In 1971 SF author Phillip Jose Farmer published To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first in a series of books that took place on Riverworld.  This is a planet with a million mile long river that is inscribed upon it where everyone who had ever lived on earth was reborn in the body they had when they were 30 years old.  An interesting series, the first book won the Hugo award in 1972, and the Sci Fi Channel created a made for cable movie based on the series in 2003.  This movie has now been released on DVD under the title Riverworld.  Only related to the books in the most general sense, the movie isn't bad, but it has a lot of shortcomings.

I read the main four books in the Riverworld series about 20 years ago, and while a lot of the details are fuzzy, I still recall the main plot.  I enjoyed the books quite a bit, and so I jumped at the chance to review this made for TV movie.  I wasn't expecting the movie to be as good as the book mind you, but I was interesting in how they went about adapting this story.  Unfortunately, it wasn't very good.

The movie starts off with Jeff Hale (Brad Johnson,) an astronaut, dying as his space shuttle gets hit by some space debris.  He burns up on reentry, but then wakes up, underwater.  Swimming to the surface he finds himself on the bank of a large river that is littered with canisters.  A large group of people emerge from the river, all scared and unsure about what is going on.  It seems that they have all died, but in different times.  Hale died in 2009, but a woman he meets, Alice (Emily Lloyd,) died in the 1930's.  There is even an early human present from the dawn of time.

The canisters all contain clothes, with Alice's conveniently having a different style from all the others to set her apart, and the group soon finds an obelisk.  When they put their canisters in holes the encircle the tall artificial structure, food appears inside.

No sooner have they figured this out, than a group of bandits on horseback attack.  It seems that other people have been on the planet longer, and they've organized.  This area is ruled byValdemar (Kevin Smith,) and he captures the newly reborn people for use as slaves and to make fight to the death in his arena.

Hale, with the help of a hooded person who comes in the middle of the night, escapes from Valdemar before he reaches the villain's fortress, but trails the group there so that he can release his new found friends including Alice, a mute girl, an alien who died on Earth, a Nubian Princess and a Jew who died in a concentration camp.  He doesn't bother to rescue the others that came ashore with them for some reason.  I assume because they didn't have speaking roles and therefore weren't worth saving.  In any case, one of the other prisoners challenges Valdemar in the ring and, unarmed, defeats him.  The mysterious vicious person turns out to be the Roman Emporor Nero, who will be more trouble for Hale and his gang than they can imagine.

Obviously the prequel to a series that was never launched, this movie wasn't bad, it just had this "I've seen it all before" feel to it.  You know how many times the hero's plans will go awry based on how much time is left in the show.  If there's half an hour left, that's time enough for the star to be captured again and escape.  The movie felt more like an episode of Xena than anything else.  It was entertaining, but uninspired.

It is too bad that they tried to turn this story into an action/adventure show, because in doing so they drained all of the interesting aspects out of the saga.  In the books the main character was Sir Richard Burton, a much more engaging person than the rather bland Hale, but the main thing point of interest was how humans would act if they didn't have to worry about food or death.  The obelisks keep them fed, and if they die, they are just reborn along a different stretch of river.  There is no disease or illness, and effectively no poverty, but nothing in the way of material objects either.  How would people organize themselves into a society in such a situation?

This movie by passes all that, including the resurrection twist though that is hinted at in the end.  Instead they concentrate on sword fights and escape plans.  Unfortunately, the one aspect that I didn't like from the books they decided to keep: everywhere you turned there was some historical characters popping up.  The Roman Emperor Nero (who is nothing like the real person,) Mark Twain, and the inspiration for the title character in Alice in Wonderland all appear in this movie.  That's a lot of famous people out of the dozen or so who have speaking parts.
 

Audio:

The stereo surround sound track was clear but not exceptional.  There was only limited use made of the soundstage, but the audio was full.  An average sounding disc.

Video:

Being a recent production, the widescreen anamorphic video looked very good.  The colors were bright and clear and there were no defects in the print.  The detail and contrast was fine, and the digital defects were minimum.  A good looking disc.

Extras:

There was only one extra included on this disc, a 6½-minute segment on the CGI effects that were used.

Final Thoughts:

This wasn't a bad way to spend an hour and a half, but it didn't live up to its potential. Playing like a long episode of Xena, this movie had some excitement but all of the plot turns were predicable.  Only loosely based on the books, all of the interesting social commentary and hypotheses about human nature have been removed and replaced with sword fights.  Worth watching if you're curious, but make sure you Rent It.