You’ve probably seen the meme of Nicole Kidman leaving her lawyer’s office after her divorce, arms outstretched in pure, unadulterated joy. It’s iconic. But there’s another chapter in her mid-2000s career that is far less "celebratory." Honestly, it’s kinda weird how we all collectively decided to forget that she starred in a $80 million alien invasion flick alongside a pre-Bond-fame Daniel Craig.
The movie is The Invasion (2007).
It was supposed to be the definitive, modern take on Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers. Instead, it became one of the most famously "cursed" productions in Hollywood history. If you watch it today, you can actually see the moment the movie stops being a psychological thriller and starts being a confused car-chase simulator.
Why The Invasion Still Matters (As a Warning)
Most people assume this was just another boring remake. It wasn't. At first, it was a high-brow experiment. Warner Bros. hired Oliver Hirschbiegel, the German director who did the Oscar-nominated Downfall, to bring a chilly, European dread to the story.
The premise was pretty grounded: No giant pods this time. No screaming aliens. Just an alien spore that hitches a ride on a crashed Space Shuttle (the "Patriot") and infects people while they sleep. If you have the flu, you’re safe—for a bit. But once you hit REM sleep? Game over. You wake up as a "pod person"—emotionless, compliant, and part of a hive mind that wants to bring world peace by killing everything that makes us human.
Kidman plays Carol Bennell, a DC psychiatrist. She’s the first to notice things are off. Her patients are claiming their husbands aren't their husbands. Her ex-husband, Tucker (played by a very creepy Jeremy Northam), starts acting like a high-functioning mannequin.
The Reshoots That Broke the Movie
Here is where the drama gets real. Hirschbiegel turned in his cut, and the studio basically panicked. They thought it was too "artsy" and "talky." They wanted a summer blockbuster.
So, they did something radical.
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They brought in The Wachowskis (creators of The Matrix) to rewrite a massive chunk of the script—reports vary from 30% to a staggering 70%. They then hired James McTeigue, who directed V for Vendetta, to handle 17 days of intensive reshoots.
You can literally feel the "Wachowski fingerprints" on the screen. Suddenly, the movie has these jagged, hyper-stylized jump cuts. There’s an 11-minute car chase at the end that feels like it belongs in a totally different film. During the filming of that sequence, things got dangerous. Kidman was in a Jaguar being towed by a stunt rig when it hit a pole. She ended up in the hospital with broken ribs.
It was a mess. A beautiful, expensive, A-list mess.
Why the Political Message is So Bizarre
Most Body Snatchers movies are metaphors for whatever we’re scared of at the time. The 1956 original was about Communism (or McCarthyism, depending on who you ask). The 1978 version was about the death of the hippie dream.
The Invasion tried to be about the Iraq War and the Bush era. There's this scene where a Russian diplomat argues that if we all became emotionless aliens, there would be no war in Iraq, no genocide in Darfur. It’s an interesting "be careful what you wish for" angle on world peace.
But the reshoots watered it down. The ending we got is a "happy" one where a vaccine is found and everything goes back to normal. It’s the only version of this story that doesn’t end with a terrifying scream. Critics hated it. Roger Ebert called it the "least" of the four versions.
The Numbers Don't Lie
The movie was a certified "tankeroo."
- Production Budget: Estimated between $65 million and $80 million.
- Domestic Opening: A measly $5.9 million.
- Total Worldwide Gross: About $40.2 million.
Basically, it lost the studio around $60 million once you factor in marketing. It was a disaster for Kidman’s "bankability" at the time, coming right after other misses like The Stepford Wives and Bewitched.
How to Watch It Now (And What to Look For)
If you’re going to revisit The Invasion, don't expect a masterpiece. Treat it like a forensic investigation.
Look for the "split" in the movie. The first hour is actually quite good. It’s claustrophobic and paranoid. The scene where the "census taker" comes to Kidman’s door at night is genuinely skin-crawling. But once Daniel Craig and Kidman start popping amphetamines to stay awake, the logic falls out the window.
Actionable Insights for Movie Buffs:
- Spot the "Wachowski Cut": Watch for the high-octane car chase in the final act. That's the part that cost $10 million in reshoots.
- The "Daniel Craig" Factor: It’s fun to see Craig right before he became a global superstar in Casino Royale. He’s playing a supportive, slightly nerdy doctor—a far cry from 007.
- The Covid Parallel: Re-watching this in the post-pandemic era is wild. The way the government handles the "flu outbreak" in the movie feels eerily familiar, even if the "aliens" part is obviously fiction.
Next time you’re scrolling through a streaming service and see Nicole Kidman’s face on a generic-looking sci-fi poster, give it a click. It’s a fascinating look at what happens when too many cooks—even genius ones—try to fix a "broken" movie.