Film Friday: Lost in Space (1998)

Arg. This film frustrates me on so many levels. So much potential. So much wasted potential. Yet, despite the overall lousiness of this film, it’s still disturbingly better than 90% of what Hollywood is making today. That’s really frustrating.

The Plot

Lost in Space is the big screen adaptation of the 1960s television show of the same name. The film involves the Robinson family who are shot into space aboard the Jupiter II spacecraft with the goal of reaching a nearby planet and creating a hypergate which will allow people to travel back and forth. The reason they want to do this is because the Earth’s resources are exhausted blah blah blah. Anyway, some mutant terrorists (“Global Sedition”) pay scientist Dr. Zachary Smith to sabotage the Jupiter II. But Smith ends up stuck on board when it happens. And when the robot he programmed to destroy the ship lets loose, the whole ship ends up shot off randomly into deep space. Now the Robinsons are lost and they have no idea where they are or how to get home.

Arg Will Robinson, Arg

This film is so wrong on so many levels. Consider the acting. The film stars William Hurt as Prof. John Robinson and Gary Oldman as Dr. Smith. That’s good. There is real talent there. But then they cast fricken Joey from Friends as Major Don West. Joey? Give me a break. Who thought putting Joey into a film was a good idea? The guy should be waiting tables.

Opposite Joey is Heather Graham, who plays the older daughter Judy. She’s pretty pointless, as are the other women, and she has zero chemistry with narcissist Joey. Unfortunately, their “relationship” forms a big chunk of the dialog. Even worse, the youngest son Will is played by Generic Child Actor-bot, and rather than focus on Hurt or Oldman, he becomes the central focus of the film. What a waste.

The writing is awful too. It’s full of first-grade dialog and stolen clichés: “Your father’s battle strategies were required reading at the Academy.” Ahhh! I swear I am going to punch the next person who puts that line into a film. Seriously. Stop. And the dialog in the “touching” father-son scenes, the point to the story, is as bad as anything Lucas scribbled together in his prequel romance scenes... “Sand. . . it gets in stuff. I hate my coworkers. You smell perdy.” //rolls eyes

In fact, this whole focus on the father-son relationship is a plot killer. Rather than being a story about the Robinsons encountering some new and fantastic worlds or alien terrors, the story devolves into a time-window story where older Will Robinson must come to realize that his father does love him. And to make this happen, work-obsessed William Hurt must realize that he actually needs to speak to his son once in a while. Arg. The whole thing feels so trite, so cliché and so unreal and it drags the ending down. Well, not the “ending” ending, as that’s about Joey flying them through a planet... duh, me no understand physics... but it does wipe out the thirty minutes before the ending.

Arg.... arg.

When this film came out, I hated it. It felt like such a wasted opportunity. It was poorly written with a weak plot and it felt stupid. It compared so poorly to then-recent films like Dark City, Star Trek VI and First Contact, Fifth Element, Event Horizon and others, with The Matrix coming out a few months later. But you know what? As bad as this sucker seemed at the time, it’s actually better than most of the science fiction put out since.

It’s got some good actors. The effects are very good; I would say they rival anything you see today in the age of CGI. The spaceships look good. The aliens look good. There are some cool technological advances, which always make these stories feel complete. The robot is impressive. The sets are believable. The costumes are good too. And parts of the plot are quite fun.

For example, the setup is a good one and moves well. It’s enjoyable. After they get lost in space, they come to an alien spaceship, and that’s enjoyable too. Indeed, that whole scene is very satisfying, even if it is stolen from several prior films. The way they approach the ship, stolen from The Black Hole, has a great feel to it and comes across as realistic science fiction. The discovery of a ghost ship is always exciting. The mixing of time zones, with a message from the future is a good one too. It adds solid depth to the story. Then the scene with them fleeing the spiders and the use of the robot to fend off the spiders is excellent... if also rather cliché, but it’s done well.

The rest of the plot is weak, but it doesn’t offend you or anything, and it has a science fiction flavor combined with enough action to keep your interest; basically, 50% of the film is a fairly decent science fiction film and the rest is just a lifeless-but-watchable father-son drama set against a science fiction backdrop. Sadly, that makes this film more enjoyable than so much science fiction that came after: Mission to Mars, Planet/Rise of the Apes, the Star Wars prequels, Terminator 3/Salvation, the Matrix sequels, I Am Legend, etc. Oh, the pain... the pain.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Film Friday: The Village (2004)

I wanted to like The Village so much. After The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and even Signs, M. Night Shyamalan had won me over, even if his films weren’t as well received by the public as they should have been. But The Village never worked. It started well, but it fell apart quickly and it just kept getting worse.

** heavy spoiler alert **

The Plot

The Village is an odd story about a group of people who live in a village surrounded by a vast forest. The film appears to take place in the 1880s or in a world where humanity has been reduced to the technological and cultural level of the 1880s. Indeed, these people have no modern machinery, no cars, no electricity and no modern medicine. They also dress like Mennonite farmers and they talk like caricatures of the 1880s. The story centers around Ivy Elizabeth Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), who can best be described as Tom Sawyer in a dress. Ivy is the daughter of the village leader Edward Walker (William Hurt), and she is blind.

As the story begins, we are told that the forest is controlled by evil creatures the villagers call “Those We Do Not Speak Of.” These creatures wear red cloaks and look something like wild boars. And apparently, there is some truce which involves the villagers staying out of the forest so the monsters won’t raid the village. But then there is an attack. In the meantime, a love story has arisen between Ivy and Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix). Lucius wants to brave the forest to get medicine from some nearby town to stop children from dying from common illnesses. The village elders forbid this. But then Lucius gets stabbed by Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), a retarded man. He is dying. So the elders decide to let Ivy venture to the town to get medicine to save him. That’s when the “big” secret gets revealed.

The Problems

Like I said, I wanted to like this film a lot. And the beginning of the film has a neat vibe to it that does present you with an interesting world that pulls you into the story, even if the dialog feels oddly stilted. Soon, however, the plot falls off the rails. And the reason it does this is because Shyamalan couldn’t decide what he really wanted to make. Did he want a horror movie? A romance? A tale of evil? A psychological thriller? Yeah, sort of.

The ultimate problem with The Village is that Shyamalan never picks a single genre which will drive the film. Instead, the film meanders between genres. By failing to pick a dominant genre, Shyamalan ends up creating a film which dabbles in several genres but never does any of them effectively. For example, the idea of the creatures in the woods is truly terrifying. And when they first appear, you really do get the makings of a heck of a horror movie. But that idea resolves itself without ever delivering a real bang. The romance between Ivy and Lucius starts well enough as well. You like both characters and you see how their relationship will ultimately prove to be satisfying once they overcome the obstacles in their path. This is a classic romantic premise and you feel like you are on your way to an exceptional romance. But that never goes anywhere either.

Both of these storylines basically stop when Lucius gets stabbed. At that point, a new storyline begins which asks whether or not the people who created the village have done something truly evil to the kids who are stuck in the village. But frustratingly, the film never delves into that either. It sets it up and it spends a few minutes batting the idea back and forth, but before this issue can be explored to any degree, the film shifts to Ivy walking through the woods to save Lucius.

This is a storytelling disaster. At each phase, you are presented with a story that you instinctively know has been very well setup and could be a great story – a horror film, a romance, and psychological thriller/tale of evil. But each time, right after the setup, the film cuts off that storyline and starts a new one. Thus, you get a horror film which becomes a romance before it unleashes any horror, and the romance becomes a psychological thriller before it give you any romantic payoff, and the psychological thriller morphs into “blind girl walking through the woods” before the issues are even fully established. This is highly frustrating.

For one thing, this wastes all the investment in the horror and romance storylines because they prove meaningless to the story. For another, the blind girl walking through the woods is the weakest storyline, so focusing on that is a huge mistake. Moreover, if anything in this film could be called a common theme, it is the storyline questioning whether or not the adults have been justified in their deceptions. That is the only storyline that really is relevant in each part of the film. BUT, once their deception is revealed, i.e. right when you expect the payoff to this story, the film shifts to blind girl walks through the woods, and all the questions that were raised by the actions of the adults get dropped, if they even got asked. This is like watching the first two thirds of a Twilight Zone only to have the last third be replaced by something from another drama. It’s completely unsatisfying.

Further, this structure undermines the big twist Shyamalan drops at the end. When the blind girl makes it through the forest, we suddenly learn the BIG secret about the adults. This secret is meant to shock the audience and to cast everything the audience has seen in a new light. But because this relates to the storyline which was already dropped by the time the secret is revealed, it lacks punch. A twist simply won’t work when it doesn’t relate to the story that is on people’s minds at the moment, and when this twist arises, the only thing the audience is left with is “girl walking through the woods.” Each of the other stories ended by that point.

Mixing genres is one of the hardest things to do in storytelling. Unless you really are an expert in both genres and you are a talented enough storyteller to bring those two storylines together seamlessly, then what you end up with is a story that is neither fish nor fowl and satisfies no one. Shyamalan’s problem is in the mixing. Indeed, his problem isn’t that he couldn’t have told a horror story, a romance, or a psychological thriller. Clearly he could, as each of these started quite promisingly. But rather than weave them together to create one overall film, he just runs them in series and cuts them off when he needs to start the next one. Thus, you end up with three partial stories and one complete story, none of which satisfy. Had Shyamalan actually brought them all together, The Village might have been his best film. Instead, it was just another Shyamalan film that didn’t live up to the hype.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Film Friday: Dark City (1998)

Today we take a look at an amazing and underrated science fiction flim: Dark City. Written and directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow, I, Robot), Dark City is a combination film-noir crime story and creepy, shocking science fiction story, which explores what makes us who we are. If you haven’t seen Dark City, you should. You should also check out Roger Ebert's commentary on the DVD -- it will give you a whole new level of respect for the film, for filmmaking as a craft, and even for Ebert's knowledge of films.

** spoiler alert **

One of the things that makes science fiction so great compared to other genres is its ability to ask truly deep philosophical questions without becoming a dry dissertation. Indeed, unlike most genres, science fiction can weave these questions seamlessly into storylines and use fantastic devices, creatures, or environments to play out the possibilities without ever losing the story element that people expect in entertainment. Dark City does this expertly. It also has a first rate plot, characters, and sets, plus its story moves quickly and surprisingly, and it keeps the viewer engaged from start to finish.

The Plot

Have you ever woken up next to the body of a dead hooker? John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) has. But did he kill her? As he struggles to wake up, the phone rings. He answers it. He is warned to run as men are coming for him. He flees. But Murdoch can’t remember who he is, and he’s haunted by images of a beach. We soon meet Murdoch’s wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and police detective Bumstead (William Hurt), who is tracking Murdoch. But things are not right with them either. This case doesn't add up to Bumstead, but he can’t put his finger on why. The detective who worked the case before him has gone insane.

As the story unfolds, we learn that the world is not what it seems. It is always night. At midnight, everyone falls asleep -- except for Murdoch and the very strange Dr. Schreber (Keifer Sutherland), the man who warned John to flee. While they sleep, the city changes around them. Buildings expand or shrink. And a group of dark leather clad albinos (the Strangers) roam the city, and with the help of Schreber, inject people with a strange mixture. When the people awake, they have new lives -- new jobs, new families, new memories.

We soon learn the city is a sort of lab. The Strangers are manipulating people’s lives in an attempt to understand the human soul. To that end, they are mixing people’s personalities, their emotions, and their lives, and monitoring the results. Murdoch, who seems to have some of the powers possessed by the Strangers, is the only one who can stop them.

Are We Ourselves?

Beyond the plot itself, Dark City explores the question of what makes us who we are? Most of us think we know who we are, but do we really? Are we the product of our memories or are we something more? Are you sure? What would happen if the next time you woke up, you no longer had your memories, would you be the same person or would someone new emerge? What if rather than having no memories, you had someone else’s memories? Would you become that person?

Dark City delves into this question head on. Night after night, the Strangers mix people’s memories, adding a little of this to a little to that. One day you’re a bank President, the next you’re a cop. One day you have a family, the next you’ve always been single. This process is called “imprinting.” As the story develops, Murdoch and Bumstead learn about the imprinting. They realize that nothing they know is true, i.e. all their memories are fake. Indeed, they know nothing at all. They don’t know where they are, what year it is, or who they are. Even their families are not really their families.

Bumstead is a cop. . . or is he? He has no idea who he was the day before last, or the one before that, or before that. And now that he knows this, is he still a cop just because he was a cop when he realized the truth? He acts that way. In fact, despite suddenly realizing that the whole world is fake, he continues to act in the exact way he's been programmed. Perhaps that's the only way for him to remain sane? Murdoch wakes up next to the dead hooker, holding a bloody knife. Did he kill her? He doesn't actually know. But does it matter since he was given the motivation to kill her? Does that make him a killer or just a tool? And is there a difference?

Interestingly, when Murdoch learns that his memories have all been implanted, he consciously rejects those memories because he knows they are fake. BUT, he clings to one memory in particular from “his” youth. This memory, of a beach, obsesses him -- even though he has no way to know if it’s any more real than the other memories (and likely isn’t). He also finds himself drawn to Emma, even though she is not really his wife. Thus, on the one hand, he consciously rejects the idea that he has become what the Strangers made him, i.e. he rejects the idea that his memories make him who he is and he claims to have the power to define himself, BUT he ultimately builds his new life upon foundations that the Strangers put in place and thereby proves that he remains a prisoner of those memories.

And that gets us to the take away question from the film. Are we simply a collection of the things we've learned and experienced, or are we something separate and apart? If you took away those memories and experiences would we still be us or would be become someone new? Oh, and lest you think this question is just a theoretical musing, it is worth noting that science is catching up to science fiction. Not only has it become apparent that you can plant memories in people, but science developed a pill that wipes out specific memories.

Perhaps the world of Dark City isn’t as far off as it seems?

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...