How a Wilmington-shot space thriller offers a 'wind of change' to post-Cold War era

When a movie or TV show is made in Wilmington locals can usually look forward to spotting a variety of area locations.

A rare exception is "I.S.S.," a sci-fi space thriller that opened Jan. 18 in theaters nationwide. It was shot in 2021 entirely at the old Screen Gems/EUE Studios, now Cinespace, in Wilmington.

But while the movie might not show off area locations, it does show off Wilmington's giant studio sound stages, on which crews built sets replicating the real International Space Station. The I.S.S. has been in low-earth orbit since 1998.

"I.S.S." stars Oscar-winning Wilmington native Ariana DeBose ("West Side Story") along with SAG Award-winning actor Chris Messina ("Argo"). Locally, it's playing at the Mayfaire and Pointe multiplexes in Wilmington.

It's directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, who's best known for hard-core documentaries like 2013's "Blackfish," about a captive orca at Seaworld that turned deadly.

When she was here in 2021, "I lived in Wrightsville Beach. Most beautiful place I've ever been on a shoot," Cowperthwaite said during a Zoom interview. "I walked (the beach) every weekend. It was amazing. My only regret is we were there during the pandemic, so nobody could go out. We couldn't really enjoy the town."

Many crew members working on "I.S.S." were locals.

"You've got some world-class filmmakers in your town," Cowperthwaite said. "It was a privilege to be there (on) this amazing, enormous stage that we were so lucky to get."

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"I.S.S.," which was written by Nick Shafir, imagines a scenario in which six astronauts, three American and three Russian, are working in peace and harmony on the space station until what appears to be nuclear war breaks out on Earth.

Then, both crews get messages from their respective governments to take control of the space station "by any means necessary." Predictably, relations devolve from there.

Early reviews have been mostly positive, with a 69% "fresh," or positive, rating on the review-aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes.

DeBose, who was born in Wilmington — her family later moved to Wake Forest, where she grew up, and she graduated from Wake Forest High School and went to Western Carolina University — plays Dr. Kira Foster, a space newbie who studies mice and tends to see the best in others.

Her crewmates are played by Messina (as steadfast captain Gordon Barrett) and John Gallagher Jr., while the Russians — some friendly, others dastardly — are played by Maria Mashkova, Costa Ronin and Pilou Asbæk.

The movie toys with expectations that "I.S.S." is going to be another Russians vs. Americans tale like 1984's "Red Dawn" or any number of other Cold War-era movies that pit the countries against each other. But things don't go the way you might expect, and there are heroes and villains on both sides.

"I wanted you to kind of enter into the film and leave nationalism at the door," Cowperthwaite said, adding that she wants folks to think, "'I might do those types of things,' whether you're American or Russian."

Also, the director said, she wanted to create a moment of division between the Americans and Russians early on. The film accomplishes that via the rock ballad "Wind of Change" by German band The Scorpions, which plays during a boozy space-bonding session between the two crews. Written at end of the Cold War, the song holds deep meaning for many Russians and Eastern Europeans, who associate it with the newfound freedom of the time.

Americans, meanwhile, mostly associate The Scorpions with such visceral yet cheesy hits as "Rock You Like a Hurricane," long an on-the-nose staple of Wilmington hurricane parties.

"I wanted very much to have a moment where there is a chasm, right? Where it's like, 'You have no idea what we went through. This song meant something to us.' And Americans are like, 'Haha, The Scorpions.'"

Cowperthwaite has helmed a range of projects, from investigative documentaries like "Blackfish" and "The Grab" to emotional dramas about the bond between families ("Our Friend") and people and animals ("Megan Leavey").

The common thread, she said, is character.

"I love character-driven everything," she said. "You can have the best plot in the world, but if you don't have a story (where) the people are who they are, to me it doesn't work."

The characters do drive the action in "I.S.S.," with DeBose's idealistic Kira coming into conflict with, among others, Gallagher's intensely suspicious astronaut, Christian. There are plenty of tense moments, and while things fall into some formulaic (albeit weightless) ultra-violence down the stretch, the open-ended conclusion will no doubt have viewers talking.

"I.S.S." is the latest in a long line of space thrillers, from "2001" and "Alien" to, more recently, "Gravity" and "Moon."

The space station itself is almost like another character in the film, and Cowperthwaite said her background in documentary helped create it.

"Coming from documentary and coming from real life storytelling, you know what real looks like, you know what real feels like and you want very much to bring that to this space station," she said.

The movie depicts weightlessness with a mix of camera tricks and CGI, but for the spaceship itself, "I wanted the I.S.S. to look realistic and look like the real I.S.S.," she said. "Geoff Wallace built these pods on set. They're on wheels, they move around. And so that was fantastic."

Things took an unexpected turn for the film when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

"All of that happened when the film was in post production," Cowperthwaite said. "I remember my producer, Mickey Liddell, calling me and saying, 'Can we even put this movie out? Like, is this gonna be responsible?' And I remember thinking, 'You don't want to be simulating war when there's actually real stuff going on.'"

The film is being released, of course, this weekend in fact. Ultimately, that's because "what we're trying to say is exactly what I would say anyway," Cowperthwaite said. "The brunt is borne and absorbed by the little people."

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Filmed in Wilmington, NC, sci-fi movie 'I.S.S.' stars Ariana DeBose