ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Confession: I haven't seen this version of Solaris, but I have seen the 1972 Russian version, and I decided it just wasn't my kind of science fiction movie. It's a bit murky (on purpose, of course), and it deals mostly with that thing they call the "human condition".

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the story is interesting enough to make me wish it had gone in another direction.

But that's the kind of movie worth discussing, so I'm opening the floor for comments and debates.

Who would like to go first?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I think I'll get this one from Netflix and watch it so I can get a discussion going. All I really said in the post above was that I hadn't seen it.

No wonder there's been no replies in nine months, eh?

Meanwhile, here's the trailer.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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The plot summary of this movie on Wikipedia reminded me why I didn't care for the 1972 version. The plot of both movies leaves so many unexplained elements that it seems like an unfinished story, badly in need of revisions and additions.

With a few exceptions, I dislike stories that attempt to "leave conclusions to the viewer" (or the reader) in an effort to "challenge the reader's intelligence".

Don't get me wrong, a certain amount of that, done in the right way, is wonderful. But when it's not done in the right way, I'm just left with the conviction that the screenwriter / author simply constructed a convoluted plot and left all the mental "heavy lifting" to the poor reader — without having a clue himself about how it could all be connected in interesting ways.

It's like abstract art; you're supposed to stare at it and discover what it means to YOU. (What this one means to me is that the "artist" should have flunked his art classes . . . )


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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Remake of the 1972 Russian film from director Steven Soderbergh.

This is a shorter version of the older film — by the 10-minute mark, the main character of Dr. Kelvin (George Clooney) is already on board the space station which orbits the mysterious planet of the title. He's an expert psychiatrist who had been requested to go there by one of the crew and by the corporation in charge of this station.

Unfortunately, by the time Kelvin gets there, the one who requested his presence has already committed suicide. There are many other strange occurrences on this station, mostly involving the appearances of long dead people, but the first theory about this being the result of psychotropic drugs doesn't hold up.

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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Maurice]

A point of contention: this film isn't a remake of the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky film, it's another (the third) adaption of the Stanislaw Lem novel.
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"The absence of limitations is the enemy of art."
― Orson Welles