mentat@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Robert Dorsett) (08/30/89)
MILLENNIUM
A film review by Robert Dorsett
Copyright 1989 Robert Dorsett
MILLENNIUM starts with an incredibly fake model of a Boeing 747 skipping
the tops of clouds, bumping all over the place. We go to the cockpit, where
the crew is drawling ATC clearances, and the captain, for some reason, so
senile that he's taking orders from his first officer. Inexplicably, the
airplane has a mid-air with a DC-10. On the way down, the flight engineer's
sent to the back. He returns as promptly, shouting "The passengers are all
dead!" And thus is the crux of the story.
Kris Kristofferson plays the chief investigator for the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). You know he knows his stuff: he looks
unkempt, walks like he has more aches and pains than James Gardner, and growls
out the smallest line. When he smiles, it looks like his face is going to
collapse from the effort. Clearly an expert.
As he investigates the crash, he discovers various oddities: watches that
run backwards, for example. And a "thing" that manages to stun him.
Spoilers are at the end of this article. The above makes the plot sound
pretty interesting, right? *Wrong*. This is a *horrible* movie. The pits.
Pure, un- pretentious, regurgitated crap. The acting sucks. The direction
sucks. The production values are non-existent. The special effects are
laughable. The dialog is lousy, fake, and contrived. Technically, the
producers clearly haven't the foggiest idea of how the NTSB works
(Kristofferson to press conference: "We'll have our findings for you in a
couple of days, just hold your questions"). The thing which eventually gets
Kristofferson in hot water with his bosses in Washington is SOP for the "real"
NTSB. Cheryl Ladd looks like a high-school girl who's just discovered makeup.
Suffice it to say that this movie isn't worth seeing. Five minutes into
it, I seriously debated running out and negotiating a ticket-swap with "The
Package." This movie is pure trash. A zero rating (out of four). An utterly
forgettable movie, one which I am embarrassed to even admit having spent the
time watching. But even worse, since about a quarter of the movie is run
*twice*, in the form of an alternative-future flashback. So we get to see the
same, horrible acting and implausible situations for *1/2 the running time of
the movie*.
In other words, yes, folks, we finally have an SF flick this summer that's
worse (*much* *much* worse) than STAR TREK V (makes STV look like Academy Award
material, folks).
Spoilers
The whole point about the movie is that there's this sort of commando team
from the future that runs about picking passengers off doomed airliners,
replacing them with dead bodies. The idea's to "seed" them in the distance
past or far-off future. A humanitarian effort, right? Well, why do they even
bother? If the passengers are seeded in the far-off future, they're just
fucking up someone *else*'s future. And seriously, are airline crashes the
most significant tragedy that people 1000 years in the future will be concerned
about? This is one hole the movie never overcomes. Nor do they ever explain
why life is such hell in the year 3000. Nor how the robot at the end is able
to get all misty-eyed and cry. Now how these jokers are capable of producing
dead bodies that are *identical* with other people (without ever seeing the
subject), yet lack the technology to produce medicine.
I could go on and on about the incredible conceptual problems in this
flick, but it's simply not worth it.
Robert Dorsett
Internet: mentat@walt.cc.utexas.edu
UUCP: ...cs.utexas.edu!walt.cc.utexas.edu!mentatleeper@mtgzx.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (08/30/89)
MILLENNIUM
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This adaptation of John Varley's short
story "Air Raid" is downbeat and surprisingly cliched. This
is a minor film with a 1960s matinee sort of feel, in spite
of a little interesting time paradox plotting. Rating: low
0.
MILLENNIUM is one of those film projects that seem to take forever to
come to fruition; then the fruit turns out to be a lemon. I happen to like
some lemons but they are not to everybody's taste. Years ago, there were
rumors that somebody was going to base a film either on John Varley's novel
MILLENNIUM or the short story the novel was expanded from, "Air Raid."
Well, it came out finally based on the latter but named for the former.
Varley himself is credited with the screenwriting, though it should be noted
that screen credit is dubious. As far as I know Varley has no experience
screenwriting and the script is really very different from the short story.
And rather than the accomplished and creative story-telling of a popular
science fiction, MILLENNIUM has more the feel of mediocre matinee science
fiction films of the 1960s and in particular Ib Melchior's THE TIME
TRAVELERS.
[Minor spoilers follow, but no worse than were in the coming
attraction.] This downbeat science fiction film starts with a spectacular
collision of two airliners and the resulting crash. Enjoy the special
effect. It is the only one in the film both ambitious and convincing. Bill
Smith is the bland name of the even blander Federal agent sent to
investigate the crash. Smith is played by a bland Kris Kristofferson.
Smith runs into the chain-smoking Louise Baltimore (played by Cheryl Ladd).
Baltimore is not exactly what she seems to be. Instead she is a visitor
from a thousand years in the far future where she wears a punk hairdo
distressingly like what you are already starting to see in New York City.
Baltimore is on a mission involving air disasters. Just what she is doing
is part of the mystery.
The script for MILLENNIUM needs some clarification. There is an
apparently unintentional ambiguity in the story-telling. The script clearly
tries to clarify which interpretation is correct, but does so inconclusively
and unclearly. With the exception of a few half-hearted humorous moments,
the writing is all very downbeat and at the same time hokey. The film's
vision of the future is as hopeless as it is hopelessly unconvincing. The
film returns to 1960s science fiction film conventions such as having a
convenient scientist along to explain the idea of the film. Then there is
an attempted love interest between two stars as animated as a Ken and Barbie
doll and whose love is just about as interesting to the audience. Some of
the time paradox play does work; some comes off as really stupid. In short,
MILLENNIUM is easily better than some other adaptations of real science
fiction stories--films such as NIGHTFALL and NIGHTFLYERS--but it is far from
being a winner. I rate it a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzx!leeper
leeper@mtgzx.att.com
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeperdls@mtgzx.att.com (Dale L. Skran, Jr.) (08/30/89)
MILLENNIUM
A film review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.
Copyright 1989 Dale L. Skran, Jr.
Not NIGHTFLYERS or NIGHTFALL!
There exist few examples of strong SF stories made into excellent films.
Three recent botches come to mind -- DUNE (Frank Herbert), NIGHTFLYERS (George
R. R. Martin), and NIGHTFALL (Isaac Asimov) - - all based on stories of the
highest caliber, and all seriously flawed on screen. Now comes MILLENNIUM,
based on the John Varley story "Air Raid" (Hugo nominated, I believe). This is
the only major SF movie I can remember where the script was written by the
original author without being re-written by several hacks. And it is a major
film, unlike NIGHTFLYERS and NIGHTFALL, both of which starred mostly unknowns
running around cardboard sets. Kris Kristofferson plays an air safety
investigator who slowly comes to realize that there is something very odd about
a plane crash. Cheryl Ladd plays an assault team leader from a distant,
terrible future that is slowly dying. To save humanity, Ladd and her
associates steal people from the past who are about to die in plane crashes
away to a new life in a distant future, one far beyond their own polluted
world.
As a time travel story, MILLENNIUM builds on the background provided by
the simpler TERMINATOR and BACK TO THE FUTURE, providing the audience an
introduction to temporal censorship and time paradoxes. Cheryl Ladd is
surprisingly convincing as the woman from a dying world, and Kris is
believable as well. The "stewardesses from hell" scenes as Louise and her team
infiltrate a doomed 60's era jetliner was the highpoint of the film for me.
I have several complaints, however. At one point, Louise Baltimore
(Cheryl Ladd) turns to one of her assault team and explains in true
Gernsbackian Lecturese the concept of time censorship. Louise's "personal
robot" is simply a man in a tin woodsman suit. The technology of Louise's
future world seems more like that that of 100 years in the future than 1000
years in the future, but this could be explained by a nuclear war or other
disaster.
While driving to the movie I expressed a hope that the plot and script
would be solid even if the FX were not the best. While driving away, I did an
about face and claimed that the movie would be substantially improved if an
extra million or so had been put into the robot and the final scenes, which
looked too much like the destruction of every citadel of evil I've ever seen on
film. A final problem was the literary sounding voice-over at the end of the
film - it might be a great story ending, but a movie needs a visual ending.
Overall, MILLENNIUM is a strong SF film, an original SF film, and a film
that deserves but will probably not get a wide audience. It is a complex story
told from various temporal points of view that seemed to leave the audience I
was with somewhat baffled. I'd rate it a +2, and with another million or two
in FX and the re-shooting of a couple of scenes, it could easily have been a +3
film.