Netflix’s new Adam Sandler movie is unique in the Sandman canon: Despite sending the comedic actor to space for an encounter with an oversized alien spider, most of the potentially corny laughs are swapped for melancholic tears. Like Solaris, The Fountain, and Ad Astra before it, director Johan Renck’s Spaceman is a meditative intragalactic drama orbiting around a heartfelt performance from Sandler. It’s not the first movie with the kind of visual effects that demand an actor’s unbridled imagination, but filming Spaceman was a test that took him outside his comfort zone.
“In Jack & Jill, my twin sister was a tennis ball,” Sandler joked to Polygon earlier this month. “I’ve had moments [with visual effects], but not a full movie, and not a movie where I was on wires, and not a movie where I had to cry. I never cried in front of a tennis ball before. I mean, one time at the Jewish Community Center when we lost the match. But that’s when I was 7. A long time ago.”
Adapted from Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, Renck’s film casts Sandler as Jakub, a Czech astronaut who’s starting to crack eight months into his solo journey to Jupiter. If isolation wasn’t enough, his wife back home has stopped speaking to him. Luckily, a talking spider (voiced by Paul Dano) has appeared on board the ship.
Unlike his dramatic turns in Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems, Spaceman demands Sandler dig deep while zipping around in zero gravity, an effect pulled off with an intricate system of wires and mechanical-arm rigs. It’s not a surprising method, but it does look like an absolute pain in the ass — a form of movie magic I can never get enough of. This exclusive look at the making of Spaceman gives you a peek into how Sandler made it all work, from crying at tennis balls to the more elaborate choreography required to navigate his claustrophobic set.
Spaceman is currently streaming on Netflix.
