TITLE & REVIEW
Space truckers Jason London (
Mallrats
) and
Missy Crider
are having a secret affair.
This is against company policy,
because they spend a lot of time together while trucking ore from Titan to Earth.
The ship's computer wakens them from cryo-sleep, and they find themselves in a nightmare situation. The ship has been going off-course for ten months, because the two crew members who were on duty went crazy and killed each other. It turns out that they got infected by an alien virus. Before they died they boobytrapped the ship. The AI was reprogrammed by the corrupt MegaCorp that owns the ship, who would rather claim the insurance money than try to save the crew. There is less than ten hours worth of power for life support.
Luckily, Alan Dale ( Lost ) is on a research vessel within a few light minutes travel. The rescue ship might arrive within ten hours, but that is slightly too late to save everyone.
The science is relatively well done in this movie. No film has ever been 100%, but for a low-budget effort they certainly did their best. We may not have alien microbes, cryosleep or artificial intelligence computers in real life, but things like the time delays for communications across interplanetary distances are taken into account. A distance that takes nine minutes for light (or radio waves) to travel takes a nine MONTHS for a starship to travel. The writer certainly did a decent job.
This is a low-budget space opera,
courtesy of zero-budget B-movie studio The Asylum.
Although it is not part of the actual
Star Wars
series, and simply uses the name as a copycat cash-in,
the truth is that this is a lot less disappointing than the Disney trilogy.
It is a time of Civil War. The Galactic Coalition has become tyranical, so the rebels flee to a planet called Haven. The peace-keepers, known as Paladins instead of Jedi, have split allegiences. While loyal to the Coalition, the Evil Overlord who now rules it is the one they are being hunted and killed off by.
The Evil Overlord's daughter, the feisty Princess, is kept prisoner aboard his flagship. She manages to escape without being rescued, by reprogramming one of the Coalition's fembots. Not only do the androids convincingly pass for human, they have built-in hologram projectors ... and they can teleport. Yes, with an army of robots like this it is a wonder that the Coalition is so vulnerable.
The biggest difference between this and the real Star Wars saga? Well, the Galaxy Far Far Away is filled with ugly-looking aliens, whereas this movie was cast with the most unbelievably attractive humans that could be hired on the sub-poverty wages the producers offered. All men are ruggedly handsome, all women are slender blondes.
The opening title cards give us the necessary exposition.
Earth became polluted,
so the rich people abandoned the planet
and flew off to colonise Kepler-9.
Generations later they sent home a probe ship,
the Ulysses, which never reported back.
Decades later a second mission is sent,
led by Louise (
Nora Arnezeder
).
Louise and her crew crash-land on Earth, where they are captured by primitive barbarians who live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. She finds out what happened to the crew of the original Ulysses mission - Commander Gibson (Iain Glenn - Lara Croft ) and her father (Sebastian Roche - Odyssey 5 ).
The twist is pretty obvious. The Ulysses missions were intended to begin preparations for the colonisation of Earth. As in the usual anti-colonial propaganda, such as Avatar , the colonists are meant to be the bad guys. One thing this lot do is they force young girls to get an education. Yes, this villainy - the same cultural Imperialism that was forced upon Malala by Oxbridge University - is highlighted for the true evil that it is!
Louise may not be an action movie hero, but she turns out to be a very effective killer. Not in exciting and spectacular stunt sequences, but in a couple of brutal and nasty kills. All in all, this is quite downbeat and unappealing.
Planet Earth has become a Third World ghetto,
while all the rich people live in a massive space station called Elysium.
The greatest inequality is in terms of healthcare -
the poor suffer and die in misery,
while the rich have MRI machines that can heal lethal injuries!
Ex-convict Matt Damon ( Dogma ) tries to straighten out his life so he can be with Alice Braga . But he gets screwed over by his boss, the suit-wearing William Fichtner ( Lone Ranger ). Damon tries to even the score by pulling a Johnny Mnemonic style brain-heist.
Unfortunately, Fichtner was in league with Defence Secretary Jodie Foster , who sends bloodthirsty mercenary Sharlto Copely ( District 9 ) after him.
This is a Canadian Made-for-TV from 1999.
As such it is low budget,
and features a number of familiar faces.
The story starts in the run-up to the first manned mission to Mars. As the astronauts are shot off into orbit, we are given insight into the characters by means of TV broadcasts of interviews with them. Kavan Smith ( Stargate Atlantis ) is a Russian, while Michael Shanks ( Stargate SG-1 ) is an architect.
This is not Apollo 13 - they do not have one big incident, but lots of little ones.
This was produced by Andrew Stevens.
Filmed in 1998, it seems somewhat out of date.
Especially since it is set in the then-future,
the far-off year of 2015.
Russia is at war with its neighbour, the former soviet republic of Tajikistan. However, the USA has not put an embargo on the warlike Russians. Quite the opposite, they have invited three Russian astronauts to NASA so they can get a lift on space shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station.
The ISS has a very spacious interior, and comes equipped with full Earth-type gravity. Unfortunately it is also easy to hijack. The Russians did not do a proper background check on their astronauts. Federov (Frank Zagarino - ) and the others were born in Tajikistan. Of course, Federov already had a top security clearance because he designed the Russians' orbital weapons system. Now he is in command of the space station he can activate the system.
Nobody in an American audience cares about Russian cities, so the hijackers threaten to destroy an American city instead unless the Russian military withdraws from Tajikistan. The US government sends a rescue mission, including disgraced Space Shuttle pilot JJ (Daniel Baldwin - ).
The bad news is that Earth is entering a new ice ade.
The good news is that an Alien stargate mysteriously arrived in Earth's obit,
creating a wormhole to a new star system
where time somehow travelled at a faster pace.
Bran (Stephen Moyer - True Blood ), an Earthling with a low-quality space pod, discovers a derelict supply ship and decides to salvage it. Unfortunately there is a survivor, and she thinks the Earthling is a saboteur.
Our protagonist has flashbacks to his life on Earth, a post-apocalyptic hell-hole where nobody could be trusted. Luckily he had Henry (John Rhys Davies - Raiders of the Lost Ark ) for company.
The mysterious Decker (Casper Van Dien - Starship Troopers ) is also aboard the ship. Will he turn out to be a nasty piece of work?
The International Space Station is crewed by a bunch of pretty people.
They include the cliched American hero type (Ryan Reynolds -
Green Lantern
), the quiet American backup hero (Jake Gyllenhall -
Donnie Darko
), the token babe (
Rebecca Ferguson
) and the token Asian man (Hiroyuki Sanada -
Sunshine
).
Our heroes have an important job to do. They indulge in some derring-do in order to save a space probe. Much like the scoop probe in Andromeda Strain , it has collected a sample of microscopic alien life. Also like that film, the alien life grows and behaves in an unexpected manner.
As more serious science fiction movies of recent years ( Gravity, The Martian ) have already proven, the idea of an accident in space is scary in and of itself. This film could have been just as good, if not actually better, without the presence of a CGI space-octopus killing people off.
This is set aboard a sub-light colony ship en route to another star system.
Chris Pratt (
Guardians of the Galaxy
) wakes up in his cryo-pod,
ninety years before the ship is due to reach its destination.
He spends the next year of his life re-enacting scenes from
The Martian
. If you would prefer a comparison to Castaway,
instead of Wilson the football he has Michael Sheen (
Underworld
) the robotic bartender.
The second act hots up when, driven insane by the loneliness, he decides to defrost his fellow passenger Jennifer Lawrence . She gets first billing and a third more money than Pratt, but she is a bigger star so the studio must have thought she was worth it. Not only is the advertising somewhat deceptive, since she is basically a hanger-on in someone else's story, but Pratt's character deceives her and pretends that her awakening was also an accident.
The climactic third act manages to neatly tie everything up. A little bit too neatly, it turns out. There is nothing about the story that is logical, and nothing about the telling of it that is challenging or original. The characters spend months wandering around a starship that is slowly falling apart, and yet they never wonder why the systems are failing.
Earth is at war with a race of aliens called the Ceruleans.
An American sniper is in a desert that looks like Utah,
because that is where the exteriors were filmed.
Meanwhile, the Commander (Kevin Sorbo -
Andromeda
) watches in orbit.
The villainous Ceruleans are dressed in all-black uniforms with plastic helmets - basically like paintballers. They have absolutely no camouflage, and wear gas-masks even though they can breathe oxygen. In fact, they look completely human except or the fact they have white blood and blue eyes. Basically they are Fremen from Dune , a well-known allegory for Arabs. In the post-911 world, this equates them with terrorists and insurgents.
The supposedly space-age aliens carry bullpup rifles. The humans use standard American military gear. It may as well be a modern-day action thriller, but the lack of story would leave it over-shadowed by better-written alternatives.
As an action movie, this is quite straightforward. There is no real plot, just a bunch of action scenes strung together as an unkillable hero wipes out small numbers of enemy cannon-fodder. There is a tiny speck of character development, which gives this the slightest bit of substance to go with the emphasis on style.
This is an animated feature film by
Don Bluth
, best known for the 1980s annimation
Secret of N.I.M.H.
.
Humans are a racial minority, despised by the alien cultures that they live alongside. The young hero is given his call to action by a couple of other archetypes - a hot wrench wench love interest and a Han Solo type character. They, along with some comedy-relief aliens, jet around the galaxy trying to find the secret last hope of mankind.
This was created by
Luc Besson
, the man responsible for
The Fifth Element
. However, while it is visually similar to that film it is much inferior.
In fact, despite being based on an original source
(a French comic-book) it is basically style over substance.
Besson was a great director twenty years ago, but what has he done lately?
The main star of the story is Cara Delevigne , so you would expect her to be the title character. In fact, she is just the sidekick to Valerian (Dane Dehaan - A Cure For Wellness ) who is more experienced if less well-known. One suspects that this is an effort to ensure the actors get equal pay. All it really does is illustrate the fact that a female actor's career usually ends in her mid-thirties, but a male actor's career is only beginning at that age.
The protagonists are a pair of tweenagers who work as interstellar secret agents. They look far too young for the job, compared with The Fifth Element which had Bruce Willis as the male lead. The token adult in this endeavour, Clive Owen ( Shoot 'Em Up ), is delegated to a supporting role that is virtually a cameo. And speaking of cameos, Rihanna has an eye-catching couple of minutes and virtually steals the show.
Valerian must, on both moral and political grounds, avoid any distasteful incidents involving alien species. After all, he is a law enforcement officer and is not above the law himself. However, when it is time for an action scene he gleefully slaughters as many aliens as he can. Later on, he hypocritically gets judgemental when it is discovered that the military created some collateral damage in a war many decades ago. This is a man who does not blink when all the redshirts helping him get wiped out or eaten.
Planet Earth has been polluted to death.
The only hope for the human species is to colonise another solar system.
They raise a group of genetically perfect children,
trained from birth as astronauts,
and send them on a high-sublight multi-generation ship to the target system.
Colin Farrell (
Daredevil
) goes along with the kids as the token adult.
After a few years, the teens discover that the blue pills in their meal supplements are actually interfering with their natural hormone levels. Not full-on puberty blockers, but definitely inhibitors. Although some of the kids secretly stop taking the pills, Farrell does not seem to realise the reason the Stepford Children have turned into full-on hormonal teenagers. One of the boys even has the hots for Lily Rose Depp , and gets jealous when Farrell gives her preferential treatment.
There are strange noises coming from the external hull, which could be an engineering issue ... or an alien life form. When Farrell and one of the kids do a spacewalk to investigate, things take a turn for the worse. Now the ship is in deep space with a crew of hormonal teenagers who have no adult supervision. Worse, they now have the threat of alien possession hanging over them. Will the alien kill them, or will they just kill each other first?
This was the first big Hollywood movie for
David Lynch
, taken from the novel by
Frank Herbert
. Since the book was a big inspiration for
Star Wars: A New Hope
, that movie is what this was competing against.
Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan - Twin Peaks ) is a young man with prophetic dreams. His mother, Lady Jessica ( Francesca Annis ), submits to have him tested by the Reverend Mother ( Sian Phillips ). Although Paul is not what they hoped for, he may have an important destiny.
Paul is heir to his father, Duke Leto Atreides (Jurgen Prochnow - Judge Dredd (1995) ), who is gifted the desert planet of Arrakis ... also known as Dune. With Paul's best friend Duncan Idaho (Richard Jordan - Raise The Titanic ) and Leto's military advisor Gurney Halleck (Patrick Stewart - Star Trek: TNG ), the Atreides clan moves to the palace on Dune. Their only job is to oversee collection of Spice, a magical substance that mutants need to navigate space-ships.
The villainous Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan - ) orders his nephew Feyd (Sting - The Bride ), to attack Dune and kill all the Atreides. Paul and his mother hide out with the desert-dwelling Fremen, along with the leader Stilgar (Everett McGill - Twin Peaks ) and Chani ( Sean Young ) - Paul's love interest. Then they have to plot their revenge.
This is a new adaptation of the source novel, made by
Denis Villeneuve
. However, it is in many ways a scene-for-scene remake.
The real revelation is how much the original adaptation
must have kept true to the source material in the novel.
Ths good news is that, while the
David Lynch
version flopped because it was in competition with
Star Wars
, this movie might actually be successful
because of the decline of the Star Wars franchise.
It might become a decent rival franchise, as
John Carter
was intended to become.
Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet - ) is a young man with prophetic dreams. His mother, Lady Jessica ( Rebecca Ferguson ), submits to have him tested by the Reverend Mother ( Charlotte Rampling ). Although Paul is not what they hoped for, he may have an important destiny.
Paul is heir to his father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac - Star Wars: The Force Awakens ), who is gifted the desert planet of Arrakis ... also known as Dune. With Paul's best friend Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa - Aquaman ) and Leto's military advisor Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin - ), the Atreides clan moves to the palace on Dune. Their only job is to oversee collection of Spice, a magical substance that mutants need to navigate space-ships.
The villainous Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard - ) orders his nephew, Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista - Spectre ), to attack Dune and kill all the Atreides. Paul and his mother hide out with the desert-dwelling Fremen, along with the leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem - Skyfall ) and Chani ( Zendaya ) - Paul's love interest. Then they have to plot their revenge.
This is a TV mini-series,
although it seems to have been re-edited for television.
The total running time is under three hours, split into three episodes.
It was filmed in the Czech Republic by action director
Greg Yitaines
. It has some blocky CGI and wooden acting -
it suffers compared to the production values of the
David Lynch
movie. However, it stays faithful to the
Frank Herbert
book.
Episode 1: The Messiah
Paul the Muaddib (Alec Newman - ) leads a Crusade across the galaxy. Unfortunately his Fremen Crusaders want to kill all unbelievers. Stilgar (Stephen Berkoff - Octopussy ) leads the Fremen, while Muaddib's mom Jessica ( Alice Krige ) is back on the Atreides homeworld.
Princess Wensicia ( Susan Sarandon ), eldest daughter of the deposed Emperor, is an evil plotter. She has a clone made of Paul's dead friend, and sends it to him through the Navigator Guild. Other players are mixed into the affair.
Episode 2: The Children
The first episode ends when Paul's children are born. The second episode is set 18 years later. Paul's son Leto (James McAvoy - X-Men: First Class ) and his sister are the main focus of the story. They have been up-aged from the original book, which makes it easier for filming purposes but the characters still act like immature children.
Jessica ( Alice Krige ), now the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, visits her family on Arrakis. A mad old blind preacher heckles them. Stilgar (Stephen Berkoff - Octopussy ) is in charge of the security.
Princess Wensicia ( Susan Sarandon ) is still plotting her revenge. Yes, she has been waiting twenty years for her evil plan to pay off. It involves even more gifts given to the Atreides.
The show is basically an uncompelling drama with nice SPFX. While the main cast are relatively big names, the supporting actors are small-timers even for a TV mini-series. Most of them never moved on to anything bigger, and are completely forgettable in this.
Alia, sister of Muaddib, is Regent since everyone else has either left or is under-age. She has a perfectly good husband, but seeks pleasure with a priest named Javid (Rik Young - ). However, she is being driven insane by her genetic memory of her forebears - personified by her mother's father, Baron Harkonnen (Ian McNiece - Dr Who ).
Stilgar (Stephen Berkoff - Octopussy ) discovers that a dissident sect of Fremen is plotting to start a civil war. Jessica ( Alice Krige ) realises what is up, and tries to save her grandchildren from Alia. Of course, this is all what Princess Wensicia ( Susan Sarandon ) has spent the last twenty years planning for.
Episode 3: Children of Dune
In the third episode, Leto and his twin sister have fallen into the trap. They are chased across the desert by a couple of CGI monsters - sabre-tooth tigers cloned specifically to hunt them. Of course, the twins have different storylines to follow.
Alia has been terraforming Arrakis in order to kill most of the worms and deliberately endanger the supply of spice to force up the price. In return, some of the rebels have been shipping worms off-world in the hope of breaking the Atreides monopoly on spice.
Princess Wensicia ( Susan Sarandon ) offers her son as marital consort to Leto's sister, in a move that should safeguard all concerned. Jessica ( Alice Krige ) even agrees to train the son in Bene Gesserit techniques. The inevitable betrayal comes from an unexpected quarter.
In the end, all the plot threads are tied up and the villains punished. However, it is all a bit lacklustre. While the original story is the classic Hero's Journey, with the rise to power of Muaddib, this sequel is about his decline and fall. Not through enormous space battles like in Star Wars , but through plotting and politicking.
This is not part of the official franchise,
simply a cheap mockbuster from The Asylum.
Sean Young
, one of the stars of the 1984 film,
plays the role of US Space Force Captain Chase.
This is set in the next few centuries, as opposed to the Fiftieth Millennium. The USA and Russia are the two main powers engaged in interstellar exploration. Unfortunately they are engaged in a new Cold War, which is bad news for the protagonist. She is a hot-shot rescue pilot who disobeys a direct order to save a Russian cosmonaut.
As punishment, the pilot is put in charge of a crew of convicts. Strangely the convicts are all of above-average attractiveness. This means that most of the movie is about three hot chicks running around in skimpy tee-shirts.
The convict crew go to salvage a freighter that had to land on an exo-planet named Planet Dune. They quickly find themselves besieged by gigantic CGI worms, hence lots of running around. Since they are convicts, Captain Chase refuses to send a rescue team to help them.
Despite this being made by the Asylum, this is not the worst-written of their films. The writers have actually made an effort to deal with their plot holes. Unfortunately, their director has neither the imagination of David Lynch nor the visual storytelling flair of Denis Villeneuve . Ultimately this seems to owe more to Tremors , if it were made as a serious effort rather than a comedy.
As with
Robocop 2
, this was directed by
Ed Neumeier
as a follow-up to a highly successful movie by
Paul Verhoven
. Since the budget is significantly lower,
the audience should adjust their expectations accordingly.
Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien - The Pact ) has made it to Colonel. He gets reunited with a couple of old friends - a former love interest is a female Space Navy Captain ( Joelene Blalock ) and a male General in a black Psi Corps uniform. Evidently they are stand-ins for Carmen and Carl from the original movie.
The Sky Marshall, supreme ruler of Earth's interstellar empire, tours Rico's outpost. Just then is when the bugs choose to launch an all-out attack. Rico gets to safety, but ends up getting scapegoated.
Back on Earth, the Admiral ( Amanda Donahoe ) plots and schemes. With the Sky Marshal out of the way, nobody can stop her from taking over. Well, they have a chain of command so she does not really need to plot and scheme to get promoted. Anyway, religion is making a come-back so she decides to frame some god-loving pacifists and make them out to be bloodthirsty terrorists.
The Brain Bug from the original movie is still in captivity. Although it has been established that some humans possess telepathic powers, it took years for anyone to even suspect that the bugs might also have telepathy. In fact, it could be the case that the Brain Bug ALLOWED Private Zim to capture it.
Blalock's lifepod landed on a desolate alien world. She is stuck there with a handful of others, including the Sky Marshal himself. It turns out that he has gotten a bad dose of monotheism, as has junior officer Marnette Patterson .
Rico gets sent to rescue Captain Blalock. This time the Mobile Infantry actually has the super-suits they used in the novel, and he is in charge of the first unit issued with them. Beyond that, the climax is actually quite similar to the original film.
This is an animated follow-up to the previous films in the serious.
Since the bugs in the series have always been CGI,
and now the humans' battle-suits are CGI too,
there is little to be lost by converting the entire story to CGI.
However, there is a problem.
With the expection of Rico, the CGI versions do not resemble the original actors.
Worse, all the characters are physically two-dimensional
and the supporting ones all look alike.
They are voiced by a cast of unknowns,
which does not help when we need to distinguish one from another.
The interstellar war between humans and bugs has gone on for decades. Carl Jenkins (formerly played by Neil Patrick Harris) is now Minister of Paranormal Warfare. He commandeers a ship from Captain Carmen Ibanez (fomerly Denise Richards ). She complains to her ex-lover, General Johnny Rico (formerly Casper Van Dien), who gives her a new ship and a team of Mobile Infantry for the pursuit.
The grunts get to hang out together and socialise, so we can work out which one is associated with which archetype. One of the females is an exhibitionist, so we get to see as much of her as we did of Dina Meyer in the original.
When the team board the missing ship, they use a motion sensor reminiscent of Aliens . In fact, the whole sequence is awfully familiar. Ironic, since one of Cameron's main influences for his movie was Heinlein's novel. As the story progresses, this becomes what Alien 3 should have been ... This Time It's Earth!
The aliens plan to invade Earth. The humans do not have much in the way of defences. Their space station lacks sufficient weapons to shoot down incoming hostiles, although it does have a battery of ICBMs pointed straight down at their own homeworld. Rico is given thirty minutes to suit up on the space station and then drop into the combat zone and defeat the alien Queen before his superiors will nuke the site from orbit. In real life, the drop from orbit would take more time than that. However, what we get is a third act that consists of a series of action scenes that last virtually half an hour, but it is not actually a real-time movie.
This is part two of the
