Spaceman’s director answers the movie’s biggest question: Is the alien spider real?

05.03.2024 - 18:11 / polygon.com / Adam Sandler / Paul Dano

There’s an obvious question at the heart of Spaceman, Netflix’s science fiction movie where Adam Sandler’s forlorn astronaut character spends half the story talking to a tennis ball communing with a giant alien spider that he names Hanuš. But even without watching the movie, viewers may wonder: Is Hanuš actually real?

Normally, when a movie revolves around this kind of question, the director and stars hedge when asked for their opinions. For instance, No One Will Save You writer-director Brian Duffield has been clear that he wants viewers to interpret that film’s startling ending in whatever way they think fits best, without his input. Andrew Haigh has been careful about weighing in on the controversial ending of All of Us Strangers. And that’s entirely reasonable — often filmmakers want to keep viewers guessing, thinking, debating, and interpreting.

But not always. Polygon couldn’t resist asking Spaceman director Johan Renck and stars Adam Sandler and Paul Dano what they think about the movie’s central debate point — and we were surprised at how definitive their answers were. We’ll get into the details after a spoiler break.

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for Spaceman.]

In the movie, adapted from Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, Sandler plays Jakub, a Czech astronaut suffering from extreme depression and anxiety eight months into a solo journey to investigate a mysterious outer-space phenomenon. His isolation is relieved when a giant space spider he eventually dubs Hanuš (an all-CG character voiced by Paul Dano) infiltrates his spacecraft and starts chatting, drawn by Jakub’s loneliness. Hanuš says he, too, is a lonely traveler on his way to visit the same glowing space cloud for his own reasons.

Hanuš can read Jakub’s mind and see into his past. He uses these abilities to force Jakub to confront his secret guilt and face his shortcomings, particularly in the ways he’s failed to support his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan). Eventually, Hanuš accompanies Jakub out into the space cloud, and the two of them hug it out in a kind of cosmic ballet of interspecies understanding and catharsis.

But Hanuš’ complete access to Jakub’s subconscious and the way he so perfectly represents Jakub’s anxieties does make this question pretty glaring. Is Jakub just hallucinating? Is Hanuš a representation of his guilt and loneliness? How much does Hanuš have in common with the similarly confrontational/therapeutic hallucinatory figures in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 movie Solaris, which director Johan Renck says is one of his favorite movies?

Asked his opinion on the matter, Sandler is cut-and-dried about it: “I go real,” he told Polygon in an interview ahead of the movie’s release.

Co-star Paul Dano