about Fantastic Beasts' future.

• The Fantastic Beasts prequel series started as a standalone adventure but evolved into a larger narrative connected to the Harry Potter series.
• There are three Fantastic Beasts movies: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
• Originally, there were plans for five Fantastic Beasts movies, but due to various factors, including poor performance and controversy, the series will not continue beyond the third installment.

How many Fantastic Beasts movies are there, and how many were there supposed to be by the end? The Harry Potter prequel series started as a standalone adventure, with Newt Scamander collecting information about the world's mythical creatures as he traverses the globe. But things changed along the way and instead of it being a fun side story set in the Wizarding World, much of Fantastic Beasts ' overarching narrative has established a path to the Harry Potter series. By the third movie, Newt Scamander and his friends ended up embroiled in a war between Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, who wanted a revolution.

The original movie was inspired by the textbook Harry Potter had in his possession but grew into something much bigger. In many ways, it rivaled the scale of the original series. This also changed the Fantastic Beasts focus completely , and it didn't help that the story involving Newt was just kind of tacked onto the story of Dumbledore and Grindelwald's legendary battle. Since that battle never happened and won't happen now on the big screen, it ruined the purpose of the franchise.

RELATED: No Need For Fantastic Beasts 4 - The First Movie Already Revealed How Dumbledore Wins The Elder Wand

There Are 3 Fantastic Beasts Movies

To answer how many Fantastic Beasts movies are there, the total is three and that is likely it for the franchise. The Fantastic Beasts movie order is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022). The first two Fantastic Beasts films were written entirely by J.K. Rowling. The first film saw Newt arrive in America and head out on some adventures before learning of evil within the Wizarding government. The second movie brought in Dumbeldore and introduced the evil Grindelwald into the mix.

The Secrets of Dumbledore saw Steve Kloves return to co-write. He wrote the screenplays for every Harry Potter movie except Order of the Phoenix . This final movie saw Dumbledore and Grindelwald end their blood pact and set up their eventual war with each other. All three movies are available to stream on Max, which also has all the Harry Potter movies as well.

There Were 5 Fantastic Beasts Movies Planned

While there are three Fantastic Beasts movies, there were five Fantastic Beasts movies planned. Shortly before Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was released in 2016, it was announced that four sequels were planned that would take place between 1926 and 1945, tackling a different series of events in each installment. Not only did 1945 mark the end of the Second World War but also the end of Dumbledore and Grindelwald's feud canonically, so that was the year the final Fantastic Beasts movie would have taken place. Rowling said all five movies had the story mapped out (via Movie Web ).

"As with the Harry Potter books, it is all mapped out. In fact, when we announced the five films, I talked about that. It's always possible that some details will change along the way, but the arc of the story is there. It's been an amazing opportunity to tell parts of the backstory that never made it into the original books. I'm thinking particularly of one character that I think fans will be surprised to meet in this movie."

Initially, the answer to the question "how many Fantastic Beasts movies are there?" was a bit different. Fantastic Beasts was originally planned as a trilogy, but once the full story was mapped out, two additional films were announced. In some ways, it's similar to what happened with James Cameron's Avatar sequels , which added additional movies as the story plan unfolded. However, with Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore 's lackluster performance, it won't happen. Fantastic Beasts 4 had no planned release date — a stark difference from The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore , which always had release dates.

Why Fantastic Beasts Is Finished After Three Movies

A number of factors saw the Fantastic Beasts movies grind to a halt after the third installment rather than moving on to the planned sequels. The Secrets of Dumbledore performed very poorly, making further series ventures a financial risk. Additionally, Ezra Miller, who played a crucial Fantastic Beasts character, Credence Barebone , was the source of significant controversy lately with several legal matters involving the actor, even though his Flash movie still saw its release. Finally, even within the world of the films, the story didn't necessarily have to continue.

The Secrets of Dumbledore already saw Dumbledore and Grindelwald battle and wrapped up Credence's arc. While the spectacle of a full-scale Wizarding World War would be undeniably thrilling, the series already seems to have done enough to close out its major narratives. However, there are three Fantastic Beasts movies, and there are no more on the way because of one major announcement. Max is rebooting Harry Potter with a 10-season series, retelling the stories from the books. With all the money going to the new Max series, Fantastic Beasts has seemingly officially ended once and for all.

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Fantastic voyage, common sense media reviewers.

Sci-fi classic may be too low-tech for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The crew leader's bravery and self-sacrifice a

Assassins shoot at scientist extricated from the S

Ogling of Raquel Welch. Clinging goo must be brush

None within the movie but there are many many spin

Parents need to know that this 1966 sci-fi adventure is set mostly inside the human body. There is an assassination attempt, a car crash, battle-like sequences, use of "laser" guns, suspenseful brushes with death, and one death. By today's standards the action and violence are pretty tame and not very…

Positive Messages

The crew leader's bravery and self-sacrifice are contrasted with the cowardice and underhandedness of the traitor on the submarine. The battle between good and evil is grafted onto an understated conflict between Soviet Communism and American democracy, which is equated with moral purity and a respect for the majesty of human life. The sole female character, Raquel Welch's Clara is shown to be competent and brave, but ultimately in need of saving. Initially, the commanders feel that "a woman has no place" on such a mission.

Violence & Scariness

Assassins shoot at scientist extricated from the Soviet Union, his car crashes but he survives. Surgical lasers are fired at a blood clot inside the human body. Antibodies attack, and a mass of white blood cells engulfs and kills the bad guy. There is a tussle between the hero and the villain.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Ogling of Raquel Welch. Clinging goo must be brushed off Raquel Welch's ample spandex suit.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

None within the movie but there are many many spin-offs, including the Isaac Asimov novelization, and a 1968 animated television series. A remake is scheduled for 2010.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this 1966 sci-fi adventure is set mostly inside the human body. There is an assassination attempt, a car crash, battle-like sequences, use of "laser" guns, suspenseful brushes with death, and one death. By today's standards the action and violence are pretty tame and not very graphic. Younger kids may be alarmed by encounters with dangerous "blob"-like enemies but the circumstances are so remote as to not be particularly frightening. Importantly, the opposing forces here are antibodies and microbes and the healthful functioning of bodily organs and biological processes. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (2)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Funny (SPOILERS)

What's the story.

After an attempted assassination by USSR operatives, the only scientist with the technology to successfully "miniaturize" matter is left comatose. The CIA and the Pentagon use the limited technique to save him by repairing his blood clot from within. They shrink a team of doctors and navigators who travel intravenously on a cell-sized submarine to destroy the clot through surgical laser. The catch: they have but one hour to complete the mission and get out before the miniaturization process reverses. If the voyagers and their submarine enlarge, the body's immune system will respond and attack.

Is It Any Good?

A product of its era, this is a trippy film, with a colorful, psychedelic set design full of blobby globs and jellyfishy molecules. It provides a vivid opportunity for kids to get an up-close and very magnified view of biological processes and get jazzed about physiology and anatomy. While there's the suspense of a ticking clock, and danger around every arterial corner, this movie is still more of a travelogue; a tour of strange and wondrous foreign country.

The idea that this otherworldly world is right under one's skin is indeed mind-blowing, but the excitement of the concept subsides thanks to a fairly shoddy script and no character development. The action is also tame and slowly paced by today's standards, hindered by a long set-up and much discussion about the complex shrinking procedure that's meant for the die-hard sci-fi buff. There's definitely a campiness factor that parents will enjoy, particularly the first screen appearance of Raquel Welch as a science-minded surgeon's assistant in a skin-tight scuba suit.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the human body and how it works. Parents can explain the immune system and help kids understand how it protects itself and why a body would attack a foreign substance. Parents can guide their kids as the film follows the submarine's path through the veinal system and discuss the functions of each organ and why the heart, the lungs, and the ear all pose risk for these microscopic voyagers. Families can also discuss how scientific breakthroughs can help repair bodies save people. What might scientists invent in the future to cure people?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 24, 2008
• On DVD or streaming : June 5, 2007
• Cast : Edmond O'Brien , Raquel Welch , Stephen Boyd
• Director : Richard Fleischer
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Run time : 101 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : October 29, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Somehow, James Cameron Has Another Movie Besides Avatar In The Works

The legendary director has something in the works outside Pandora.

Ever since the historical success of 2009’s Avatar , James Cameron has primarily placed his energy into forwarding the franchise. Following a sequel finally coming to fruition with 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water , the iconic filmmaker isn’t stopping there, considering a third Avatar movie is expected to come out next year, and two more are dated for release down the line. But, somehow Cameron revealed that he has been working on another movie that takes place outside of Pandora in recent years.

When Cameron attended an event in Paris this week as “The Art of James Cameron” is now on exhibition at the Cinematheque Française, the filmmaker revealed he has been working on a remake to 1966’s Fantastic Voyage . In his words:

We’ve been developing it for a number of years, and we plan to go ahead with it very soon. Raquel Welch is not available, but we think we can make a pretty good movie.

Fantastic Voyage is a science fiction adventure film about a crew that are shrunk to a microscopic size and take their submarine inside the body of an injured scientist to fix up injuries he has in his brain. The movie famously made Raquel Welsh a star when she was part of the submarine crew in the film. As Cameron referred to in his comments (via Variety ), Raquel Welsh, who died at the age of 82 last year, can’t be in the remake, but he’s still confident he and his collaborators can pull off something exciting.

The original Fantastic Voyage is a beloved science fiction film from the ‘60s that won two Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects. Considering James Cameron being a pioneer in filmmaking techniques like mo-cap and underwater filmmaking, it seems like the perfect project for his skills. It’s not the first time Cameron has shared interest in remaking Fantastic Voyage , as his vocal interest dates back to 1997.

James Cameron Just Addressed Avatar 4’s Time Jump, And Now I Have Questions

Back in 2007, Independence Day ’s Roland Emmerich was attached to remake it before the WGA strikes of 2007-2008 delayed filming, and the project was ultimately cancelled. Guillermo del Toro was also going to helm a Fantastic Voyage movie as well, but it was delayed and later cancelled as well.

Amidst Cameron talking about taking on a movie outside of Avatar , the director also shared that the third movie is still on track for its intended release date on December 19, 2025. He also said the scripts for Avatar 4 and 5 have been locked in and he is prepping 3D modeling on them. In an update from Walt Disney Studios on Friday, where Toy Story 5 and The Mandalorian & Grogu were also given official dates , the Avatar sequels were given dates rather far into the future. Per the release schedule, Avatar 4 will come out on December 21, 2029, and Avatar 5 will hit theaters two years later on December 19, 2031.

With that in mind, perhaps James Cameron will have some time to take a break from Pandora for Fantastic Voyage ? You can stay updated on upcoming Disney movies here on CinemaBlend.

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Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

James Cameron has his eyes set on Fantastic Voyage remake

April 7, 2024 by EJ Moreno

After appearing to open a new exhibition at Paris’ Cinematheque Française , filmmaker James Cameron was met with great acclaim.

“That’s the record,” Cameron said in between laughs. “That’s the record for the longest applause I’ve ever had in my life. Thank you. This is a high point of my career!”

The conversation soon shifted to Fantastic Voyage , the remake of the 1966 film that Cameron and his partner Jon Landau have longed to create for over a decade.

“We’ve been developing it for a number of years, and we plan to go ahead with it very soon,” Cameron said. “Raquel Welch is not available, but we think we can make a pretty good movie.”

The synopsis for 1966’s Fantastic Voyage reads: “Scientist Jan Benes , who knows the secret to keeping soldiers shrunken for an indefinite period, escapes from behind the Iron Curtain with the help of C.I.A. Agent Grant. While being transferred, their motorcade is attacked. Benes strikes his head, causing a blood clot to form in his brain. Grant is ordered to accompany a group of scientists as they are miniaturized. They have one hour to get to Benes’ brain, remove the clot, and get out.”

Running until January 2025, The Art of James Cameron showcases more than 300 paintings, etchings, and production designs pulled from Cameron’s private collection, signed by the filmmaker’s own hand, and exhibited as a kind of career retrospective.

About EJ Moreno

EJ Moreno is a film and television critic and entertainment writer who joined the pop culture website Flickering Myth in 2018 and now serves as the executive producer of Flickering Myth TV, a YouTube channel with over 27,000 subscribers. With over a decade of experience, he is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic who is also part of the Critics Choice Association and GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics.

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James Cameron Confirms He’s Planning to ‘Go Ahead With’ a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ Remake ‘Very Soon’

By Ben Croll

• James Cameron ‘Knew Nothing About Guns’ When Making ‘The Terminator,’ but Then He Remembered: ‘This Is America, I Can Just Go Buy Them!’ 1 week ago
• James Cameron Confirms He’s Planning to ‘Go Ahead With’ a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ Remake ‘Very Soon’ 1 week ago
• Unsteady World Fuels Appetite for Small Screen Solutions as TV Biz Asks ‘What More Can We Do?’ 1 week ago

Gallic cinephiles gave James Cameron a hero’s welcome at a Paris masterclass on Thursday, ushering the action auteur onstage with a reception so thunderous that it shook the filmmaker’s oft-unflappable public demeanor.

“That’s the record,” he said in between laughs and in a show of uncommon giddiness. “That’s the record for the longest applause I’ve ever had in my life. Thank you. This is a high point of my career!”

Popular on Variety

Dreams and Nightmares

While Sigourney Weaver flanked her longtime collaborator at the exhibition’s opening vernissage, “Proxima” director Alice Winocour stepped in to lead the talk. Still, the star actress remained a prime subject of conversation – leading to an endearing connection between the two filmmakers.

After Winocour said that she wrote many of her scripts sitting below a framed photo of Weaver as Ellen Ripley, Cameron revealed he had done the very same, writing “Aliens” for an actress he had yet to meet while taking inspiration from her photo.

And though the sequel’s visual universe built on the designs of H.R. Giger, the incoming director made sure to leave his own mark on the material by introducing the Alien Queen. “I think Giger was a little disappointed that we didn’t hire him,” said Cameron, listing off the various biomechanoid features that made the new villain such chilling addition. “But I had so many ideas about what I could do in that same area.”

“[I remembered a dream] where I went into a dark room with every square inch of the walls and ceiling covered in wasps, and I knew that if I moved or tried to escape, they would attack me dead,” he recalled. “Every horror film must go to the deepest and worst place in the subconscious [because] that’s the point. That’s what you to pay your money for.”

‘Avatar’ and Beyond

Given the event’s reflective and retrospective context, Cameron offered little new information about his three upcoming “Avatar” sequels. However, he reassured the audience that work on Part 3 is coming along for an intended late 2025 release and that the scripts for the subsequent volleys are finished, the designs nearly locked and 3D modeling just about to begin.

As for other pursuits, the filmmaker once again brought up his plans to produce a remake of the 1966 tour-through-the-human-body “ Fantastic Voyage ,” a project Cameron and his partner Jon Landau have toyed with for over a decade.

“We’ve been developing it for a number of years, and we plan to go ahead with it very soon,” Cameron said. “Raquel Welch is not available, but we think we can make a pretty good movie.”

Hope and Dread

Without giving any more specifics, Cameron perhaps offered a thematic clue when describing his appreciation for science fiction as a conduit for both hope and dread.

“Science fiction allows us to imagine futures that can emerge from our present day,” he said. “When ‘Star Wars’ came along, science fiction seemed to suddenly become very upbeat, [all about] entertainment and adventure. But the history has always been about warning, about the misuse of technology and the misuse of science.”

“Who gets to decide what’s good for humanity?” he asked. “Machine intelligence will only be a reflection of us. It’ll be us with all our flaws and all of our potentially evil intentions. Yes, that can be good, but the atomic scientists of the 1930s believed [they would unlock] an infinite power source that would abolish starvation… Instead we got Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Cold War. This is what concerns me.”

Taste for Risk

Reflecting on a career path that began with schlock before building toward some of the highest grossing – and most expensive – films of all time, Cameron saw a clear throughline in his taste for risk.

“The more established you become, the more you risk losing what you’ve already gained,” he said. “But I also think that the greatest risk you can make is not trying something new and different. There’s a tendency, when the budget gets bigger, to start to go for the lowest common denominator – and you cannot do that.”

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5 movie sequels that were better than the original.

Last month, Dune: Part Two released in theatres to rave reviews, with many critics and fans alike lauding it as even better than the first Dune (which was already very well received). In the film world, this is a fairly rare sight. Sequels are often considered unnecessary or inferior to their predecessors, to the point of even being used as a punchline (such as in the opening number of Muppets: Most Wanted ). However, as Dune: Part Two has shown, there are many sequels that are not only just as good as the original movie, but better. Here are five movie sequels that I believe fall into this category.

1: Toy Story 2

The original Toy Story is a groundbreaking film that still holds up well to this day. However, Toy Story 2 is truly where the series hit its stride. Everything that worked in the first Toy Story has been polished to a mirror shine: the comedy is top-notch, the emotional beats are powerful, the characters are more fleshed out, and the plot is engaging and thought-provoking. This film set Toy Story apart as one of the best animated film series of all time, and it also set the stage for another Toy Story 3 , which many consider to be even better. Whether you prefer Toy Story 2 or the movie that followed it, there’s no denying that Toy Story 2  is truly what turned Toy Story from a film into a franchise.

2: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

While I consider Star Trek: The Motion Picture to be a better film than many people say it is, there’s no denying that it suffers from having a sluggish pace that turned many viewers away. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , on the other hand, is a thrilling and expertly written sci-fi adventure that basically saved the Star Trek film franchise. This film features some of the most iconic moments in Star Trek history (such as Captain Kirk’s infamous shout) as well as one of the greatest rivalries ever put to film. This film is often regarded as the best Star Trek film ever made, and for very good reason. Although I personally prefer Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home for its comedic elements, Wrath of Khan is an enthralling movie that easily trumps its predecessor.

3: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has proved to be one of the most unexpected hits in recent memory. After the middling reception of the first Puss in Boots film, no one expected anything spectacular from its sequel. And yet, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish stands alongside classics such as The Prince of Egypt and Shrek 2 as one of Dreamworks’ best films. It is beautifully animated, well-paced, laugh-out-loud funny, and has not one, but three fantastic villains. The personal journey that Puss goes on over the course of the movie is also masterfully crafted with an immense amount of empathy, and it ultimately leads to a powerful message that can resonate with everyone. And the best part is, you don’t need to watch the first Puss in Boots or any of the previous Shrek films to enjoy it. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a must-watch sequel that surpasses the original with flying colors.

4: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars (now known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope ) was a worldwide sensation when it hit theatres. As such, there were extremely high expectations for the sequel. Thankfully, The Empire Strikes Back is a wildly successful sequel that builds off the foundation set by A New Hope in plenty of new and interesting ways. It features an overall darker story than its predecessor and introduces some of the most iconic characters and locations in the Star Wars franchise, as well as one of the most legendary plot twists in cinematic history. In fact, many would say that Empire set the bar so high that no other Star Wars film has been able to top it. Whether you agree with this sentiment or not, The Empire Strikes Back is a superb sequel that truly molded Star Wars into what it is today. 

HEAR ME OUT ON THIS ONE. Yes, Cars 2 is often considered one of the worst Pixar films, if not the worst. However, in my opinion, Cars 2 is more enjoyable to watch than the first Cars movie for one simple reason: stuff actually happens in Cars 2 . Make no mistake, Cars 2 is an extremely dumb movie. In fact, I don’t even consider it to be good. But people often forget that the entire concept of Cars is dumb. And yet, even with such a dumb concept, Cars still somehow managed to be incredibly boring. The first Cars simply takes itself way too seriously in my opinion, and it leads to a dull slog of a film whose one gimmick (the characters being cars) could be removed entirely and the plot would stay basically the same. (In fact, Cars without cars already exists, and it’s called Doc Hollywood .) The plot of Cars 2 , on the other hand, is actually dependent on the fact that THE CHARACTERS ARE CARS. And it’s not afraid to embrace how stupid that entire concept is. Cars 2 has cars being tortured to death via explosive fuel.  Cars 2 has spy cars with car grappling hooks and car guns. Cars 2 has a car crime syndicate trying to take over the world because they are seen as unreliable cars. Cars 2 even has the car Pope (pictured above), which implies the existence of a car Jesus. Cars has none of that. Cars 2 may not be a good movie, but I’ll take dumb and memorable over boring and forgettable any day. I am ready to die on this hill.

Bryce Cain is a junior at IU studying Interactive & Digital Media as well as Theatre & Drama. He has worked for Media Services since the fall semester of 2022. His interests include theatre, video games, and graphic design.

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The MCU Has The Perfect Solution For An Ongoing Multiverse Problem

• The multiverse in the MCU needs to feel alive by using different actors for variants.
• The MCU needs to make the multiverse expansive to revitalize the franchise.
• Using new actors for variants could solve Marvel Studios' big Kang the Conqueror problem.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had some problems in recent years, but the franchise already has the perfect solution to make the multiverse work in its favor. The MCU established itself during the Infinity Saga . That chapter of the franchise encompassed 23 movies, going from 2008's Iron Man to a grand finale in 2019 with Avengers: Endgame and an emotional epilogue in Spider-Man: Far From Home . The saga included most of the MCU's best movies , and with the loss of the franchise's two main heroes — Iron Man and Captain America — the MCU has had a harder time being successful recently.

While there have been some resounding hits during the Multiverse Saga , both where movies and Disney+ projects are concerned, it has become clear that the MCU's Phases 4 & 5 have been uneven . Several complaints about the direction the MCU is in have emerged over the past couple of years, with the multiverse not escaping. While it is a fantastic tool to bring characters together and explore alternate versions of the MCU and other universes, Marvel could have been doing more in terms of making the multiverse pack a punch, and there are a few ways to do so.

All Marvel Movies Releasing In 2024

Doctor strange 2 and loki had different approaches to variants & one worked better, the multiverse needs to feel alive.

One of the most important uses of the multiverse is to show what kind of variants are out there in alternate versions of the MCU or other Marvel properties. While the MCU has found success in bringing back past actors in new roles through the multiverse, like Hayley Atwell as Captain Carter, or reprising their iconic characters, like Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man: No Way Home , one way the multiverse has been used to present variants has been more exciting than the other, and Marvel needs to focus on that to make the most out of the multiverse.

Tom Holland's Spider-Man 4 Has A Daunting Task Ahead After No Way Home's $1.9b Success

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Loki are two key multiverse projects with opposite uses of variants. While the movie had its main Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch variants again be played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen, the Disney+ series introduced several newcomers to the franchise as different versions of Tom Hiddleston's Loki. To help make the multiverse more unique and fresh, Loki 's approach to variants should be followed by new projects , as new actors as versions of beloved MCU characters bring along an interesting dynamic that can revitalize the franchise.

The female Loki variant — Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie — showed the enormous potential of such practice.

The MCU Needs To Make The Multiverse Feel Expansive

The multiverse can offer more than it has.

The MCU has been facing a lot of criticism in recent years due to the universe feeling directionless and the multiverse not having been fleshed out enough. The Multiverse Saga should come to an end when 2027's Avengers: Secret Wars rolls around , and only three years out, Marvel Studios has not really done a deep exploration of the multiverse aside from a couple of projects. Instead, the MCU's Multiverse Saga has mainly focused on introducing new/smaller characters that do not really have much to do with the grander scheme of the multiverse.

While Spider-Man: No Way Home was an enormous hit with a multiverse story at its center , the film saw characters from past Spider-Man franchises come to the MCU. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was the MCU movie that was really meant to do a deep dive into the concept and show other universes and their particularities. However, the film never really focused on many universes, only heavily using a couple of different ones — with minor changes like going on a red light instead of green — and a quick sequence of Doctor Strange and America Chavez falling through universes.

The Rumored Post Avengers 6 MCU Reboot Seems Like A Better Idea Now Than Ever

Having different actors play variants would solve multiple mcu issues, the kang the conqueror problem needs a solution.

By having different actors play variants instead of using the same MCU stars, the franchise can succeed in making the multiverse feel expansive, widening the scope of the Multiverse Saga. With Kang the Conqueror actor Jonathan Majors fired , the MCU could also solve its big villain problem through that. All Kang variants have been played by Majors , and recasting the actor with several new stars would be the best way of making each variant feel unique, bringing in as much talent into the MCU as possible, and not putting the burden of taking over Kang on a single actor.

Using new actors for variants could also lead to many exciting moments in upcoming MCU projects. Deadpool & Wolverine could cast actors who have been requested by fans as variants of Wolverine and other characters, such as Taron Egerton or Daniel Radcliffe playing Logan; Avengers: Secret Wars could finally allow Tom Cruise to become the MCU's Superior Iron Man , and more. With different actors playing variants, the Multiverse Saga can feel expansive and exciting going into its last few years, responding to MCU complaints.

Having escaped from a different timeline, Loki stars in his own titular series, where he learns about the life of his predecessor and discovers the truth of time and space. In the show, Loki reluctantly becomes a part of the Time Variance Authority (TVA), an interdimensional governing body that keeps time in order. On the chopping block, Loki is given a chance to save himself by helping the TVA hunt down someone more dangerous than himself - another Loki.

Cast Erika Coleman, Richard E. Grant, Tom Hiddleston, Wunmi Mosaku, Sophia Di Martino, Sasha Lane, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Release Date June 11, 2021

Streaming Service(s) Disney+

Directors Kate Herron

Showrunner Michael Waldron

Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness

In Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the MCU takes a deeper dive into the Multiverse and the unknown, introducing variants of Strange and other familiar friends and foes - including The Illuminati - and offers a new perspective on how it works and connects. The story follows Stephen Strange, now post-blip and no longer the Sorcerer Supreme. When a terrifying monster rampages through New York seeking to capture a young girl from another multiverse named America Chavez, Strange finds himself as her newfound protector. Unfortunately, his new foe is a former ally, Wanda Maximoff. To protect Chavez and stop Wanda's rampage, Strange travels the Multiverse looking for answers - and encounters engrossing and terrifying realities that expand the Marvel Universe in a whole new way.

Director Sam Raimi

Release Date May 6, 2022

Writers Michael Waldron

Cast Patrick Stewart, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Michael Stuhlbarg, Elizabeth Olsen, John Krasinski, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benedict Wong, Hayley Atwell, Xochitl Gomez, Bruce Campbell, Lashana Lynch, Anson Mount

Rating PG-13

Runtime 126 minutes

Key Release Dates

Deadpool & wolverine, thunderbolts (2025), the fantastic four (2025), blade (2025), avengers: the kang dynasty, avengers: secret wars.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Fallout review – an absolute blast of a TV show

This immaculately made, supremely witty post-apocalyptic drama is yet another brilliant video game adaptation. It’s funny, self-aware and tense – an astonishing balancing act

The following review contains spoilers for the first episode of Fallout .

The first thing to note is that, as with The Last of Us, there is no need for any viewer to be au fait with the source material of Fallout, Amazon’s new competitor in the field of hit video game adaptations (though a fan of the game who watched it with me assures me that there is much to enjoy in addition to the basic narrative if you are).

For newcomers such as me, this intelligent, drily witty, immaculately constructed series set in the Fallout universe fully captivates and entertains on its own terms. It opens in 1950s America, at the height of the cold war and the “red scare”, with former TV star Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) reduced to appearing at a children’s birthday party after being tarred with the pinko brush. A mushroom cloud appears on the horizon, the blast wave hits, the apocalypse arrives.

All those who can afford it rush to the secure vaults they have had built in preparation. We cut to Vault 33 two centuries later, by which point they appear to be doing very nicely. All the naivety of the 50s and the better parts of its mores – politeness, consideration, cooperation, modesty and restraint – have been preserved, albeit with the occasional twist. Like daily weapons training, and chipper approaches to the avoidance of marrying one of your many cousins.

The underground idyll is shattered when they are brutally raided by surface dwellers led by a woman called Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury). Vault Overseer Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) is kidnapped and his daughter Lucy (Ella Purnell) defies orders from the remaining Council and leaves the Vault to find him. As a wide-eyed believer in the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), she is wildly unprepared for the array of delights surface-dwelling holds. It’s not like she can disguise herself effectively either. As one gnarled resident of the desperate nearby town of Filly says – “Clean hair, good teeth, all 10 fingers. Must be nice.”

Surface threats include, but are not limited to: giant cockroaches, godawful sea monsters (the Gulper’s innards haunt my dreams), radiation poisoning, strung-out survivors, fanatics of various kinds, puppy incinerators and cannibalistic Fiends. The Brotherhood of Steel try to control the Wasteland but you can’t help but feel, committed warrior faction though they are, that they are on a losing wicket. The Brotherhood is divided into Lords (in battered Iron Man-esque suits), Squires who attend and hope to become them and Aspirants training as Squires. Aspirant Maximus (Aaron Moten) is our guy and we follow him as he rises from bullied victim to rogue Lord. His mission? Acquire the severed head that Lucy also needs to find, containing a chip that Moldaver wants (and which Lucy hopes to trade for Daddy MacLean).

The biggest threat of all, however, is the Ghouls, and one in particular – a noseless, mutated remnant of Cooper Howard who is also hunting for the head and the bounty on it. He is the first to cross paths with Lucy, and oh the fun we have! By the end of a fishing trip, she’s in such a state that if she were to return to Filly, they would probably accept her unquestioningly as one of their own.

Co-creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner somehow manage to combine traditional post-nuclear apocalypse tropes with semi-ironic takes on 50s motifs, B-movie conventions and horror-level blood and gore (and work in plenty of Easter eggs and other pleasures for gamers). It’s a perfectly paced story that is both funny and self-aware without winking at the camera, undercutting our increasing emotional investment in characters who reveal – and sometimes unexpectedly redeem – themselves layer by layer. If I tell you that the organ-harvesting robot is voiced by Matt Berry, that the Ghoul’s meeting with a long-lost, rotting colleague almost made me cry and that neither element jarred with the other, perhaps that will convey something of the triumphant balancing act that is maintained throughout the eight-episode series.

It is, if you’ll pardon the pun, an absolute blast. Goggins is wonderful as both the unsullied golden boy Cooper and the wretched Ghoul, Moten brings such nuance to what could easily be a one-note role and Purnell performs Lucy’s fall from innocence brilliantly. The growing mystery back at Vault 32, as Lucy’s brother Norm (Moises Arias) becomes suspicious of the origins of the murderous raid and the supposedly benign Council that has protected them all these years, adds yet another strand to the story and ratchets up the tension even further. In short, for Fallout, I’m all in.

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Fallout is on Prime Video

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