Spaceship Earth

Name: Spaceship Earth
Genre: Documentary
Released: May 8, 2020
Duration: 113 min
Rating: 73
Cast: Jane Goodall, John Allen, Linda Leigh, Roy Walford, Tony Burgess

2020

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Ratings

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8.0	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Ratings

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Spaceship Earth

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Movie Details & Credits

Neon | Release Date (Streaming): May 8, 2020 | Not Rated

Starring: Jane Goodall, John Allen, Linda Leigh, Roy Walford, Tony Burgess

Summary: Spaceship Earth is the true, stranger-than-fiction, adventure of eight visionaries who in 1991 spent two years quarantined inside of a self-engineered replica of Earth’s ecosystem called BIOSPHERE 2. The experiment was a worldwide phenomenon, chronicling daily existence in the face of life threatening ecological disaster and a growingSpaceship Earth is the true, stranger-than-fiction, adventure of eight visionaries who in 1991 spent two years quarantined inside of a self-engineered replica of Earth’s ecosystem called BIOSPHERE 2. The experiment was a worldwide phenomenon, chronicling daily existence in the face of life threatening ecological disaster and a growing criticism that it was nothing more than a cult. The bizarre story is both a cautionary tale and a hopeful lesson of how a small group of dreamers can potentially reimagine anew world. [Neon]… Expand

Director: Matt Wolf

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 113 min

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Critic Reviews

100

RogerEbert.com Matt Zoller Seitz

May 8, 2020

As cinema, it's not trying to reinvent any wheels. But it's an impressive example of basic storytelling techniques refined for maximum impact, each element reinforcing and feeding off every other element, as in the enclosed ecosystem that it depicts. Read full review

Ann Hornaday

May 6, 2020

Suffice it to say that, in addition to celebrating the energy, enterprise and idealism of America’s postwar generation, Spaceship Earth provides a sobering primer in how some dreams die, and others are strangled mercilessly in their cribs. Read full review

Alan Ng

May 9, 2020

If you want to hear the story of dreamers fulfilling their outlandish dreams, this is the film. Read full review

Chuck Bowen

May 5, 2020

The film offers a refuge of idealism and intellectuality in an age that’s actively hostile to both of those qualities. Read full review

David Fear

May 11, 2020

We may never see the likes of something like this again, even as climate change makes the impetus behind Biosphere 2 that much more urgent. But if Spaceship Earth proves nothing else, it left behind some one hell of a stranger-than fiction yarn. Read full review

Leah Greenblatt

May 8, 2020

It's a fascinating story, this clash of 1960s idealism with the cold realities of modern science, though not one that director Matt Wolf (Wild Combination: A Story of Arthur Russell) is fully able to bite off and chew in Spaceship Earth, his fitfully enthralling but frustratingly incomplete documentary. Read full review

Ben Kenigsberg

May 7, 2020

Like the project itself, Spaceship Earth winds up caught in the gulf between rigor and showmanship. As entertaining as it can be, it is also disappointingly deferential to its subjects — the work of a filmmaker in thrall to characters who have welcomed him inside the bubble. Read full review

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User Reviews

katalystt

May 10, 2020

Science fiction without the fiction. The wild story of a group of astonishingly practical dreamers. Reminiscent of the ingenious astronaut growing potatoes on Mars in The Martian.