Tag: Science fiction

The Midnight Sky (2020)

Dystopian end-of-the-world drama gets dull and dreary in this misfire

Director: George Clooney

Cast: George Clooney (Augustine Lofthouse), Felicity Jones (Dr “Sully” Sullivan), David Oyelowo (Commander Adewole), Kyle Chandler (Mitchell), Demián Bichir (Sanchez), Tiffany Boone (Maya), Caoilinn Springall (Iris), Ethan Peck (Augustine), Sophie Rundle (Jean)

The world has been evacuated after an unspecified radiological disaster, with the survivors bound for K-23, a newly discovered moon of Jupiter capable of supporting life. The only person left on Earth is Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney), suffering from a terminal illness. He remains behind at an arctic base to warn returning space missions. The returning mission Aether – crewed by Jones, Oyelowo, Chandler, Bichir and Boone – are en route, but to make contact with them Lofthouse must travel across the arctic to a back-up transmitter, accompanied by a mysterious wordless child called Iris (Caoilinn Springall) who seems to have been left behind during the evacuation.

The Midnight Sky is the largest, most technically ambitious film Clooney has directed. Did the focus on the technical aspects mean he took his eye off other elements? Even the ones his previous films have been strong on: dialogue and character. The Midnight Sky looks great and has some impressive effects. But it is a dull film, lacking pace or energy, populated by paper-thin characters and often feeling like a Frankenstein-like stitching together of elements of other, much better, films.

It splits its focus between two story lines: one a survivalist two-hander between Clooney and child actress Caroilinn Springall; the other a “journey home against the odds” space mission. The first carries a little more interest, if only because Clooney manages to brilliantly convey loneliness, isolation, sadness and how terminal illness increases the effects of all of these. There is also emotional depth from his growing bond with Iris: the two of them playfully flicking peas at each other over dinner and his protecting her from the dangers outside. This is shot in some stunning Iceland vistas and shows a competent selection of various traditional survivalist set-ups during the struggle to complete the journey. It’s not exactly original, but at least it holds the interest.

That interest isn’t found in the space scenes – although the lack of originality is. How did Clooney fail to notice that he assembled a terrific cast of actors, but then failed to give them so much as a whisper of a character to play between them. This crew are terminally unengaging 2-D characters, whose dialogue echoes tropes of other films. Despite the dangers they encounter while navigating a course to Earth (that inevitably takes them through uncharted meteor storms), we are never really given a reason to really care about these characters (all the sad mooning over holograms of the families they left behind doesn’t actually make us feel like we know them).

The sense of nothing we are seeing here actually feeling new is key, and the main problem with the whole film. Countless other films have covered world-ending events. Clooney’s battle to cross the arctic and survive carries more than an echo of The Revenant by way of The Road. The struggles in space have lashings of Gravity with an Interstellarvibe. And those are just for starters. Even the final narrative twist (which you can probably see coming) echoes other film twists. For all the handsomeness of the film, it never feels fresh, always more of a tribute remix of other superior films that you should probably just consider rewatching instead.

That’s Clooney’s main failing here. As if he was so focused on getting the technical elements spot on, he never checked if the patient had a pulse. The Midnight Sky, knitted together from the offcuts of other films, has only the vaguest of heartbeats. Nothing is original and virtually no character in it ever feels either fully-formed or someone we care about. Others, all too obviously, serve as nothing but narrative devices. There are some wonderful shots and a lovely score from Alexandre Desplat. But narratively, the film often feels too cold, distant and emotionally dead. It ends up feeling far, far longer than its two-hour run time.

The Matrix (1999)

Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving defy gravity in ground-breaking sci-fi The Matrix

Director: The Wachowskis

Cast: Keanu Reeves (Neo), Laurence Fishbourne (Morpheus), Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith), Joe Pantoliano (Cypher), Marcus Chong (Tank), Anthony Ray Parker (Dozer), Julian Arahanga (Apoc), Matt Doran (Mouse), Gloria Foster (The Oracle), Belinda McClory (Switch)

In 1999 we all waited for the release of a science-fiction film that would change the genre forever. Problem is we all thought it would be Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, when in fact the entire world went crazy for The Matrix. It helped that The Matrix was everything The Phantom Menace wasn’t: tight, exciting, brilliantly made and above-all endlessly, effortlessly and completely cool. And it still is: not even its dreadful, dreadful sequels could dent its genius or legacy. The Matrixis a flash of counter-culture: anarchic, teenage fantasy taking over the main-stream. It’s still brilliant.

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is an office-working drone by day, hacker Neo by night, who wishes there was more to life than this. He’s going to get more than he wished for when he’s offered a choice between the “Red Pill and the Blue Pill” (truth or fantasy) by Morpheus (Laurence Fishbourne), leader of a mysterious hacker group with super-human athleticism and strength. Choosing the Red Pill, Neo wakes up to find himself plugged into a massive machine – and that the world he knows is nothing more than a post-apocalyptic cage, a computer simulation known as The Matrix, used by the all-conquering machines to keep humanity docile while they use their bodies as batteries for their empire. Even more than that, Morpheus is convinced Neo is “The One”, a prophesied saviour who will bring an end to the Matrix. Can Neo accept his destiny?

The Matrix is a superb fusion of a whole host of questions that clearly fascinate the Wachowski siblings. Questions of identity come flying to the fore, as well as the battle for individualism in a conformist society. The Matrix has very earnest points to make about learning to embrace the people we really are, which it delivers with a host of references to philosophy and psychology. It could have become indulgent and self-important (a trap the sequels would fall into), but it delivers the story with a crowd-pleasing burst of energy, mixing in film noir, kung-fu and some rather endearing characters that we end up really caring about.

It’s also of course super, super cool. Everything about it passes the test: from the leather trench coats and shades to the high-octane action and the sense that the film is speaking directly to the alienated, authority-nose-thumbing teenager in all of us. This is a film for the people, the under-dog, with something for anyone who has ever felt trapped, bored or oppressed by their fate (i.e. nearly everyone) and reassures them that their dreams of having a special destiny might actually come true. It tapped into people’s joy and fantasy in a way The Phantom Menace totally failed to do.

This is a classic slice of mysticism. It’s not a film as clever as it thinks it is – it’s main calling card is still Alice in Wonderland the go-to for all films musing on dreamlike fantasy worlds – but it still throws a host of fun little questions and thinking points at the audience. Today, its also easier to see how the film is a celebration of counter-culture and sexual fluidity in a way that had to be snuck under the wire in the 90s. It asks (in a simple) way questions about who we are and what is it all about, in a way that really appeals to rebels. It’s the sort of film a Camus-loving teenager who is fed up with their parents, dreams they had the skill to make.

Skill is the key here. This is a superb achievement by the Wachowskis. It’s brilliantly directed, fast-paced and electric. The camera-work frequently makes use of a flurry of flashy tricks (reflections are a common theme), but which never over-whelm the narrative. It’s revolutionary use of freeze-frame camera work – an ingenious invention created “bullet time” where a series of cameras each taking one shot seem to allow us to rotate at normal speed around actors caught mid jump – introduced something we’d never seen before (and was much imitated and parodied later). The action sequences are stunning – a series of high-stakes, super-cool kung-fu-laced punches and kicks that are shot with a fluid camera that manages to seem both classic and deeply immersive.

It also works because our heroes are really underdogs. We are told again and again that they are vulnerable in the Matrix – that for all their gravity defying feats of strengths, when they come up against the “Agent” sentient programmes, they stand little or no chance of surviving. The goodies die with astonishing regularity in the film, and even the leads are shown to be extremely vulnerable in combat. Our empathy for them is so well crafted, that we even forgive the fact that they gun down countless numbers of their fellow humans during the film (it’s handwaved that anyone can become an agent at any time, so the slaughter of dozens of regular Joes is pretty much essential to prevent this).

A lot of that is also down to the excellence of the main performers. The film channels Keanu Reeves instinctive sweetness and gentleness in a way few other films managed to do as successfully before – he’s brilliantly convincing as both the kick-ass hero, but also the endearing fish-out-of-water who says “woah” as Morpheus jumps over a building. Carrie-Anne Moss is determined, assertive and very humane as Trinity while Laurence Fishbourne’s natural poise and authority are perfectly utilised as Morpheus. Opposite them we have a performance of such dastardly, lip-smacking, Rickmanesque consonant precision from Hugo Weaving, that Agent Smith becomes an iconic villain.

It all comes together into a film that delicately weaves a plucky under-dog story of a hero trying to find his purpose around a few perfectly staged, edge-of-the-seat action set-pieces, that hits a perfect balance between a wider-audience and a cool and pulpy indie vibe. It’s the sort of film that will please the masses, but many people will still feel is speaking very personally to them. Hugely influential, it remains a masterpiece of action and science fiction cinema which, while never as clever as it thinks it is, is hugely vibrant in its filming and endlessly, repeatedly exciting when watching.

The Hunger Games (2012)

Jennifer Lawrence takes aim against a corrupt system in The Hunger Games

Director: Gary Ross

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss Everdeen), Josh Hutcherson (Peeta Mellark), Liam Hemsworth (Gale Hawthorne), Woody Harrelson (Haymitch Abernathy), Elizabeth Banks (Effie Trinket), Lenny Kravitz (Cinna), Stanley Tucci (Caesar Flickerman), Donald Sutherland (President Coriolanus Snow), Wes Bentley (Seneca Crane), Toby Jones (Claudius Templesmith), Alexander Ludwig (Cato)

“May the odds be ever in your favour”. They certainly were for The Hunger Games, the first adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ dystopian YA trilogy. It was one of many franchises trying to ride the success of the Harry Potter series – and easily the best (it’s vastly superior to, say, Twilight or the woeful Divergent). Shepherded to the screen by a confident Gary Ross, it’s a film that doesn’t shy away from book’s social politics and darkness, while also balancing that with complex and engaging characters. It stands up well to repeated viewings and never lets you forget it’s a film about teenagers involved in a brutal series of murderous blood sports.

In the future, after disasters and wars, the nation of Panem has been built. Twelve colonies are ruled from the capital. As punishment for a past rebellion, each year each district sends two tributes to the capital. These tributes will be feted, celebrated – and then pushed into an area and made to fight to the death in “The Hunger Games”, all of it transmitted on TV across Panem. To the winner, a lifetime of fame and comfort. To the losers – well, death. In the poorest district, District 12, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers as tribute after her sister’s name is selected. Stubborn, surly, defiant and an expert archer, Katniss surprisingly finds herself capturing the public imagination – helped by a faked romance with her media-savvy fellow District 12 tribute (Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta). But in the ring will it be everybody for themselves? Or can Katniss keep hold of her soul?

The Hunger Games is rich material. Panem feels more and more like a mix between Gilead and Trumpian pomposity (the capital is a heavily stylised and artificial Rome-inspired centre of excess), in which life and death matters for very little. It’s a film that has astute things to say not only about how totalitarian regimes operate, but also how the oppressed often connive in their own suppression. So wrapped up is the population in the excitement of the Hunger Games, so invested in the results, that they’ve almost forgotten it is a tool of oppression. That the capital can only continue to exist if all the districts co-operate in following its orders and meekly supplying anything it asks – from food and resources, to teenagers for slaughter.

What this world needs is someone like Katniss. An individual who knows her own mind, who won’t play the game and will be herself. The film is brave in not softening the edges of this often prickly personality. Expertly played by Jennifer Lawrence, Katniss is compassionate and caring – but she’s also judgemental, untrusting, holds grudges and in person is often surly, resentful and impatient. But what makes her a hero, is her refusal to collaborate in softening the Hunger Games. She knows she is being manipulated to make a world feel better about itself – and she is repulsed by the idea of taking life needlessly and the slaughter of the weaker and more vulnerable tributes. Indeed, she will go to huge lengths to keep others alive in the games – something that helps to wake a population up to how they’ve been hoodwinked by bright lights to forget their own humanity. Her defiance is less about politics and more about simple human decency and being able to make her own choices – something a whole world has forgotten.

Even the people in the capital have forgotten that the Hunger Games exist to suppress not entertain. The film gets some delightful mileage out of its satire of blanket media coverage. The TV coverage is pure ESPN or Sky Sports, mixed with shallow chat shows. Stanley Tucci has a ball as a flamboyant anchor who lets no moral qualms even cross his mind as he banters with the tributes in interviews with the same excited ease as he will later commentate on their slaughter. Wes Bentley’s would-be Machiavel TV producer has been so drawn into the mechanics of his games, he’s stopped even seeing the combatants as human beings, just another set of ratings-tools he can use to advance his career.

It’s a neat commentary from the film on how we can be so beaten down and crushed by the everyday that we forget – or overlook – how it is both controlling our own lives and forcing us to rethink our own views on life. This is a world where people are being taught that life and death are not valuable, that murder can be entertainment and that everyday burdens are worth dealing with because you have a chance of being allowed to fight to the death for a shot at eternal comfort. It’s a deeply corrupt and savage system, and the film doesn’t flinch away from exploring it.

Alongside that, it’s an entertaining, gripping and involving film (if one that is a little overlong in places). The second half – which focuses on the games – is both exciting and terrifying in its (often implied – after all this is still a film that needs to be shown to kids) savagery. It encourages us to identify closely with Katniss, to experience the same terror she does as well as delight in her ingenuity and inventiveness to escape death and plan strikes against her brutal opponents. By the end of the film we’ve taken her to our hearts – for all we’ve seen how difficult a person she is – as much as the population of Panem have.

Ross’s film is a triumph of adaptation, and you don’t say that about many YA novels. Suzanne Collins’ adaptation of her own book captures its thematic richness, while compressing it effectively. There are a host of interesting actors giving eclectic performances, including Harrelson as Katinss and Peeta’s mentor, Banks and Kravitz as their support team, and Sutherland as the controlling dictator behind it all. The Hunger Games is prime entertainment, with some fascinating design work (the costumes and sets are spot on) and very well made. It’s a franchise to watch.

Midnight Special (2016)

Michael Shannon is the loyal dad in Midnight Special

Director: Jeff Nichols

Cast: Michael Shannon (Roy Tomlin), Joel Edgerton (Lucas), Kirsten Dunst (Sarah Tomlin), Adam Driver (Paul Sevier), Jaeden Lieberher (Alton), Sam Shepard (Pastor Calvin Meyer), Bill Camp (Doak), Scott Haze (Levi), Paul Sparks (Agent Miller)

At some point around its original release, someone attached the label “Spielberg-esque” to Midnight Special. I suppose this may be due to its father-son central relationship and its rough similarities to Close Encounters. But it’s a label that does the film no favours. JJ Abrahms would create a Spielberg-esque film, but Jeff Nichols? Pull the other one. Instead Jeff Nichols creates a sci-fi film that wilfully avoids explanations and turns its back as often as it can on any sentimentalism. It’s more like James Cameron crossed with existential philosophy. It certainly won’t be offering up easy entertainment.

Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) is on the run from the law with his son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), helped only by his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton). Alton has mysterious powers – glowing eyes, elements of telekinesis and the ability to intercept electrical signals – that have made him a target for everyone from the government to a cult that has kept him under lock and key for years, believing he holds the key to surviving the inevitable apocalypse. Alton has an aversion to sunlight which means our heroes can only travel at night, heading towards a secret location, trying to stay one step ahead of the dangerous figures following them.

Nichols film is almost too elliptical for its own good. But then I think this is partly Nicholls point. He’s looking to subvert a few expectations here. To create a sci-fi, other-world chase movie that’s wrapped itself up in enigmas. Sadly, I think to have enigmas like this become truly engaging, you need to form a connection with the film itself – and Midnight Special fails too much here.

It keeps its cards extremely close to its chest – it only begins to dive into any sort of explanation about what’s going on over halfway into the film, and even then this is kept vague and undefined. There is virtually no exploration given of most of the characters of their backstory, bar a few key points. It’s a chase movie which frequently slows down to a crawl. It’s a science fiction film that’s largely confined to the ‘real’ world. It’s a father-and-son on the run film, which separates these two characters for a large chunk of its runtime. All this makes it very difficult to form an emotional attachment with, in the way you do with, say, Close Encounters or The Terminator (both of which leave traces in this film’s DNA).

Not that I think Nicholls will mind, as this is an attempt to do something different, more of an existential musing on humanity. Its unfortunate that this was exploration of personal regrets and tragedies against a backdrop of earth-shattering sci-fi revelations was done more absorbingly in Arrivalamong others. Compared to that, Nicholls film seems almost a little too pleased with its deep (and in the end slightly empty) mysteries and its opaque characters, many of them defined more by actions and plot functions rather than personality traits.

There’s strong work from Shannon as a father desperate to do the right thing and Lieberher as young boy who becomes calmer and more in control as the film progresses. But we never quite learn enough – or understand enough – about either of them to really invest in their fates.

And without that investment, its hard to worry in the same way about what might happen to them – or to really care about the revelations they are seeking to discover by the films conclusion. The film could counterbalance this if the ideas behind it were fascinating enough. But I am not sure they are. It touches upon questions of faith, parental love, destiny and human nature – but it studies them like they were under a microscope. Ideas are there to be excavated from it, but that doesn’t always make for great story-telling. Take the cult: there are fascinating ideas about the honesty (and pervasions) of faith, contrasting this perhaps with the overwhelming faith the father has in his son’s fate. The film introduces this – and then doesn’t really give it any depth.

It’s a problem all across the film. It’s partly a meditation on human progress and enlightenment – but the film never makes a compelling case or intellectual argument about it. Again there’s some great opportunities here, not least with Adam Driver’s fine performance as a sceptic turning believer – but it even that plotline eventually gets reduced to simply allowing someone to move from A to B for plot purposes. The film – for all the skill it’s made with and the obvious talent of Nicholls – is cold and distant.

And a cold and distant film is eventually going to get that reaction from a lot of its audience. Those who can see its merits, but never engage with it – or care about it – enough to really seek it out.

Children of Men (2006)

Clive Owen and Claire-Hope Ashitey could be the last hope for mankind in the masterful Children of Men

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Cast: Clive Owen (Theo Faron), Julianne Moore (Julian Taylor), Claire-Hope Ashitey (Kee), Michael Caine (Jasper Palmer), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Luke), Charlie Hunnam (Patric), Pam Ferris (Miriam), Peter Mullan (Syd), Danny Huston (Nigel)

Children of Men was overlooked on release. But the more it ages, the more it clearly hasn’t aged it at all. Criminally ignored at the major awards, this might well be the finest film of 2006 and certainly one of the best movies of the noughties. Rich in thought-provoking content and cinematic skill, this is truly great-film-making from Alfonso Cuarón. Dark, grim, edgy but also laced with hope, faith and kindness, Children of Men grows in statue with each viewing, rewarding you more and more.

It’s 2027 and the world has gone to hell. Mysteriously mankind became infertile 18 years ago, and faced with the despair that the extinction of the human race is inevitable, society has collapsed. Cities lie in ruins and war has torn countries apart: Britain “stands alone”, one of the few with a functioning government – even though that government is a totalitarian, nationalist police state. Aggressive campaigns are waged against refugees from around the world, who are herded into hellish concentration camps. In this chaos, Theo (Clive Owen) is a disaffected civil rights activist, now plodding through a dead-end job and smoking weed with his friend, ex-newspaper cartoonist Jasper (Michael Owen). All this changes when he is entrusted by his activist/’terrorist’ estranged wife Julian (Julianne Moore) to protect Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) who carries inside her something that could change the whole of humanity: an unborn child.

Today Children of Men seems alarmingly prescient. In a world of migrant crises, Brexit, Trump and coronavirus (the film even refers to a flu pandemic of 2008!) the vision of the future it presents seems only a few degrees away from our reality. Rather than a hellish view, it seems more and more like something that could happen. Everything is worn out and grubby. Streets are lined with rubbish, buildings coated with graffiti. Televisions and advertising screens alternate between demands to report immigrants with promotions for “Quietus”, a suicide pill. Fences, armed police, barbed wire and crowds of filthy, terrified and brutalised people are common. Humanity has given-up: there is no hope in the world.

It’s that collapse of any sense of hope and optimism that has driven this collapse of society in Cuarón’s vision. In a world where the extinction of mankind is inevitable, what’s the point contributing to society or worrying about your legacy or the future? Why preserve anything when no-one will be around to see it in a hundred years? By such fragile threads, does society hold itself together. The crushing depression of knowing you live in the final days of humanity is everywhere. There is not a single person alive in their teens: a fact hammered home by the characters visiting a deserted and derelict school. Everyone has lost any sense of purpose, with life a grim daily grind.

Perhaps that’s also why physically the world hasn’t changed much. Unlike most “future set” dramas, this view of 2027 could be 2006, just dirtier and with a few more electronic screens (in fact this has helped hugely in not dating the film). It’s like all life has stagnated. And liberals like Theo have turned into apathetic drunks, drifting blithely through life not bothering to engage or change anything about the shit show all around them

All this makes the film sound impossibly grim – and Cuarón is superb in building this world (including the genius stroke of never explaining, even in the smallest detail, what has caused this pandemic of infertility – the film is refreshingly free of any clumsy scene setting) – but it works because it’s a film laced with hope and a belief in the fundamental goodness of people. The story has overtones of a religious fable: Theo and Kee as a sort of Joseph and Mary travelling to protect an unborn child whose birth could save the world. Specially composed choral music, rife with religious overtones, underplays key moments and scenes subtly leaning into this spiritual journey.

And the goodness that people find in themselves is inspiring. Theo, brilliantly played by Clive Owen who has just the right dissolute cynicism hiding crusading courage, may have given up but actually he’s a deeply empathetic and caring man. Animals instinctively love him. He’s a natural protector, who shows concern in all sorts of ways for people him, who puts himself at risk to protect people and refuses to ever accept defeat. But he’s a million miles away from a super-man, getting increasingly dishevelled, bashed and brutalised, while his struggles with footwear (he carries out action sequences wearing just socks, then flip-flops and finally barefoot) is both a neat little gag and also a sign of how vulnerable he is in this dangerous world.

Cuarón’s film builds brilliantly on his empathy to carefully and beautifully build the growing understanding and trust between Theo and Kee (equally well played by Claire-Hope Ashitey). Again, it stems first from his protectiveness (Theo also works hard to protect people around him from disturbing sights, twice urging Kee not to look back and that whoever has been left behind is fine), but also from her instinctive trust in him as a good man and above the only one who seems to have her interests at heart (everyone else is concerned only with what Kee can symbolise – Ejiofor’s vigilante Luke can’t even get the sex of the baby right). Kee is vulnerable, but strong and determined, someone trying to carry the burden of being the hope of mankind.

She’s also brilliantly a member of the very migrant community that the government is trying to destroy. Cuarón’s film wants us all to remember that we are all the same deep down, that what happens to one affects us all. The horrors of what the British government are doing in the war-torn slums of migrant prisons (all of Bexhill has become a lawless hell hole, where executions and riots are daily occurrences) reek of everything from Auschwitz to Guantanamo. But amongst these migrants come the only strangers who seek to help Theo and Kee out of simple goodness and humanity. Strangers put themselves at huge risk, and in many cases sacrifice their lives, to help them. It makes a stark contrast with the revolutionaries who claim to fight for the migrants (but show no compunction in shooting them when needed), but really are only interested in their own selfish battles with no understanding of the bigger picture.

This bigger picture is very much like the thematic richness of the film that was missed on its released. It’s almost a victim of its own technical brilliance, which attracted much more attention at the time. Cuarón constructs several sequences to appear as single-takes, and the stunning camera work really helps establish this grimy, brutal world. It’s a wonderfully immersive film, a technical marvel. Every single part of the photography and design is pitch-perfect, and the key sequences are stomach-churningly tense, inspired by everything from The Battle of Algiers to A Clockwork Orange.

But the film works because it is underpinned by faith and trust in the human spirit. Mankind is being challenged like never before, but Cuarón shows us that the human spirit can survive. That simple acts of kindness can still happen. That there is a chance of hope. The final conclusion of the film is both sad but also upliftingly hopeful. Cuarón’s direction is just-about perfect, as are the performers (not just Owen and Ashitey but also an almost unrecognisible Caine as an ageing Hippie). With its acute and brilliant analysis of humanity – both in its grimness and capacity for goodness and selflessness – and with its prescient look at how easily our world could collapse, Children of Men is vibrant, brilliant, essential film-making.

Alien (1979)

Sigourney Weaver is last woman standing in Alien

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), John Hurt (Kane), Ian Holm (Ash), Yaphet Kotto (Parker), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), Veronica Cartwright (Lambert)

For decades, space was seen as a place of wonder. But Alien reminded us it was also a place where no one can hear you scream. We dream the vast void out there contains life: but what if the life we found was a relentless killing machine, a seemingly invulnerable monster literally having humanity for breakfast? Ridley Scott’s Alien took science fiction and ran it through the blender of horror, turning its space ship into a terrifying haunted house with an alien straight out of slasher films. It’s still a landmark today.

In deep space, the Nostromo’s crew is pulled out of hypersleep early – long before arriving back in our solar system. A strange distress call from an unidentified vessel needs to be investigated, on standing orders from “the company”. The seven-strong crew lands their ship and a party heads out – only to return with third officer Kane (John Hurt) with a strange alien creature attached to his face. The creature can’t be removed until it detaches itself of its own accord. All seems well until an unfortunate dinner party – at which point the crew finds itself being hunted one-by-one by a relentless alien monster.

Scott’s film is so famous today it’s very hard not to forget your foreknowledge of what’s going to happen and to experience it as its original viewers did. But it still works brilliantly – even if almost everyone watching knows only Ripley is getting out of this alive. The film is a masterpiece of slow-burn tension punctuated by moments of shocking horror. The final Alien itself doesn’t appear until almost an hour into the picture – but before then we’ve had our nerves more than jangled by the unsettling disquiet of the film’s mood. From the Nostromo, to the storm-laden planet they land on, and the vast alien ship – now a tomb of dismembered corpses with an unsettling organic look, like a giant carcass – everything in the film is designed to put us ill-at-ease. You can’t watch this film and expect anything to turn out for the best.

The camera prowls around the dank, grimy and run-down ship – space travel has rarely looked this unglamorous – like the predator that will hunt the crew. It’s slow, stately lingering on the crew, their faces, the eerily unsettling sounds and score, all serve to act like an advance funeral. Every single beat of the film stresses claustrophobia and dirt. It looks like a horrible trap already, and the film embraces a sense of grim inevitability. The observational style of the editing and shooting as we follow the characters, overhearing their bickering and functional work-based conversations, also helps add to this mounting sense of unease. It’s a surprisingly quiet film for much of its opening act, ambient noise and unsettingly lingering music dominating.

There is a poetical eeriness about the whole film. This is also partly from the sense of the ship being a society in microcosm. Much of the bickering is around bonus pay shares, the working-class engineers of the ship (one of whom is also black) bemoaning their smaller shares. The officers sit at the top, a mixture of entitled, distant, officious and daring. They have their own feuds over status, professional boundaries and personal rivalries. The captain is a laissez-faire professional, who offers only a general guidance and could really be just another member of the crew. The ship is like a giant oil-rig in space, with the crew basically a group of “truckers”. The film is as much about interpersonal tensions as it is about an alien monster who hunts people down.

But it is mainly about an alien monster that tears people apart. After almost an hour of deeply unsettling and unnerving build-up, when the monster (literally) rears its head, it’s a terrifying sight. We usually only see it briefly for small shots, but what we see is pure nightmare fuel. The creature is terrifying in its violence and power. It is partly human but also completely revolting. Covered in slime, it looks like a bizarre mix of a man, a giant penis and a vagina (its designer, HR Giger, reasoned nothing would be more unsettling and disturbing to us than seeing a beast that’s partly inspired by our own sexual organs). It creeps in corners, embraces the many shadows of Scott’s set and its capacity for violence seems unstoppable. Sharp editing and suggestion elaborates the visceral horror of its extending jaws punching through bone and flesh. It moves like an interpretative dancer and leaves a trail of blood. It’s unstoppable and infinitely cunning. It looks like your worst nightmare.

It’s all washed down with body horror. An alien that smothers its victims and shoves an egg down their throat which hatches through their chest becoming a slaughtering beast. There is an uneasy sexuality about this, right down to the “birth” of the creature being a grotesque parody of childbirth. The “birthing scene” is a masterpiece, the first moment in the film when the tension between the crew has eased – and the film itself seems to have relaxed for a moment from the knot of tension – that turns into one of the most memorable moments of body horror ever. The actors were allegedly told what would happen – but not how graphic it would be – and their horror-struck disgust (Veronica Cartwright was nearly knocked over by a powerful jetstream of mock blood and guts) and and shock gives the film a priceless realism.

Watching the film, it’s striking to me how much John Hurt’s Kane is shot as the hero early in the film. It’s he who wakes first from hypersleep. It’s Kane we follow the most for the early part of the film – he’s the one piloting the ship, volunteering to answer the distress call, urging his crew mates on as they investigate the alien vessel – it’s Kane who seems to be the hero. Making his brutal demise even more of a subconscious shock. On the other hand, Ripley is introduced as an officious, unpopular, by-the-book officer who it seems few other members of the crew like (Sigourney Weaver’s praetorian attitude helps a lot with this) – if you had to bet on someone to bite it early on, you’d pick her. The film continues to defy expectations. Characters who seem like they might be invulnerable are slaughtered early. Those who looked vulnerable survive until late on.

It’s a very strong cast. Weaver magnificently grows in authority as the film progresses, turning her abrasiveness into strength of character and moral determination. Hurt is very good as the unknowing victim-in-waiting. Kotto, chippy and defiant, is another stand-out. The finest performance through might well come from Ian Holm as science-officer Ash. Precise, cold, distant – but always hiding his own secret agenda – it’s an unsettlingly controlled performance that leads to a pay-off reveal that still works brilliantly today (and the character would have one of the most memorable death scenes in film, if he wasn’t in the same film as the most memorable death scene).

Scott’s filmmaking is brilliantly controlled, and the film is a horrifying masterpiece of tension and terror. The monster is skilfully shown at its worst (you’d never even guess in actuality it’s little more than a Doctor Who man-in-a-rubber-suit) and its design is faultless perfection. It’s not completely perfect – its build up might be ten minutes too long, and a late sequence that sees Weaver wearing little more than her undies looks hideously dated today – but it’s pretty close. Science fiction has never been scarier than it is here – hell the movies have rarely been scarer. In space no-one really can hear you scream.

Tenet (2020)


John David Washington has to save the world in the tricksy Tenet

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: John David Washington (The Protagonist), Robert Pattinson (Neil), Elizabeth Debicki (Katherine Barton), Kenneth Branagh (Andrei Sator), Dimple Kapadia (Priya), Himesh Patel (Mahir), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Ives), Michael Caine (Sir Michael Crosby), Clémence Poésy (Barbara), Martin Donovan (Fay), Fiona Dourif (Wheeler), Yuri Kolokolnikov (Volkov)

SPOILERS: I’ll be discussing Nolan’s film, which was kept so secretive, that even revealing what it is about might be considered a spoiler. So if you want to experience the film as intended, watch it first!

Tenet, at this rate the only blockbuster that is going to be released in 2020, was given the mission to save cinema from coronovirus. Match that with the near religious regard Christopher Nolan is held in by fans of cinema, and you had a major cinematic event on your hand. Is Tenet the second coming of cinema? Well of course not. But it is an enjoyable, if frustratingly tricksy, film shot on a jaw-dropping scale. If you ever had any doubt about whether Nolan grew up watching Kubrick intermixed with James Bond, this film dispels it.

Our entry point in the story is an unnamed character – he calls himself The Protagonist of the operation – played by John David Washington. A CIA agent, left critically injured after an operation at the Kiev Opera, is recruited to work for a mysterious organisation, Tenet. He discovers that Tenet is dedicated to preserving mankind in a war that is taking place across time. The tools of this war are “inverted” bullets and other materials. These bullets both backwards through time – explosions reform and bullets return to the guns that fired them. The Protagonist discovers that the inversion bullets are being funnelled through arms dealer Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh). Sator is working with a faction from the future, planning to invert time in order to save their world from destruction. Sator also has access to machines that can invert people, allowing them to move physically backwards through time giving him huge advantages in forging his empire and in collecting the components of a time-inverting super weapon that will destroy all life in our present and past.

Confused? Well as characters frequently say throughout the film – don’t think about it too much. I’ve seen Nolan’s epic twice. It’s a film that revolves around Temporal Pincer Movements – military tactics that use normal and inverted people moving backwards through time. The “forward” team lives through the events. The “Inverted” team move backwards, seeing events from the end backwards, supplying real-time information to the forward team. Those carrying out a Temporal Pincer Movement know the exact timeline of what is to happen and are therefore almost unbeatable.

Watching the film twice, I realise it places the viewer in the same position. First time I was lost in the maze of the film’s rushed explanations, hand-waved time mechanics and confused by working out who was inverted and who wasn’t at any one time. Watching the film a second time, knowing the plot, I did a Temporal Pincer Movement on it myself – my “past self” who knew basically how the film ended, helped my second viewing self to understand what was happening.

So you’ve kinda got to watch it twice to understand it properly. Or at least to begin to. Second time around you also know which details are important and which to ignore, which explanations are crucial to its understanding and which are not. Second time around I noticed a lot more how characters, such as Clémence Poésy’s scientist, who introduces inversion, stress “don’t think about it too much”. The science of it all is basically a red-herring. There is talk of various predestination and grandfather paradoxes (as you might expect in a world where the future is plotting to destroy the past). Again, second time around I realised: don’t worry about it too much.

So the question is, will people rush to see the film a second time around to understand it better? I’m not entirely sure they will. And I think that’s because, unlike Nolan’s other films, Tenet lacks heart. Here’s a man who has been praised for the ingenuity of his films going a little too far. Look back at Nolan’s other films and underneath the trickery and “timey-wimey” there is a core of a beating human heart. Inception and Interstellar, at heart, are about a man trying to reunite with his children. Memento, a man mourning the loss of his wife. Dunkirk, frightened young men trying to get home. In Tenet, there is none of this. It’s literally a film about time-scheneanigans with a huge Macguffin at the middle that will wipe out the world. The Protagonist is just what who he seems, a character who (engagingly played as he is by John David Washington, very good) we feel so little connection with that you could easily not notice we don’t learn his name.

It’s this lack of heart that really weighs the film down. How much can we really care in the end about a world-ending Macguffin so briefly explained, we just take it on trust that it’s bad? Tenet is burdened by Nolan’s slightly-too-pleased-with-itself cleverness, as events are played and replayed from multiple angles throughout the film, in a way that demands repeat viewings rather than giving the first-time viewer more knowledge in each scene. If you fall for this sort of thing, then you will fall hard. But, Nolan’s other mega-hits charmed viewers because they cared about the characters at its heart, not the elaborate tricks about time and memory. We wanted to see DiCaprio find his kids, we wanted those boys on the beach to get home – and people were happy to let other things wash over them slightly, because the emotion was how they interpreted the story. Without that heart, the film is a massive, showy trick – and a bit empty as a result.

Which isn’t to say that Nolan doesn’t shoot the hell out of it, or that the scope of it isn’t incredible. It’s where his Bond influence comes in. Because while half the time, he’s paying homage to Kubrick’s mastery and precision – or wonderfully, with its early scene of objects moving backwards and thick rubber gloves, Cocteau’s Orphée – the other half is straight out of Roger Moore. Massive bases. Huge car chases. Big shoot-outs. A Russian villain who could have walked out of Spectre and straight into the film. Flemingesque touches with the hero infiltrating the villain’s world, taking part in a sport with him. A woman at the middle who has a foot in the camps of both hero and villain. This is all Moore-era Bond, repackaged with a sprinkling of PhD Physics.

If there is a heart in the film, its Elizabeth Debicki’s abused wife of Kenneth Branagh’s lip-smacking villain. The film’s most effective character scenes revolve around this pair, and the destructive, possessive ‘love’ of Branagh’s Sator, a man must possess or destroy a person. The film captures neatly the perverted “love” Sator claims to have for a woman he abuses, beats and terrifies – and Debicki beautifully captures the mix of shame, hate and fear people in such situations often feel. Nolan must have enjoyed BBC’s The Night Manager, as Debicki repackages her role from that film almost exactly, but given the most emotional and heartfelt plotline in the film, she becomes the one character you really care about and invest in. A better film might have put her even more front and centre.

Instead though, the action around time dominates, with Nolan’s brilliantly mounted action scenes that mix forward and backward motion with staggering (and seamless) effect. It’s yet another reason to see the movie twice. The film is big, loud and demanding – often too loud, with dialogue frequently drowned out (a problem you notice less second time around when you have a much better idea about when to concentrate and when to look away). The cast do terrific work. Washington is very assured as the lead, playing with wit and grace. Debicki is a stand-out. Robert Pattinson brings a quirk and originality to a role that has very little to it on paper. Branagh has been more controversial for his Bond-tinged Russian baddie, but I found a chilling horror in his domestic abuse and selfishness that works extremely well (again particularly second time around). Pattinson brings a playfulness to an underwritten role.

Tenet may not rework cinema – and I doubt it would make a top five list of Nolan’s best films – it’s bold and challenging, if a little cold and heartless. While demanding a double viewing, it’s not quite clear if it will make you long to see it again too quickly. But if you take the effort to do so, you will find a film that grows on you more with repeated viewing – and reveals its deliberately impenetrable mysteries much better.

A Quiet Place (2018)

John Krasinski needs absolute silence in A Quiet Place

Director: John Krasinski

Cast: John Krasinski (Lee Abbott), Emily Blunt (Evelyn Abbott), Millicent Simmonds (Regan Abbott), Noah Jupe (Marcus Abbott), Cade Woodward (Beau Abbott)

I think we can all agree that 2020 has not been a good year. But it could have been worse: in A Quiet Place, by 2020 mankind has been almost completely wiped out by blind extra-terrestrial alien predators who use their super-sensitive hearing to hunt down survivors. Even Covid-19 doesn’t sound quite as bad as that. To survive demands absolute silence as even the slightest noise could lead to a pack of the ruthless, seemingly invulnerable, aliens descending.

The few survivors include the Abbott family, on an isolated farm somewhere in the American countryside. Father Lee (John Krasinski) has painstakingly converted the house as much as possible into a silent place, with sand on every walking surface outside, sound proofed rooms, batteries out of everything that could make a noise, light and camera warning systems and strict rules on no shoes and no talking – nearly all communication is done in sign language, which the family is fluent in because daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf. But there are troubles on the horizon – not least because Lee’s wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) is heavily pregnant, and the chances of childbirth – and a new-born baby – happening in silence is dangerously low.

A Quiet Place takes a fresh and ingenious concept and lays it on top of a story that otherwise hits a fair number of expected tropes. But that doesn’t matter too much when the story is told with such freshness and confidence by Krasinski and the idea at its heart genuinely feels like something we’ve never seen before. This is a film where just the very prospect of sound is tense, and noise is the principle villain. And for anyone who’s ever tried sneaking past anything silently, you’ll know how hard it is to say absolutely silent.

The concept means that even the sight of things we know could cause sound builds tension. A nail sticking out of a step to the basement causes huge worry (because we know standing on that barefoot is really going to hurt). The running through a field of wheat suddenly feels like a terrible risk. Just a glass falling off a table could lead to death for everyone. As for the tension you feel at the possibility Evelyn could go into labour and need to deliver a baby in total silence…

It’s the skilful use of everyday concepts like this that gives the film a special sense of dread. This is added to by putting a very clear family unit at the heart of this drama. At root, this is a film about the lengths that parents will go to in order to protect their children and to try and build a safe world for them. Lee is determined to pass on as many of his survival skills to his son, while Evelyn struggles to keep some form of normality going in their home. The family is also coping with deep-rooted grief and unspoken tensions, falling out from the tragic loss of one of their members early in the invasion.

This adds a further generational tension, with the father struggling (on some level) with feelings of guilt at his own failure to protect his family and shamefully feeling some blame towards his daughter for partially causing the events that led to this death. The daughter in turn fears she has lost her father’s love, and can never be forgiven by anyone (including herself) for her mistakes. While there is nothing earth-shatteringly original about this, it helps us to invest solidly in the family and to care deeply about what happens with them.

Krasinski’s direction is sharply acute and brilliantly detailed and his own performance extremely humane and engaging. He also gets an equally fine performance of tenderness and determination from (his real-life wife) Emily Blunt, while the work from Simmonds and Jupe as their children is equally well-judged and excellent. This work is particularly impressive since most of the film takes place in near silence – there isn’t a clearly spoken word of dialogue until almost 45 minutes in and no verbal conversation until nearly the hour mark.

This involving family drama sits very comfortably in the middle of a horror concept. So well in fact that it doesn’t matter that much of it pretty unoriginal or even a little predictable. After a first reel shock, the film settles into more expected rhythms. There are certain gaps that raise questions – I had to wonder how Lee and his family managed to build so much in this collection of theme houses while making no sound at all? While the weakness of the creatures seems so obvious, I’m amazed that it was never stumbled upon while governments and the military fought against them.

But that doesn’t matter too much when A Quiet Place is largely an involving thrill ride with emotive characters whom you care deeply about. And on that score, Krasinski has made a fine horror thriller with a concept that will make it stand out in the memory from other genre pics.

Zardoz (1974)

Yes Sean Connery actually wears this in Zardoz

Director: John Boorman

Cast: Sean Connery (Zed), Charlotte Rampling (Consuella), Sara Kestelman (May), Niall Buggy (Arthur Frayn/Zardoz), John Alderton (Friend), Sally Anne Newton (Avalow), Bosco Hogan (George Saden)

Be warned. When a director is given the money to make any film he wants – with total creative control and no interference from anyone else – you’ve got a 50/50 chance of either getting a work of genius or a piece of pap. In the case of John Boorman’s Zardoz you definitely get the latter. Zardoz is possibly one of the most bizarre, misguided, surreal and finally plain bad films you’ll see, like a walking advert for the most pretentious and terrible outreaches of science fiction.

It’s the year 2293, and the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The “Brutes” live in the wastelands, growing food for the “Eternals” – immortal figures, leading a luxurious but empty, pointless existence on a series of country estates protected from the outside world by forcefields, their lives governed by a super computer. In the middle are the “Exterminators”, who control (i.e. kill and enslave) the Brutes and worship “Zardoz”, a giant flying head sent by the Eternals. Until, one day, Exterminator Zed (Sean Connery) sneaks his way into Zardoz and finds himself in the world of the Eternals and starts to lead them to question the point of their interminable immortality.

Zardoz looks overwhelmingly silly, and is often filmed and edited with such high-flown, empty surrealness, that it’s almost impossible to take seriously from the start. It looks so bizarre – with its terrible costumes, camp playing and overly designed look and feel – that it’s hard not to suppress a snigger. This is made worse by the shallow, pretentious and obvious social satire forced upon on once you start to concentrate on the dialogue.

It’s also one of those films that mistakes an incoherent, poorly explained plot – in which characters frequently change sides, motivations and aims at the drop of a hat – for a sort of mystical profoundity. The influence of The Prisoner is very strongly felt, from its commune-like setting to our “hero” being trapped in a stylised world where he is trying to work out the rules. But while The Prisoner manages, more or less, to suggest some sort of deeper meaning behind all the stylistic self-indulgence and pleased-with-itself babble, Zardoz just manages to be unengaging and heavily self-indulgent.

You don’t need a philosophy major to work out the social commentary being made in a world where the richest exploit the rest of the population to live a life of ease and content. Nor is it a surprise to find that this sort of life without challenges, continuing forever, has led to stagnated and lazy lives where everything (even, to the film’s shock, sex – although of course the muscular Connery fixes that) has lost all meaning. Frankly this world takes off-cuts of several, far better and smarter films, and remixes them together into a turgid mess.

And it looks so silly. The entire design of the film constantly shoots it in the foot. How could you take Sean Connery seriously in that costume? The Eternals wear the sort of Greek-influenced hedonistic costumes that you would expect to see on a second-rate episode of Star Trek. The film frequently uses stylistic decisions that look absurd – and try too hard – from the hand gestures used to show the Eternals’ mind control (looking like a partial lift from the Macarena) to the bizarre sequences where Zed’s memory is searched using an projector, frequently using surrealist images mixed with physical theatre that frankly looks more than a little bit silly.

Sean Connery goes at this all with a respectful commitment, even if the character isn’t particularly engaging, and is hard to relate to since most of his memories seem to revolve around rape and murder. As if recognising this, there is a late plot turn where we find out that Zed is far more than he appears. But rather than making this intriguing, it makes virtually all his actions earlier in the film incoherent. But then it’s not as if that’s a problem: Charlotte Ramping, Sara Kestelman and John Alderton as the leading Eternals swop views, sides and opinions virtually scene to scene. Rampling in particular goes between plotting Zed’s death to becoming his acolyte in one conversation. For some this might be a sort of poetry. But really it’s crap.

In amongst all the nonsense, the film has a seedy, porny view of women. The Eternals seem to walk around – perhaps because they are so indifferent to sex – virtually in the buff. Connery has sex (eventually) with most of the female cast, as well as groping several others. Boobs frequently appear in shot. In one moment so bizarre it must be a joke, Zed’s sexual drive (so alien to the Eternals) is even explored by showing him some pornographic images (including some naked women mud wrestling) to see if it gets his rocks off (sadly for them, he shows much more – visible – interest in Rampling than the images they are showing).

It all finally comes to an end in an orgy of violence intercut with images that comment on rebirth in a way that is supposed to be (no doubt) an intellectual comment on the balance between love and death – but actually is just another clumsy, empty excuse for a bit more sex and violence (and plenty of nudity). But then since the film has long since stopped making any sense (with scenes including Connery dressed as a bride, chasing himself through a hall of mirrors and briefly gaining the power to turn back time and protect others from violence with “his aura”) that it hardly seems to matter. The film had a seriously damaging impact on the careers of both Boorman (who makes a good job of the opening scene and then sees the whole film slide down a silly, indulgent and pointless mess) and Connery. Not a surprise. It’s terrible.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

The Enterprise crew head to space in a tedious misfire that almost killed the franchise: Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Director: Robert Wise

Cast: William Shatner (Admiral James T Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr Leonard McCoy), James Doohan (Montgomery Scott), Walter Koenig (Lt Pavel Chekov), Nichelle Nichols (Lt Uhura), George Takei (Lt Hikaru Sulu), Persis Khambatta (Lt Ilia), Stephen Collins (Captain Willard Decker), Majel Barrett (Dr Christine Chapel), Grace Lee Whitney (Lt Janice Rand), Mark Lenard (Klingon Commander)

In the late 1970s the success of Star Wars meant every single studio was checking to find anything that could be turned into the next space-set mega-hit. Paramount’s eyes fell on a TV show that had been cancelled over ten years ago but had attracted a cult following. Hell it even had the word “Star” in the title! Quickly rejigging plans for a sequel TV series, instead Star Trek found itself heading towards the big screen. With a budget probably bigger than the amount spent making every single episode and two-time Oscar winning director Robert Wise calling the shots, what could go wrong?

Well as it transpires almost everything. Has there ever been a duller, flatter, less-engaging film that started a thirteen film franchise? Star Trek: The Motion Picture seems to have been made by people who looked at everything that made Star Wars a huge success and then decided “we ain’t going to do that!” Then they looked at everything that occasionally made the TV series self-important and hard to take seriously and said “We’re going to have some of that!” What we end up with a stupefyingly boring film that takes an immense amount of time to do almost nothing, with a story that might have made a passable 40 minutes of television into an empty and tedious two and a bit hours. Truly it was The Motionless Picture.

Anyway the plot, such as it was, features the now Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) taking back the reins of the newly revamped USS Enterprise to confront a giant cloud that is destroying everything it comes into contact with – and is on a direct course of Earth. Getting the old gang back together – including dragging Dr McCoy (DeForest Kelley) out of retirement and welcoming back Mr Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Kirk takes the place of the Enterprise’snew captain Willard Decker (Stephen Collins) and zooms out to encounter the cloud. What does the machine at the heart of this cloud want? Who is the mysterious creator that V’Ger wants to return to?

Where did it all go so wrong? The key problem lies with the script – and blame for that lies with Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s creator who took direct personal control of it. Determined that only he would control the Franchise’s future – after all it was his baby – Roddenberry rejected or minimised as much as possible many of the elements many of traditional film narratives (like villains, inter-personal conflict or the need for characters to ‘learn lessons’) for a science-fiction story he obviously felt dripped with importance. However, this shapeless machine like cloud searching for its “creator” tells us precisely nothing at all about the nature of faith or questions of identity. Because firstly V’Ger has no character and, secondly, the film takes so long to get this (almost three quarters of its running time) that there is no time to explore any of these themes anyway.

No parallels are drawn between the questions V’Ger is asking, and issues the core characters are dealing with. It makes for a big airey expanse of nothing. We learn nothing about our heroes personalities from this adventure, and they in turn are so little affected by it that at the end of the film they jet off to some new random adventure. A potentially interesting idea about progress and faith gets completely lost – despite ample opportunities to have built contrasts between V’Ger’s loss of faith and the barely-explored crises that Kirk (back in command after five years) and Spock (struggling to work out if he should purge all his emotions) are experiencing. Instead no comparisons are drawn, no insights are made and all three crises either peter out completely or utterly forgotten. It’s part of the film’s failure to really make us engage with any of these characters, or to find a reason to care about them – like Roddenberry felt investment was pandering. It’s also The Emotionless Picture.

On top of which the film was obviously so thrilled with having the budget to include the sort of sweeping space vistas the show could only dream of, that a huge portion of the film was given over to watching these images draft past the screen. Slow, 2001-like pans across space vistas, around alien crafts and then through the trippy details of V’Ger’s inards clog up the film. But while Kubrick invested those with intense meaning, Wise makes them dull as ditchwater and as empty as light show. The bar is set early on with Kirk being given a long – almost four minute – silent shuttle tour around the exterior of the Enterprise. By the time the film is eating up almost ten minutes of the Enterprise flying through V’Ger, the actors have exhausted their “stare in wonder” faces and the audience are dozing off.

It’s not helped by the sub-par acting by all involved. Shatner and Nimoy give perhaps their worst, most lifeless performances in the history of the franchise. Perhaps they were caught between the mess of the script, the lifeless pace, the pressure of bringing these characters to the big screen – or perhaps the film just doesn’t give them anything interesting to do. Kelley gets a few moments of irascible charm, but the rest of the cast have barely got a few lines to rub together. Stephen Collins as Decker looks like he doesn’t really understand what he’s involved with, while Persis Khambatta looks more animated after her character has been lobotomised than she did intact.

The film drags on with a sonorous and stately pace, making no points at all and lacking any real thematic depth whatsoever. It’s not helped by Robert Wise’s lost direction. Wise prepared for making the 80^thlive-action entry into the franchise by watching precisely zero episodes of the show –and his utter lack of comprehension of what made the series popular in the first place perhaps explains why none of it made it into the film. There is no charm or wit here at all – everything is handled with such portentous importance it only draws attention to how little there is going on.

And it looks so bad as well. The overwhelming 1970s beige and muted colours that have been chosen for the new uniforms make it look as dull and disengaging as the words that are coming out of the actor’s mouths. It becomes even easier to notice the blandness of everything you are looking at that isn’t a matte special effect when you notice how full the script is with filler. Other a third of the film gone before the Enterprise leaves space dock. A tedious non-drama about problems going to warp (in a sequence of embarrassingly bad “slowed down” time disturbance as the ship falls into a wormhole). Almost two thirds gone before the crew make contact with V’Ger our nominal antagonist. A reveal about V’Ger’s origins and the identity of the creator that would have been shock only to people who had never seen an episode of the show before or had been living under a rock since about 1969.

There are precisely two good things about the movie. Firstly the music is superb – Jerry Goldsmith’s themes for the film (re-used for The Next Generation) and other bits of music, especially his martial Klingon music, is so perfect, so brilliant it was used in the franchise forever more. Secondly the opening sequence with the re-designed Klingons nailed a look, design and language for them that would also stick for the rest of time and the sequence itself is pretty exciting. Other than that, there is almost nothing to recommend the film.

As an advert for making someone want to watch any Star Trek ever again, it’s a disaster. Having gone way over budget, the series only returned due to loyal fans paying over the odds at the box-office. Roddenberry was dispatched from any future involvement, and the series bounced back with its best ever film with Star Trek II – which corrected all the script mistakes this one made.