If any of the three people who directed had made a science-fiction film with little studio interference, you'd likely have a good movie. In fact, if you divided Supernova's approximate budget of $90 million into three and gave portions to Walter Hill, Jack Sholder, and Francis Ford Coppola, you could end up with three compelling, creative mid-budget genre films that, at the very least, would have bombed far less publicly.
The version of Supernova released 25 years ago bore none of the fingerprints of the artists who made it (nor any credits, as the Directors Guild of America allowed Walter Hill, who was responsible for the lion's share of directing duties, to be credited under a pseudonym). Set on a medical spacecraft that can quantum jump between dimensions to recover their targets, Supernova tries to make up for its lack of narrative ingenuity - a small ship rescues a mysterious, charismatic man (Peter Facinelli) with sinister intentions and uber-powered space matter.
Supernova doesn't drag, but only because it's been edited down to the shortest possible length and quickest possible pace by studio decree; it cuts poorly, and there's a lot of off-screen (read: slapped in later) lines that scream of being built in post-production and reshoots. This is peak studio slop; at 90 minutes, Supernova is both bloated and truncated, a tension-free and flavorless whistle-stop tour of all the ways space movies never flourished in the 1990s.
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