ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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ENEMY MINE (1985)

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______________________ Enemy Mine Trailer


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To me, this was a blatant remake of Hell in the Pacific, the 1968 WW2 film starring Lee Marvin & Toshiro Mifune about two soldiers stuck on an island. They were from opposite sides, but were forced to work together.

The premise of this sci-fi version is similar and overall it's very simple. The narration by star Dennis Quaid explains that the nations of Earth finally began to work together in the late 21st century towards the goal of space exploration.

But new wars began again with "non-Human" aliens (as if there are also human aliens in outer space according to this film — the Star Trek influence is also apparent). Quaid's pilot soldier crash-lands on a planet after a scuffle in space and immediately notes that an enemy alien has also crashed about a mile away.

This alien is known as a Drac, played by Lou Gossett Jr. in heavy make-up. The planet is apparently inhabited only by primitive lifeforms.



Will walks over to the Drac's crash site and attempts to kill him, but fails — instead getting captured. Will's enmity towards the Drac is obvious, but the Drac doesn't kill him for some reason.

Then, during one of the frequent meteorite showers, the Drac drags Will to safety in a cave. So, Will also refrains from killing the Drac when he frees himself. He reasons that they must work together to survive.

Their mutual hatred soon evolves into good-natured ribbing, and later to actual respect. Months pass as they deal with local predators and the meteorites.

After about a year, Will decides to explore another part of the planet. He finds an abandoned human mining operation, but his hopes of rescue are dashed when he realizes that these are lowlife scavengers who use Dracs as slave labor.

Journeying back to his buddy, he finds that the Drac is pregnant. Dracs are asexual, becoming pregnant without choice.




Things come to a head when their shelter is destroyed and the Drac has to give birth.

By this point, the film has veered away from the expected. Will ends up raising the Drac child as a couple of more years pass.

Unfortunately, the outlaw miners return to their mining site and, despite Will's instruction, the little Drac has a lot of curiosity about them.

This does not go well.

The film is an attempt at a real sci-fi saga, spanning years, and there is indeed enough material here for a mini-series, so the final act especially seems rushed. Somehow, Will is found by the BTA (the future Earthling society) after all those years of no contact with fellow humans, and then it's a rush job to return and rescue his foster son.

The obvious theme is the humanizing of an enemy once you get to know them. Will becomes much more enlightened by the end compared to what he was, including his role of a father (or "Uncle" as he's called).

It all tells us that war is wasteful.





One weakness to me was a lot of the set design in the early going on the planet, where it all comes across as a movie set (possibly related to a fitful stop-and-start to the filming when director Wolfgang Petersen took over from others).

Other later scenes are obviously location filming and have more of a reality to them. The early space scenes also have the look of phoniness about them — sort of like what a kid might envision outer space to look like, with colorful planets-as-play balls situated next to each other.

For some reason, the visuals are better later in the film.

I'm also not a fan of Gossett's gargling speech patterns. It gets irritating after a time, even as one gets used to understanding all that he's saying. The evil miners, led by Brion James, are kind of hammy.

Overall, though, it's a game attempt at interesting social commentary in a sci-fi setting, including exposition on an alien culture's philosophy and beliefs.



BoG's Score: 7 out of 10

Enemy Trivia: Lance Kerwin is in a small role in the first act as Quaid's co-pilot; he was a teen star on TV in the late seventies (James at 15, Salem's Lot)

____________________ Enemy Mine (1985)


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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Starman (1984)

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______________________________ Starman


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JEFF BRIDGES * KAREN ALLEN * CHARLES MARTIN SMITH * RICHARD JAECKEL

This is another take on E.T. and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, meaning the friendly alien from outer space. After Bridges (as an alien who temporarily takes human form) meets Karen Allen, it turns into a road movie. There's nothing outstanding here, but it's fairly interesting for most of it.

I thought Bridges did as good a job as possible on interpreting an alien getting used to working in a human body. His early scenes show that it's a very rough start for him — he has to become accustomed to using a mouth for speech and so forth. An interesting comparison is to Kyle MacLachlan's alien-in-a-human body in THE HIDDEN. MacLachlan looks a bit odd to begin with and was more of a natural, so Bridges had to make an extra effort here.

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I wasn't sure what to make of the resurrection scene later, involving a dead animal. This story has obvious Christ parallels, including the romantic aspect which transpires later and the nearly supernatural result . . . though this tells us there's nothing supernatural out there, just a much more advanced society — including the science, presumably. This is a more mainstream effort from director John Carpenter, who usually tries for subversive messages; a little cynicism creeped in, but it was very clumsily done.



There's a faint trace of a lecture in the background during much of the film, warning us to behave in a more civil manner, but it gets a bit clumsy. Bridges' alien character comes over here in response to our Voyager 2 spacecraft, which sent a greeting to any aliens out there.

Though it's not really shown, the alien's spaceship (a small thing) is damaged by our Air Force; the alien almost immediately concludes that the Earth environment is hostile and his mission is a bust even before it begins.

During the road trip, the government is always in pursuit, looking for the alien. Then, the plan for an autopsy is unveiled in the final act. This was a clumsy effort to create more tension, more villainy — but what was the rationale? Answer: there wasn't any. Jaeckel's government man is a cliche, indeed, behaving badly because the tale needed a bad guy, I guess.



But, Charles Martin Smith is excellent. His concluding scene with Jaeckel, where Smith uses his cigar in an act of symbolism, is a highlight of the film. I always look forward to it; I've seen this 3 or 4 times now.

As for the later TV show, I did watch some of it, but don't really remember it; I think it was forgettable.



BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10



BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

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Yes, it's 2010. May as well take a look at the film of that name, also known as 2010 Odyssey Two and 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the supposed sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Only, it rarely comes across as a sequel, seemingly far removed from the Kubrick film of 16 years earlier. The main character is scientist Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider), who had been played by William Sylvester in 2001 and who was the 3rd biggest character in the earlier film.



Other prominent characters are engineer Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), Floyd's buddy, and Chandra (Bob Balaban), the genius who created the HAL-9000 computer.

These are the Americans; most of the other cast play Russian cosmonauts, headed by pilot Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren, the only British actor in the group). A little unusual, the half-dozen other Russian characters are portrayed by Russian actors (all having emigrated to the U.S. from the then-Soviet Union). And this is what really dates the film now — in this version of 2010, the Soviet Union is in full swing, a miscalculation by writer/director Peter Hyams, I feel.



The other clear indication of the difference in style from Kubrick's film is how Floyd is portrayed. Hyams was lauded for usually presenting characters that had some depth to them (an article in Twilight Zone Magazine, Feb.1985 issue, even compares Hyams favorably to directors Spielberg, Lucas, Dante & Carpenter, "who can't tell a human from a prop stick."). There may be something to this, as Scheider does present a very human Floyd here, very different from the unemotional Floyd of 2001 fame (though he was, since Jaws, the by-now-standard bemused Scheider character).



At the same time, Floyd and the other characters do not suggest some future time frame here, unlike the almost alien, far future atmosphere created by Kubrick for 2001. We really felt like we were in an alien time frame in 2001; in 2010, the characters merely suggest 1984 (the real year, not the novel/film) or 1985.

Likewise, Hyams chose to show many scenes on Earth in this 'future' before the trip to Jupiter. Kubrick avoided this in 2001, sticking to the moon and outer space; again, he was able to suggest a futuristic regime in this manner. 2001 engendered awe; 2010 just drags us back to ho-hum reality.



There are some impressive moments for the time, during this new mission to the now-empty Discovery One spacecraft. Most of the scenes in outer space and the spacewalks are extremely well done. And, the moment when Bowman (Keir Dullea) arrives, appearing behind Floyd, is very well done (I still remember how the audience reacted in the theater when I first saw this "turn around" — Oooo, oh-oh).

But, it's kind of slow overall and the revelations in the last act concerning why HAL went crazy in 2001 have a very mundane tone to them. This undermines the entire HAL character (voiced again by Douglas Rain).



Here is the problem: in recreating the whole Cold War situation here, including an escalation of USA-Soviet tensions in the last act, Hyams has grounded this film in eighties sensibilities — permanently. I feel like I'm watching scenes from 1986 or 1987 when I watch this film.

Then he presents a morality theme, a cosmic event that teaches us short-sighted humans some lessons about peace and civilized behavior. It may have been done better in the Star Trek episode, Errand of Mercy, in 1967. Not to mention, the later Watchmen graphic novel & film. It wasn't very original, I have to say, and a bit simplistic - almost grade-school style moralizing.



The final moment does touch on a cosmic aspect, leaping perhaps millions of years ahead into the future; but, that's only the last 20 seconds of the film.

A final note of trivia: Chandra uses another computer on Earth, this one with a female voice; this is voiced by famous actress Candice Bergen.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10

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