Film / The Relic

Everything old is new again.

The Relic (or Relic) is a 1997 film adaptation of a novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, directed by Peter Hyams, starring Tom Sizemore, Penelope Ann Miller, and Linda Hunt.

A string of gruesome murders plagues the Chicago Museum of Natural History in the days leading up to a massive gala to open a new exhibit. The strange mutilations of the bodies suggests the killer may not even be human. But with so much at stake, the museum officials decide to push through the opening despite the dangers.

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This film provides examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: The Kothoga is considerably larger than in the book, where it is described as being roughly the size of a grizzly bear, while in the film is about as big as a small elephant.
• Adaptation Name Change: The monster in the film is called the Kothoga, possibly because actually saying "Mbwun" out loud is a lot harder than reading it. In the novel, the Kothoga was the name of the tribe of which the monster is the legend of, and the tribe is called the Zenzara instead.
  • Dr. Julian Whittlesey, the monster's human identity, becomes Dr. John Whitney in the movie.
  • Gregory Kawakita becomes Gregory Lee. Also, doubles as a Race Lift with Greg being Chinese-American in contrast to his novel's counterpart being Japanese-British.
• Adapted Out: Pendergast was cut from the film, though some of his characteristics were merged with D'Agosta. Smithback isn't as lucky to even afford that (somewhat fitting in a meta sense, considering his character) and his role is completely absent.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the original novel D'Agosta was in his late 50's and very out of shape and overweight (although in later books in the Pendergast series he does get back into shape and slim down a little). In the film, he's a lot slimmer and in his mid 30's.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the novel, Cuthbert was an arrogant Obstructive Bureaucrat. The film's version of the character is more of a Reasonable Authority Figure.
  • In the novel, Gregory Kawakita does a Face–Heel Turn at the end and started selling the Mbwun reovirus as a drug, here Greg Lee never did such a heinous thing like that, even he is still a Smug Snake whose only worst action was locking two of his colleagues in the offices.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the novel, Gregory Kawakita was an intellectual loner; in the film, Greg Lee was an underhanded Smug Snake.
  • Tom Parkinson's book equivalent Ippolito was working to cover up the Mbwun, but only because it was his job, and was more out of his depth than anything. Parkinson, however, is doing it against Cuthbert's orders and is a total Jerkass.
• Adaptational Location Change: In the novel, the museum where the story is set in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The film changes it to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, because the AMNH staff didn't like that the story portrayed their administrates as incompetent and thought the story might make kids scared to go to the museum.
• Adaptational Ugliness: The Kothoga, to an extent. In the novel, it resembles a cross between an ape (primarily the upper half) and a dinosaur (primarily the lower half). The film gave it a drastic redesign, making it look like a cross between a lizard, a tiger, a beetle, and the Predator. This does help to obscure The Reveal that it used to be human, however.
• Admiring the Abomination: Right before he's killed, Frock stares at the Kothoga with a big grin, knowing that its existence proves his theory to be true.
• Ambiguously Evil: The Amazonian natives at the start of the film drug John Whitney with the Kothoga fungus, knowing full well that it will transform him into a monster. Why exactly they decide to do this is not clear.
• Animalistic Abomination: The Kothoga, which resembles a cross between a huge tiger and a monitor lizard with massive mandibles similar to a stag beetle. It is heavily armored, highly intelligent and very difficult to kill.
• Asian Rudeness: Dr. Lee, who is Chinese-American and a Smug Snake Slimeball.
• Asshole Victim:
  • The police searching for the killer end up filling a homeless man living in the basement full of lead. While he's not responsible for the murders they're investigating, he's still a serial rapist and an actual murderer who had it coming.
  • Lee and Tom Parkinson.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Early in the movie, when Margo is telling D'Agosta about the museum's maceration tanks, the specimen being processed today is stated to be Rhinoceros megarhinus. R. megarhinus (now considered Dihoplus megarhinus) has been extinct for millions of years; it would only exist as fossils, which of course do not need maceration.
  • Margo's devices are able to decipher the DNA of specimens in only a few minutes. In reality, DNA is so large it takes a minimum of several hours or days to read through it, often several weeks for non-human animals, never mind a creature that's a mix of multiple different animals.
  • One of the DNA components of the Kothoga is identified as Panthera tigris braziliae, presumably meaning Brazilian tiger. There is no such thing as a Brazilian tiger; tigers are known only from Asia.
  • Margo suspects that since the Kothoga is part reptilian, that probably means it's ectothermic. This is of course ignoring the fact it's never seen gaining heat from anything like a cold-blooded animal should, and that it's nearly forty-percent mammalian, even having the body shape of a tiger. Downplayed a bit because the liquid nitrogen she tries to use to kill the Kothoga doesn't have much effect, suggesting she was wrong.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: A beetle consumes some of the Kothoga fungus and promptly grows to the size of a football, our first hint at the mutagenic properties of the stuff.
• Black Dude Dies First: The black security guard Frederick Ford (played by the same actor who is the raptors' appetizer in Jurassic Park) is the first to get it.
• Bioweapon Beast: The Kothoga is actually this: the tribe uses the plants to mutate someone into the Kothoga, then cut them off the plant it needs to survive so it will have to kill their enemies to get the hormones from their brains.
• Brain Food: The Kothoga. Human brains aren't its first choice, though; it prefers to eat the plants from the Amazon used as packing material in some specimen crates, which have much higher concentrations of the hormones and such it needs. The events of the novel happen because the crates are moved to a more secure area of the basement after a curator notices they've been broken into, forcing it to search for alternatives (read: brains).
• Buxom Beauty Standard: The Mayor proudly boasts that his wife's cleavage won him the last election.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': The museum security guard decides to take a smoke break in one of the washrooms with a joint... and ends up ripped to shreds as the monster's first victim. D'Agosta thinks getting decapitated and flayed apart is a little overkill for just smoking pot though.
• Cat Scare:
  • A cat is aboard the cargo ship. It serves to make the audience jump and to once again point out that D'Agosta is superstitious.
  • Margo is wandering through the museum's not-yet open "Superstition" gallery after closing when she hears something moving nearby. She rushes to hide in the washroom, with the sound getting closer and closer... but it turns out it was just the janitor.
  • A pair of police officers sweeping the museum hear something ahead of them, one gets nervous and pulls his gun. When something appears in front of them, he unloads his entire magazine without a second thought, killing a random homeless man. Thank goodness that homeless man turned out to have been an ax-wielding serial rapist or else that would've been a tremendously horrible mistake.
• Cats Are Mean: The Kothoga is a monstrous, vaguely reptilian, cat-like thing with tiger DNA making up 40% of its genome. It's also a vicious killing machine with a special taste for human hypothalmus.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: By the time police finally manage to bust through the steel doors locking down the museum and rush in with a large, heavily-armed squad, all of the remaining guests have managed to escape through the sewer lines and Margo has already killed the Kothoga. Way to be useful guys.
• Chekhov's Gun: The maceration tank and the storage area Margo walks D'Agosta through, as well as the flesh-eating beetles the museum uses to clean their animal bones, and the old coal tunnels that connect the city's harbour to the museum.
• Composite Character: The film version of D'Agosta contains characteristics of both his novel counterpart as well as the novel-exclusive Aloysius X.L. Pendergast.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Kothoga’s method of killing is a VERY horrible and nasty way to go...
• Deal with the Devil: Frock states that the Kothoga's mythological basis was that it was created as the son of Satan from a pact made with the Zenzera tribe. How a long-lost remote Amazonian tribe knew about Satan is up for debate, although it's possible Frock is just equivocating their "evil god" figure with a more well-known figure of Christianity.
• Death by Adaptation: Lee/Kawakita and Frock.
• Decomposite Character: D'Agosta's part in the last act of the book is largely taken over by Hollingsworth in the film, with D'Agosta filling Pendergast's role.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the original book, the monster was killed due to Margo shining a light on a weak point of it, giving Pendergast an opening to shoot it dead. In the film, she lights it on fire and then has it blown up, because that's far more cinematic than just shot.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Discussed. One of the CSI guys makes a joke about the fact security guard Frederick Ford had been smoking a joint when he was killed, and D'Agosta points out that smoking marijuana is only a misdemeanor, and that "decapitation is a little over the line," saying Ford didn't deserve to die for smoking one lousy joint.
• Dr. Jerk: Dr. Lee throws his hat in against Margo for a grant he doesn't even need (and she will have to close down without) and then to up his odds of getting said grant, he has her "accidentally" locked into the labs during the party so he can brown nose the benefactors in peace.
• Drugs Are Bad: The Kothoga's first victim is the black museum security guard who sneaks into the washroom for a marijuana smoke (in the novel, its first victims are a pair of little boys). So let that be a warning to the audience: if you do drugs, you'll have your brain eaten by a mutant reptilian beast.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Past the opening prologue in Brazil, the rest of the movie takes place over about three days. What's especially silly is how quickly the story seems to think police investigations take, with the characters apparently thinking it'll all be done with in less than a day, when usually they take months or even years.
• Failed a Spot Check: The investigation on the Brazilian ghost ship drifting in Lake Michigan apparently didn't find any bodies until D'Agosta shows up. That only seems to be because nobody looked that hard despite the repulsive odour emanating from within because the ship's bilge is filled with dozens of ripped-apart, rotting corpses.
• Finagle's Law: Right as the detectives find the murderer really hasn't been caught, a new body falls right into the middle of the big gala, causing a stampede of guests as everyone tries to leave. Randomly, at the exact same time, the museum's security system goes completely crazy with no way to override it and locks everyone inside the building, then the power suddenly goes out, and then the sprinklers suddenly turn on. And then the Kothoga starts hunting...
• Foreshadowing:
  • D'Agosta jokes that the storage area would be a bad place to light a match.
  • At the beginning of the film, Dr. Whitney is desperate to find the crates he's shipping from the Amazon to the Field Museum on the tanker. At first, it seems to be because he knows there's a monster or something inside and is trying to find it before it gets loose, but in hindsight it's more likely because his Horror Hunger for hormones is starting.
  • Also the fact that his crates were never on the ship to begin with; they were accidentally left behind and ended up being delivered to the museum by air. This again foreshadows the reveal that Whitney is the monster rather than some animal that was accidentally carried onboard.
  • Detective Hollingsworth initially thinks the ship massacre in the beginning of the movie was a "drug hit" and whoever did it found what they came for. Later in the film, it's shown he's technically correct in a roundabout way, because the monster needs certain hormones to survive and it killed all the ship's crew to eat their brains for the hormones.
• Gender Flip: Dr. Ian Cuthbert from the original novel becomes Ann Cuthbert.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Margo calls Greg a gerbil.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The natives who knowingly tricked Dr. Whitney into ingesting a serum that would turn him into a horrible man-eating beast. Why did they did isn't made clear, since by all accounts John was respectful towards them.
• Guns Are Worthless: In this case it's because any time someone that has a gun is faced with the monster, the gun will either be jammed or the character will completely forget they have a gun and either fire blindly at nothing or drop their gun and run away. In the novel, the monster was simply so tough it was effectively bullet-proof (except for its eyes).
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The Kothoga rips a member of the SWAT team in half as his squad mates try to pull him to safety.
• Hard on Soft Science: Margo doesn't see any worth in Dr. Whitney's anthropological expeditions.
• Hollywood Darkness: Deliberately averted, almost to an unwatchable degree as it's very difficult to see much for the second half of the movie. Long story short, blame the home video producers. Thankfully, the Blu-Ray release is far better and more accurate to the theatrical cut.
• Horror Hunger: For human hypothalamus.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Mcnally is seemingly killed when the monster throws him through a glass display case, as he's seen lying still with a piece of glass sticking through his neck.
  • It’s not the best way to die but given how the Kothoga performs his kills? he was very lucky to go out that way.
• Incendiary Exponent: Margo manages to light the Kothoga on fire with chemicals. This only results in it continuing to chase her while completely on fire and it only dies when caught in a huge explosion that blows it to bits.
• Indy Hat Roll: Panicked party guests try to flee the museum as the security doors are activated. Some don't make it and are caught and crushed by the steel doors. Seeing as what the rest were trapped with, they were probably the lucky ones.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Dr. Frock refuses to let D'Agosta and Margo take him everywhere due to the urgency of the matter and how much his wheelchair is slowing them down, in spite of how aware he is of the dangers of remaining alone.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Averted in the novel, as the first museum victims are two young boys who wander off in a closed area. The movie turns and plays it straight though, changing the boys to the discoverers of the body and the victim becomes the old black security guard.
  • The Kothoga encounters a dog, but ignores it because it doesn't have a suitable hypothalamus to consume. This is in contrast to the novel, where one of the monster's earliest museum killings is a dog (since the monster still has to eat food along with hormones).
• Idiot Ball: The police officer in charge of the police dogs. When he sees one of his dogs has been brutally killed by something unseen right in front of them, gets hysterical and runs blindly into the darkness alone after the other dog. Unsurprisingly, he's almost immediately killed by the Kothoga. Then his decapitated corpse falls into the gala and sparks a panic.
• It Can Think: Kothoga is able to recognize traps, hide bodies, and do what it can to stay out of sight from humans, justified by the fact that it used to be human itself.
• The Juggernaut: The Kothoga is so strong, powerful, and durable meaningfully slowing it down is a task onto itself. Best highlighted late into the film when its chasing Margo and plows through doors and walls without even slowing down. Even setting the dang thing on fire with chemicals isn't enough to kill it and it takes actually being blown to bits to finally put it down.
• Kill It with Fire: Margo takes out the Kothoga by setting a lab on fire. Played With, as the fire itself only results in her being chased by a flaming Kothoga, and it takes the following explosion to finally kill it.
• Kill It with Ice: Margo attempts to utilize cold against the Kothoga. While not enough to kill it, it's one of the only things that can affect it at all.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Dr. Lee is Margo's coworker, who continuously snubs her for no apparent reason other than personal pettiness. Guess what? He ends up becoming one of the Kothoga's victims, while Margo is the one to kill the monster in the end.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Kothoga is incredibly strong, fast, and can tank bullets with next to no damage.
• Lockdown: The damaged security system effectively locks everyone in the museum with the monster, with this being triggered by the mad dash of people trying to get out, many of them too slowly, breaking things and setting off alarms.
• Mauve Shirt:
  • The museum security guards are all killed easily by the creature but get faint characterization.
  • CPD officer Evans and Bradley the K-9 cop, who both get some prominence accompanying D'Agosta and his partner into the tunnels, getting some characterization and useful moments in the process. Evans survives the movie despite having not really appeared beforehand, or having much to do afterwards. Bradley is less lucky.
• Menacing Museum: A giant mutated beast called the Kothoga is on the loose in the Chicago Museum of Natural History, chomping up people and leaving their much-bitten bodies lying around it in the run up to the gala.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • During DNA analysis of the giant beetle she kills, Margo findsHemidactylus turcicus genes mixed in with the beetle's genes. Hemidactylus turcicus is the Mediterranean house gecko; as its name implies it's from the Mediterranean, and, although it's also invasive in many countries, it's not known from South America, so there's no reason why the Amazonian fungus should have its DNA spliced in.
  • Later, Margo analyzes the DNA of the Kothoga and finds it has Lophosaurus boydii (Boyd's forest dragon), Panthera tigris braziliae (the Brazilian tiger), and Lucanus cervus (European stag beetle) DNA, along with the aforementioned gecko. None of these animals are found anywhere near South America; the "Brazilian" tiger doesn't even exist.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Kothoga is a chimera created by a mutagenic fungus mashing up the genetic structures of reptiles, insects, tiger, and humans. How exactly the fungus does this or even why it does this isn't properly explained.
• Monster Delay: It isn't until around thirty-nine minutes in that we get the first glimpse of the monster, and even then just a faint outline in the shadows. And then it's another half an hour before there's another appearance and, again, it's just a glimpse of its outline for just a second. It takes an hour and twenty minutes into the film until the audience gets their first decent look at the Kothoga. And even then, it's still shown only in very brief shots and almost always in shadow. Only in the last ten minutes is the Kothoga shown relatively clearly in extended shots.
• Monstrous Mandibles: The Kothoga has a huge pair of mandibles due to possessing stag beetle DNA, which are very useful killing tools for decapitating its prey and then removing the brain.
• National Geographic Nudity: In the opening, Dr. Whitney is in the company of South American natives who wear little to no clothes.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Bailey and McNally are fairly competent, likeable guys, but by finding a homeless guy with a record for violent crimes (who Bailey shoots when the man charges at them) they convince the mayor and museum officials that there is no more threat to worry about, causing the gala to go forward.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The Kothoga is just trying to survive by the new diet it has been given. This is in contrast to the novel where the characters speculate the beast has already been sated, but continues to hunt because it's become enraged at being shot at.
• Obscured Special Effects: Any time the Kothoga is onscreen, it's always shrouded in near complete darkness to hide most of its appearance.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Tom Parkinson, due to being a loud-mouth who ignores the warnings of D'Agosta of the case not being closed.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: The Kothoga, more so than the book: Mbwun was recognizably human once, with saurian legs and tail, a gorilla-like head and apelike facial features. Kothoga still has the saurian legs and tail, but the head looks like a Lovecraftian cross between a lizard, a tiger, an insect, a Xenomorph, a Yautja, and deep-sea fish. It also definitely had a lizard-like tongue.
• Outrun the Fireball: Featuring the slowest moving explosion of all time.
• Overly-Long Tongue: The Kothoga has one, as shown when it uses it to taste Margo (including her breasts...) when it has her cornered and is sampling her before trying to eat her.
• Off with His Head!: The Kothoga's mandibles make it able to easily chop heads off from its victims, which is its preferred killing method.
• Perpetual-Motion Monster: One noticeable change from the novel is the fact the monster only seems to need to eat hormones to survive, unlike the version in the book where it still needs to eat food like any other animal, and it keeps a larder of its victims in the sewers under the museum.
• Pet the Dog: Inverted. The Kothoga kills one of the Police German Shepherds possibly out of self-defense because he viewed the dog as a threat and then kills Bradley who was the handlers of dogs. Unfortunately in the Kothoga’s murder of Bradley his flashlight falls to the ground and reveals the other dog in the corner whimpering and cowering in fear realizing that he’s next but the Kothoga spares the poor old dog realizing that he’s not worth it and because the dog’s brain is insufficient to provide the hormones he needs.
• Plot Hole: The movie places the first murder and the break-in for the crates on the same night. If the Kothoga had gotten to the crates, why did it need to kill?
• Police Are Useless: The SWAT team sent in are immediately picked off one by one by the Kothoga. None of them even attempt to shoot it and apparently sending them in one at a time is not a good idea. Averted with D'Agosta, Hollingsworth, Bailey, McNally, Evans, and Bradley, who are all more diligent in investigating the museum and/or evacuating the guests.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Lee, who seemingly stays behind as the other guests are evacuating just to try and schmooze a pair of important museum sponsors, and earlier locked a colleague in her office in order to have more opportunities to do the same.
• Rage Against the Reflection: The Kothoga breaks every mirror it comes across because it doesn't like being reminded that it isn't human anymore.
• Recycled In Space: It’s essentially “Jaws meets Alien; in a Museum”, particularly in its subplot of the police detective clashing over bureaucrats wanting to keep the museum open, despite the danger.
• Send in the Search Team: The SWAT team sent into the museum to rescue those trapped and kill the Kothoga. The first few to enter are swiftly killed by the Kothoga, forcing the rest to hang back.
• Skewed Priorities: One of the museum's security guards is horribly killed and ripped apart in one of the washrooms, the killer is at large, possibly still within the building, and the first thing the museum's curator asks the police is if it will negatively affect the new exhibition gala opening tomorrow night. Talk about a lack of empathy...
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Although Cuthbert didn't die in the original book, he was Driven to Madness by the end. The version here fares a lot better.
  • In the novel, the monster's first victims were a pair of little boys who wandered into the museum. The film changes them into the ones who find the body of the first victim (who's an adult) instead.
  • The tribe that fed Dr. Whitney the hormones that turned him into the Kothoga. In the novel, it's mentioned that their village and the only known source of the hormones ended up being illegally deforested, so wiping out all natural traces of the monster's origins. The film omits these details, likely for brevity.
• Stock Scream: Greg lets out a Howie Scream as he's being killed by the Kothoga.
• Super-Persistent Predator: At one point, the Kothoga sees several characters down the hallway and charges at them, only for a heavy metal door to be shut in its way just before it reaches them. The monster nevertheless tries ramming the door down, striking it with so much force it partly knocks the door off its hinges, leaves craters in the steel, and injuries itself so badly that its blood starts to pool under the door. Only at that point does it give up. However, at the end of the film, the Kothoga continues pursuing Margo even after its body is set completely ablaze and prioritizes trying to get her over escaping the explosion that's rapidly engulfing the room.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Margo's profession as an evolutionary biologist turns out to be vitally important for determining the monster's origin, possible weaknesses, and motives.
• Those Two Guys: Officers Bailey and McNally, with their partnership and banter, to the point where they're reluctant to split up during the climax.
• Too Dumb to Live: Parkinson, Lee and the wealthy married guests who stay behind in the exhibition area while everyone else including the Mayor evacuates through the sewers. You would think after seeing the body of a headless Police Officer fall from the ceiling and along with being ordered by a extremely competent and experienced Detective to get out through the sewers that they would listen and get the hell out of dodge to safety right? No, they choose to stay and wait for the rescue team to break through the doors despite the fact they know a violent murderer is loose somewhere in the building. Any guesses what happens to them all next?
• Tragic Monster: Kothoga, once its full origin is revealed.
• Trapped-with-Monster Plot: The museum's security system ends up malfunctioning, resulting in everyone getting trapped inside with a horrible, brain-eating, reptilian beast. A common comparison for the latter half of the film is that the story is Alien, but set in a museum!
• The Unreveal: The museum's security system suddenly and randomly starts going totally haywire just as everyone starts stampeding out of the gala. The security control room workers think someone must be messing with the computers, but this never leads to any explanation, other than for a cheap and easy way for the characters to be stuck inside the museum with the Kothoga.
• Vader Breath: The Kothoga makes a distinctive wheezing noise when it breathes. The implication seems to be that it is in excruciating pain as a result of its transformation and that consuming hormones is the only way to alleviate it.
• Villain of Another Story: The homeless man who was killed by the cops was a serial rapist and an actual murderer.
• Viral Transformation: The retrovirus creates monsters out of anything that ingests it by inserting saurian and reptilian DNA into host cells; but the victim needs a steady supply of specialized hormones to retain its new form, the victim-turned-monster; in order to acquire these hormones, the victim must go right to the richest source available and eat the hypothalamus of its victims or go mad from the pain of being unable to sustain its new form.
• Wall Crawl: The Kothoga has the ability to do this, even walking upside-down on the ceiling momentarily, implied to be because it has gecko DNA.
• Was Once a Man: The Kothoga. It turns out that it's Dr. John Whitney himself, now horribly mutated into a brain-eating monstrosity.

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