What Is This I Don’t Even
09.03.10
“Scientifically accurate”
Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey has been in development hell since 1996, which is also the year the animation in the trailer below seems to have come from. It’s a $10 million (funded by NASA’s JPL) 3D animated film incorporating footage from the Cassini Huygens mission, and it’ll be screening at DragonCon tomorrow if you’re in the neighborhood and hate yourself.
I think about $9.9 million of that budget went to the voice cast, which includes Neil Armstrong, William Shatner, Chris Pine, Amanda Peet, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Hamill, Hayden Christensen as a lizard in sunglasses, James Earl Jones, Brent Spiner, and Jason Alexander. And, at some point, the cast also included John Travolta, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Christian Slater.
Whatever money was left over after paying the constantly-revolving voice cast was spent on the ear-raping website and on hiring Taiwanese animation studio Digimax to make the gigantic mess in the trailer below. Topless Robot is calling it “Delgo in space”. I’m calling it “footage you would see in an ITT Tech commercial.” They just animated a lizard wearing sunglasses! Those are the skills I need today for the jobs of tomorrow.

![[image]](http://cdn.gs.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gammasquadknittin-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.gs.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ironsky-poster-150x150.jpg)
It lost me as soon as I saw a flame in outer space.
The crappy animation is the second biggest hurdle this movie has to overcome. The biggest hurdle is having Hayden Christensen in the cast.
/\ Not just in the cast, but HEADLINING the damn poster! Hell, Brent Spiner probably has a better ROI than Hayden.
Thankfully, that’s just the character poster, not the one that will be hanging outside whichever planetarium plays this thing to a captive elementary school audience.
Billions well spent NASA.