DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

 

RETURNING TO

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

AND HOW GORT TAUGHT US TO HATE THE BOMB.

Every once in a while, a film comes along that sums up the Zeitgeist of our times and no more so than this movie. So picture the scene kids: its 1951. The United States of America is teaching its citizens to Love The Bomb, while they sweat it out in a Mexican Standoff with the Soviet Union. Nuclear annihilation could come at any given moment, but the world was about to be thrown into doubt, as a little Hollywood film suddenly landed in Washington DC.

A film that largely challenged the need for mutually assured destruction and stated (in no uncertain terms) that it was ok to just Hate The Bomb and all that it stood for. That film was 20th Century Fox’s: The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). 

BASED ON A BOOK

Based on the 1940 novel Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates, the original story told of an alien space craft landing in Washington DC, who’s pilot (Klaatu) is shot dead by a lunatic, leaving his henchman Robot (Gnut) motionless outside the ship. Eventually Gnut retrieves ‘voice recordings’ from Klaatu’s corpse, (to make a clone), before returning to outer space, revealing to the narrator, that he is "The Master" of the human race.   

The essence of the novel later became the movie, with scriptwriter Edmund H. North, making changes, that included changing Gnuts name to Gort and giving Klaatu a much larger part to play in world-peace and warning us of the dangers of nuclear conflict. 

With that in mind, there were very few who spoke out against the ensuing Arms Race for fear of losing their jobs. As a result, The Day The Earth Stood Still addressed these issues head on:  speaking out for the millions of people who had no voice of their own, to stand up to McCarthyism and the insanity of nuclear holocaust. 

REAL INFANTRY WERE USED. 

Production wise, the film required a reluctant military involvement, as a flying saucer lands on the grassy lawns near the Washington Monument: surrounded by tanks, anti-aircraft guns, missiles and so on. However, The American Department Of Defence actually hated the script and wanted nothing to do with it but ultimately The 3rd Armoured Cavalry At Fort Meade, Maryland (nicknamed The Brave Rifles) finally agreed to participate, supplying the necessary hardware to pull off these fantastic scenes.

 

But it was with all likelihood, that they were not fully aware of the facts. You can just imagine that the producers probably told their bosses, that it was just for a ‘training exercise’, or a publicity stunt or some such. 

COLD WAR HEATING UP 

For its time, The Day The Earth Stood Still was a brave film, in a period of extreme prejudice, social anxiety and paranoia. And its easy to understand why.  At this point in our precarious history, there was no such thing as the internet. Tv & Radio dominated the flow of information. A veritable Iron Curtain of mistrust had descended upon Europe and there were more nukes pointed at each other, than a post apocalypse caveman could shake a stick at. Propaganda was the name of the game. 

Public information films such as Duck & Cover (1952) were being churned out to the masses, showing us how Burt the Turtle and little Jimmy can survive the initial three minutes of a nuclear strike by simply ducking behind a bush! But don’t worry kids, you’ll be fine. If the blast wave doesn’t kill you first, then the subsequent fallout (and ten years of nuclear winter) probably will. 

Better Dead than Red was a household mantra and the worlds scientific and military resources were basically held ransom to a monumental game of global poker, known as The Cold War.  Indeed, the stakes were high, fuelled by paranoid delusion. Trigger happy Generals in The Pentagon, wielded atomic weapons like so many kids with water bombs. It was like a scene from Dr Strange Glove:  

We gotta nuke them goddamn commies! Nuke em all! 

But... no wait! That doesn’t work! It’s a no-win scenario. Like playing chess with live hand grenades.  

or better still:  Two sworn enemies standing in a lake of gasoline, one holds three matches. 

The other holds five. (Carl Sagan) 

But its the 1950's, so we can’t talk about that. Doubt in the campaign weakens the defence, right? 

Meanwhile, (to make sure the public was sufficiently traumatised further), The McCarthy Witch Hunts were in full swing, holding endless congressional hearings to weed out communist sympathisers. 

Have you ever been a member of, or in any way associated with (either directly or indirectly) the Communist Party? 

Hollywood was in a state of siege, black-listing actors, filmmakers, writers and musicians who just happen to like the idea of a better world. 

What? I hear you say. A better world? Sounds like goddamn commie talk to me! Shoot that basterd! 

And its not just Hollywood, but the entire USA is under the thumb. Trust was a hard thing to come by in these paranoid times. Fear of the other, fear of the unknown. Russian Spies were everywhere, apparently. Curtains twitched frantically, as strangers moved in next door, ready to invade our homes, in the guise of pleasant speaking Englishmen (probably) and no one was safe from the threat of those goddamnn commies! And only the Russians knew what they thought of us. 

FEAR OF THE OTHER 

Speaking of pleasant speaking Englishmen, the pinnacle themes of this film (mainly fear of The Other) are no more so aptly portrayed when the alien Klaatu (played by Michael Rennie) pays a visit to Mrs Crockett’s boarding house: Already in a state of anxiety (from various news bulletins of the aliens escape) Mrs Crockett’s guests leap from their seats, at the sudden appearance of the mild-mannered and well-groomed stranger, who politely asks to rent a room. 

Klaatu’s charm quickly wins them over and it’s clear that his co-lodger Mrs Benson (Patricia Neal) has the hots for this weird English-speaking (not to mention) COMPLETE STRANGER. So much so, she even allows him to take her ten-year old kid off to go see the flying saucer (!) 

Wow, now if that aint trust I don’t know what is.  Let total strangers take your kids to see flying saucers. Not so much as a criminal records check. 

All you gotta do is be white and smile, I guess. 

Michael Rennie as the charm-smooch alien Klaatu

Only Mrs Bensons jealous boyfriend (played by Hugh Marlowe) is immune to Klaatu’s charms and sets out to expose him for all his worth.

 

And these are just some of the most poignant and dramatic scenes of the movie because it shows us everything we need to know about 1950s American social anxieties. And not only did white-collar Southern Americans fear the communists, we’re also in the midst of racial segregation too. 

Jeez, imagine if Sydney Poitier had rolled up at Mrs Crockett’s boarding house? 

Hey kid! Wanna go see a flyin’ saucer?? 

We might have entered some fucked-up Klu Klux Klan territory here. Plus it would still be another three years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus and fan the flames of race equality.

But 1950's Hollywood could only stand so much. 

What ? A  film that challenges the Cold War, McCarthyism, Racism and stars a black guy too? 

Get outta here! 

All joking aside, I would of loved to have seen that version. Sydney Poitier as Klaatu? How awsum would that have been? 

In the age of Deep Fakery, somebody's gotta make that film. 

 

But for now, we just have to settle for Michael Rennie, who’s quaint English ways were about as radical as it got, for 1950s American audiences. And lets not even go there with any homo-related or gender identity connotations. For the sake of simplicity, he’s just a straight-white-guy from outer space! Capeesh?  

A MESSAGE FOR PEACE 

But I digress.  This was the state of play in those impossible times. 

This might be an old scratchy black and white movie, with lumbering killer-robots etc but the themes of paranoia and self destruction are as relevant today, as they were back then.  

We are still on the brink of nuclear war. We still fear the other. But its often films like this, that remind us, that it doesn't have to be that way. 

Hey Brother, why cant we all just ...get along? 

When The Day The Earth Stood Still premiered in 1951, it (surprisingly) received generally positive reviews.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association even gave it a Golden Global Award for promoting World Peace.

LEGACY 

Henceforth, the characters of the Christ-like Klaatu (and his indestructible killer police robot Gort), where indelibly etched into the public psyche, spurning an entire genre of science fiction movies: some bad, some just plain terrible but nearly all dealing with the idea of the communist threat in the guise of alien invasion. In most cases, the invaders were hostile and in others, pacifists and victims of misunderstanding, such was the legacy that The Day The Earth Stood Still had left us. 

Nobody can deny this films power to make one stop and think about the tightrope we precariously walk upon and without this movie, there wouldn’t be Tv serials such as Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, which essentially touched upon similar themes. With that in mind, Captain Kirk could quite easily be Klaatu: seeking out new life and civilisations etc, bringing them under the wing of a United Federation. And really that is what this film is about: the promotion of a stronger United Nations.

In plainer words, The Day The Earth Stood Still stuck a big middle finger up to McCarthyism and the Nuclear Arms race. It could be argued that this one film influenced an entire generation to work towards world peace, culminating in subsequent anti-nuke films such as, The War Game (1966), The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984), leading to the final days of the Iron Curtain and the end of The Cold War. 

Director Robert Wise would go on to direct Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), spawning a franchise that is still going strong today. With the advent of the internet, we are now more informed about the complexities of our world but we still gotta long way to go towards world peace. So if anything, The Day The Earth Stood Still has ingrained itself into our subconscious, to the point that perhaps it has made an indelible impression on where our priorities really lie. 

It may not seem like we live in a better world right now but it’s a far sight better than it used to be. 

So just remember kids, the next time you play with Nukes, watch out for Gort. Or you’ll be playing your next game of war, with sticks and stones! 

Klaatu Barada Nikto !

SILENT RUNNING

 Returning to 

1972: Just three years after 2001: A space Odyssey and five years before Star Wars, Universal Pictures produced one of the most renowned sci-fi films of all time.

In fact , critic Mark Kermode cited it as one of the best movies ever made. 

A film that highlighted environmental issues, a future where the temperature of Earth is 75 degrees and unsustainable for plant life. 

Arc ships are sent into space, carrying the last vestiges of flora and fauna taken from around our dying planet and housed within the crafts array of giant bio-domes.

But even this is subject to Nixen like budget cuts and what plays out is a film that deals with the last forest in existence. 

That film was Silent Running. 

Featuring Bruce Dern in one of his finest performances, Silent Running has all the hallmarks of a sci-fi classic. Cute robots, awsum space ships and songs by Joan Baez. Who could ask for more?  Yet at the time Derns performance was lauded by critics as over the top and Baez's musical interludes deemed annoying. 

BRUCE DERN 

Is he over acting? Not really. His character Freeman Lowell is passionate about sustainability, which was often a point of ridicule by industrialists, hell bent on making the world into one giant car park and charging the very air we breath.

Dern was fully aware of this and enthused these aspects within Lowells personality, resulting in a character driven to the point of being necrotic and comical. Especially when cooped up in a space ship for twelve years, planting trees, while his ship mates act like yocal redneck rejects from any given trucker movie. 

They drink beer, play poker, shoot pool and race dune buggies around the space forest, much to the annoyance of Lowell, as they run over his plants. Jesus. it really shows just how apathetic the mindset of this universe has become. 

Basically these guys are assholes. They don't give a flying fuck about saving the ecology of the Earth. This is highlighted in several group scenes, where Lowell grows continually tired of their ignorance. 

It all comes to a head when the company recall them to Earth and order the destruction of the biodomes. The red necks cheer. Lowell is devastated. 

Eventually he explodes into a rant about a child never knowing what its like to sleep in tall green grass on a lazy summer afternoon. To which his redneck buddies burst into giggles like three year olds. 

Fuck. These guys really need to die right now.  And so they do. But even after Lowell kills them all off, he still shows remorse for what he has done. 

It could be said that Derns little rants on ecology are akin to Woke before there was even a name for it. Before Woke became tiresome and unpopular due to its pronoun dictatorships. It could also be argued that the three hicks are just as equally Counter-Woke in their own brainwashing. 

But whatever. This was a time when Science Fiction highlighted real issues before it became pew-pew Space Opera. 

At any rate, for an actor best known for playing villian's and character parts Bruce Dern is fantastic. Nobody could have pulled this performance off better. NOBODY. His plea to his nonchalant compatriots, not to destroy the last forests, is a plea to us all. 

No CGI here folks, that's real tears welling in Derns eyes, as he gives Jordan Peterson a run for his money. 

JOAN BAEZ

Besides being a rock star, Joan Baez was best known at the time for her political activism.  She was part of the waning flower power Zeitgeist of the time, which also included protests against Vietnam, the Cold War and deforestation.  So her material dealt with matters of ecology and a better world. 

Baez contributed two songs to the movie. The first being 'Rejoice in the Sun' and  the second (also called Silent Running) . 

Both feature in the two montages that appear at the beginning and towards the latter part of the film.

Although her lyrics suit the themes in Silent Running, I must admit it was a little jarring when her first song ('Rejoice in the Sun') pops up. Baez alto-style of singing wasn't everyone's cup of tea. So its easy to understand why critics would pan her.  

In her defense, the second montage (featuring her song 'Silent Running') is a delight to watch and is one of the best sequences in the whole movie. This is  attributed to the comedic set up before the second montage appears. 

COMEDIC SET UPS

Having now gone awol, Bruce Derns character attempts to teach his new found droid pals Huey and Dewey, how to plant plants with great comical effect. 

'Pitiful!' He sighs, as the two droids haphazardly make a hash of digging a hole and sticking a plant in it. 

Its a great scene which lightens up the mood, particularly after Dern has killed off his annoying-as-fuck ship mates (trust me, they had it coming) and lost one of the three droids (Louie)  in a space storm. Thus the following Baez led montage works effortlessly and really chugs the film along quite nicely. 

Plus being a film that predominantly features zero women in it, this makes Baez's input even more relevant. She could be considered as the Mother Nature motif, that encompasses the narrative. 

ORIGINATOR OF THE CUTE ROBOT TROPE 

Of course, no 70s' sci-fi movie was complete without a couple of cute robots. And this movie started it all. True, robots had featured before in sci fi, such as Forbidden Planet and Lost in Space but these were more of the lumbering Frankenstein types.

Enter Huey and Dewey: the ships two surviving maintenance drones. This was a time before R2D2 and other astro-mech droids had become a stalwart of all space opera. In fact, George Lucas asked Silent Runnings director Douglas Trumbull,  if he could borrow the idea for his droids in Star Wars.

The three drones featured in Silent Running, were played by four bilateral amputees, Mark Persons as Drone 1 (Dewey), Cheryl Sparks and Steven Brown as Drone 2 (Huey) and Larry Whisenhunt as Drone 3 (Louie). They used their hands as the robots feet and are thoroughly convincing as bi-pedal robots. 

What makes them even more endearing, is the little quirks these robots have. They cheat at poker and hiss and bleep when Lowell reprimands them. 

Over the course of the movie, its hard not to have a soft spot for them and when one of them is damaged in a collision with a dune buggy, its almost heartbreaking.

This leads into one for the most poignant scenes, where said robot is in the sick bay, while Lowell tries his best to save the little guy. I was in fucking tears. 

LEGACY 

All in all, Silent Running might not compete with the later marvels of the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises or the giddy heights of Battle Star Galactica. 

But it was the first.

The first to combine the ideas of cute robots and ecological themes, that later proliferated into the latter. Just look at the film WALL-E and you can see echoes of Silent Running. 

Silent Running is a slow movie for sure. There are no pew-pew space battles and big showdowns with evil dark lords. 

But where it might lack in action and adventure, it more than makes up for with endearing characters and uncomfortable truths. 

BOOKS VS MOVIES

 

BOOKS VS MOVIES 

It’s the age old debate. Books are way better than films! I hear people say. Period! Cite me any movie that was better than the book! 

Oh yeah? Well what about any James Bond movie?  They are likely to be far more entertaining than a JB novel. Some movies do actually live up to their book expectations. I have even talked to fans of "The Lord of the Rings" books: one said the movie 'Battle of Helms Deep' was pretty much how he imagined it from the book. He even got up in the cinema and cheered! 

Then again, its all down to personal taste and that’s because books are a far more intimate medium than a movie but both have their own merits. Books create a close link between a writer and a reader, and it can be frustrating when films don't live up to one's individual expectations of a novel. But to state a book is better than a movie is just dismissive of the thousands of people who risk their lives making these movies, who were inspired to make them because of books. Plus nobody ever died writing a novel, unless they slipped on spilt coffee and got impaled on a pencil.

But I digress, it is true, books tend to have more longevity than a movie might because they only require the imagination of the reader. Where as a movie has to provide all that but will date quickly due to changing fashions and technology. But then again some books tend to drag also, due to the 'Show Not Tell' ethos, which in my opinion should be used wisely, as too much of it can really slow the pace of a chapter to a grinding halt and thus bore the reader. "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is considerably laborious to read and its only twist fails miserably, when (in hindsight) you know that they are one and the same person.

Transposing a book to film also requires budgetary considerations. Thus they tend to have more action and entertainment and drop scenes from a book that might kill the pacing of the narrative. Coming back to the James Bond Books for a moment, they are totally different from the movies, due to the contractual agreements. But even so, fans of bond films such as The Spy Who Loved Me or Moon Raker, might find the novel versions somewhat of a disappointment. There are no megalomaniacs in the "The Spy Who Loved Me" novella for example, nor does it have a swish submarine car or any underwater citadel lairs, submarine eating tankers or indestructible henchmen with metal teeth. It doesn't even have James Bond in it! And is more of a 'Dear Diary' affair from a Bond Girls point of view. 

Speaking of henchmen with metal teeth, the movie version of "Jaws" is another example, whereby its book counterpart is slow and laborious, with Chief Brody's wife having an affair (and no exploding shark!). "The Life of Pi"novel covers the back story in more detail than the movie does and gives a fantastic insight into Indian Culture but at the same time wonders too far from the basic plot of a kid stuck on a life-boat with a Bengal tiger. "Moby Dick" takes forever to get to the whale and the Frankenstein novel never had a spectacular resurrection scene either. The book of "Dracula" is essentially a series of correspondence letters between the characters. 

On the other hand, I have yet to see an authentic movie version of "The War of the Worlds", bar the Jeff Wayne musical version but it was because of those films (and particularly the musical), that spurred me to read the HG Wells novel in the first place and now I cant help reading it, without hearing Richard Burtons voice. 

If anything, films invariably wet the appetite of the reader and vice versa. Leaving the cinema, one might hear someone say The book was better. Another person will muddle thru the novel and think the opposite. 

All in all, each has its own respected battle trenches, that the will keep folks engaged in debate, long after the original writers and filmmakers have passed on...

WHEN DIRECTORS GO TOO FAR

 WHEN DIRECTORS GO TOO FAR!

I guess its easy to say this in hindsight but putting an actor in jeopardy for the sake of a shot is not the way to go. Actors train to fake emotions, or rather draw upon their own experiences/inspirations, to bring a role to life. 

So when a director literally pulls the rug from beneath them to get 'realistic performances', its a really shitty thing to do, particularly where stunts are concerned. Stunts are for stuntmen, not actors. 

Time and time again directors put their "vision" before the safety of their actors and crew. During Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,(1984) actress Judie Aronson suffered hypothermia, after being forced to stay in freezing water for hours, while the camera crew set up a shot in a lake. It was only when Jason actor Ted White threatened to walk, that she was finally rescued. 

Alec Baldwin accidentally shot dead cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the western 'Rust' (2021). Brandon Lee died during the making of The Crow (1994). And these are just the tips of some very nasty ice burgs. During the aerial scenes filmed for You Only Live Twice (1967), cameraman John Jordan lost his foot when a helicopter rotor blade got too close. 

James Cameron put Ed Harris thru hell to make the sci-fi film 'The Abyss' (1989), in which the actor almost drowned. Numerous technical problems plagued the production and co-star Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio walked off set. The crew even made up badges that read 'The Abuse'. 

Director John Landis was sued for the deaths of actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen who where all killed during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), when a helicopter crashed on set.  Malcolm McDowell suffered a scratched cornea and temporary blindness filming the brainwashing scenes for A Clockwork Orange (1971). 

The list goes on and on. The more ambitious the movie, the more likely accidents and fatalities will occur. 

Even with the simplest of scenes, requiring no stunts, directors still find a way to put their actors in harms way. Some Directors are simply not a people person, because they lack acting experience themselves and don’t know how to communicate with actors. That is often the problem when one stays behind the camera. They might have lots of imaginative ideas but they expect an actor to become a puppet to realise those ideas and then become frustrated when they don’t get the best results. 

Its like the passenger grabbing the wheel coz they don’t like the drivers style. Plenty of times I’ve put my heart in my hands getting lifts in cars with bad drivers but I’ve never felt I had to drive the car myself. 

If a director is not getting the results he wants from an actor, then maybe they should have thought about that before giving them the job in the first place, which is the whole point of a audition. 

Give me your best scream. 

AWSUM SERIALS: Russell T Davis: 'DALEK'

 

AWSUM SERIALS: 

Russell T Davis: 

'DALEK' 

'Dalek' was a fantastic re-introduction to the Doctors oldest nemesis. Bare in mind, that by the 1980s the Daleks popularity had been reduced to Spike Milligan comedy sketches etc. 

This was not helped by dwindling Dr Who budgets and cheap looking Dalek props that made them look like, well... cheap looking Dalek props. 

The show also suffered a decline in the public perception (and a less-prominent transmission slot). Unable to compete with ITVs The A-Team, Battle Star Galactica, Air Wolf, Knight Rider etc the show ultimately died a death in 1989. 

When Russell T Davis rebooted the series, it was one of his prime objectives to resurrect the Daleks as well. So he made sure that the Daleks would return, bigger and badder to keep in step with the times. 

Thus 'Dalek' achieves this ethos perfectly. However most kids in 2005 had no idea what a Dalek was and Davis was fully aware of this. And so he devised the idea of one solitary Dalek, to show this new audience why Daleks were the most feared race in the known universe...

NOT-SO AWSUM MOVIES: BEYOND STAR TREK BEYOND

NOT-SO AWSUM MOVIES: 

BEYOND STAR TREK BEYOND

or 

WHY BLOWING UP THE ENTERPRISE 

(FOR A THIRD TIME IN A ROW) 

IS REALLY GETTING OLD 

I have no real problem with Star Trek Beyond, honestly. Good solid acting, spectacular effects, its all very entertaining. But still, there is that niggling issue about the USS Enterprise getting destroyed YET AGAIN. I suppose its more than a niggle. Ok fuck it. I’ll be totally honest. WTF?  

Basically my gripe is the utter disrespect for the good old USS Enterprise, who's served her crew thru thick and thin, faithfully in two spectacular JJ Abrams movies. Then its like the third movie and whatever. She gets trashed, in the first ten minutes of this film, as if she's not even relevant! 

This concept just didn’t really work for me at all. There was no real reason to do it, other than cheap thrills. 

THAT THIRD ALTERNATIVE 

But here’s the thing. They coulda had their cake and eaten it, if they simply gotten the Enterprise thru the whole narrative somehow intact. 

It just seemed like nobody was in charge of script editing. 

If they had, it might have been like Kirks rant in 'Operation Annihilate.' Where Spock and McCoy are at a loss about what to do with the killer flying pizzas and Kirk is losing patience with their fumbling. 

    'Im putting you two on the hot seat with me!' He says. 'I want that third Alternative!'

In that respect, they should have gotten William Shatner on board to help re-write Simon Pegg's dumbass script. 

    'What Simon? The Enterprise gets blown up again? How about a third Alternative??' 

Why nobody objected to blowing up the Enterprise, is beyond me. Which is ironic because its actually called Star Trek Beyond.  But beyond what? Beyond the Enterprise? Beyond any sense what so ever? 

But lets talk about that Third Alternative for a second:

They could have had Kirk etc crash-land on the planet in a space shuttle (or whatever), while the Enterprise is elsewhere looking for it, while trying to evade the nasty space swarm.

Alternatively, they could have abandoned ship, (thinking it was doomed) but Scotty stays aboard and (somehow) manages to bring her back to life. This idea might have had more impact. The crew think the Enterprise is gone and with no hope of rescue they slug it out on the planet. 

But then its tad-arr! The third act, reveals the Enterprise is in fact not as badly damaged as everyone thought and Scotty has a full bank of phasers ready to kick-ass! 

They coulda done any one of a plethora of ideas, other than binning the USS Enterprise on the sacrificial alter of entertainment. 

Because blowing up the Enterprise is really a one trick pony idea. You can only really do it once (maybe twice) and that’s it. 

THIRD TIMES, NO CHARM

Jesus. I've almost lost count here. How many times has the Enterprise been blown up now? 

Lets do the math. Or Maths. Whatever. 

Echoes of 'The Search For Spock' and 'Generations' spring to mind. 

The first time they blew up the Enterprise, it was to up the stakes: 

It was all or nothing for Kirk: his son dead, his best friend Spock somewhere in limbo, his career in Star Fleet OVER. So the Enterprise’s destruction was kinda like the ultimate blow to Kirk, his ultimate sacrifice and fuck you to the no-win-scenario.

    Star Trek: The Search For Spock. A twenty-year old battered USS Enterprise is at an end. 

In Generations, the saucer-section detaches and crash-lands on the planet, its a spectacular scene and works for all the right reasons. Simply put, the stakes have to be so high, that blowing up the Enterprise is really the last resort and shouldn't be taken lightly and not just for kicks.  

                                 Star Trek: Generations, The Enterprise takes a clobbering. 

Because this iconic ship, is what glues all of Star Trek together. 

It was bad enough when they trashed Vulcan in the first movie (altering the entire time line for no reason at all) and then got the most inappropriate actor to play Khan for 'Into Darkness: Benedict (I am Khaaaaaaaan) Cumberbunch. 

TARANTINO APPROACH 

Some critics compare Abrams approach to the franchise, as akin to Star Wars but I would say it was more like Quentin Tarantino. In fact they even asked him to direct. 

Yep that’s right. They actually approached Tarantino to make a Star Trek movie. Of course it never happened but it does feel like they were trying to emulate Tarantino’s thinking, in this particular movie. Would Tarantino bin the Enterprise like this? He might have, if this film was a parody like Galaxy Quest.  

So its been a case of: what else can we do to wow the audiences, guys? Fuck it, lets get Simon Pegg to trash the USS Enterprise! Tarantino style! And for what? I’ll tell you what. Cheap thrills. 

And thats what you get folks, when you have a bunch of kids with a ton of hollywood money, trying to imitate Tarantino and then applying that to Star Trek. 

The net result, is you end up blowing the crap out of your Golden Goose in an blatant attempt to out-do 'The Search For Spock' and try to morph Star Trek into something like Star Wars meets Reservoir Dogs , all safe in the knowledge that blowing up the Enterprise is no big deal. They can always build another one. 

After all, there’s plenty more letters in the Alphabet.  

WHAT IF? STAR WARS WAS MADE IN ORDER?

 

WHAT IF  

STAR WARS 

WAS MADE IN ORDER?

This WHAT IF ? argument had to come sooner or later: What if director George Lucas had made a fantastical error by not making his movies in 'chronological order'? What if Star Wars had begun at the very beginning? What if instead of A New Hope we had The Phantom Menace - premiering across our movie theatres way back in 1977 ??  

That’s a lot of what-ifs. Thats like saying what if JFK wasn’t assassinated or Titanic hadn’t hit that iceberg? Lets face it, it would be a drag. It would be like having to read the entire Bible from beginning to end, when all you really want, is all the juicy bits, like: Noah and the Great flood, Moses and Christ taking on the Roman Empire. 

Its easy to say that The Phantom Menace should have been the first Star Wars movie but in hindsight there would have been repercussions: Running Star Wars in chronological order, starting with The Phantom Menace (circa 1977) would NOT have paid off in the '70s and heres why.  

For starters nobody would have got all the fuss about Anakin Skywalker. (Darth who???) Jabba would have been humanoid (played by Belfast actor Declan Mulholland) and to attempt to (un)create the many visual effects without CGI would have pushed the production team way over budget and 20th Century Fox would have cancelled the project.

Something as complex as Star Wars had to start somewhere. The original idea was something like Jedi Kane Starkiller and a complex story of revenge, cloning and where Han Solo was a ten foot tall green lizard in spandex. This was essentially the look of  Star Wars in 1974. It would take Lucas a little while longer to realise that this version could never be made with the current technology and opted for a simpler idea but even that became another epic story. 

In the end, Lucas realised Star Wars could only be filmed if he took one portion of it and make that into a movie - which later became A New Hope.  But back in 1977 it was simply called 'Star Wars' because folks, nobody had a clue what Star Wars was. So with that in mind, it was far simpler to use this first film as a vehicle to showcase the entire Star Wars concept.  

Lets also not forget that the original Star Wars very nearly didn't get made at all. NOBODY believed in Lucas's vision. They just went along with it because he had a little Hollywood clout. Lucas didn't help things by his shyness. His incessant mumblings and lack of stage direction frustrated actors and crew alike. 

‘Faster with more intensity’ would be his stock direction cue. 

To make matters worse, the British film crew downed tools every day at 5pm and production was dangerously close to getting shut down. Shooting the Tatooine scenes in Tunisia turned into a nightmare: as film sets got destroyed in sand storms and the crew mutinied to go back to England (presumably for more tea). 

If that wasn’t enough headache, the Special Fx Team were way behind schedule, frustrating matters. Without a break, Lucas desperately tried to get the film finished and it almost dam near killed him. In the end Lucas had to fire his editor and cut the film himself and perhaps this single act saved Star Wars.  

Looking back, it really was an ambitious project hindered at every turn. But Lucas's genius lay in turning each of those hindrances on their heads and the rest as they say is history. It was the biggest gamble of his career and it paid off but had Lucas gone with some half baked chronological story such as The Phantom Menace, the Star Wars Franchise would have sunk like a lead balloon and call it what you will, that is a educated guess and likely how it would have gone down. 

Take also into account that Science Fiction wasn’t terribly favoured by Hollywood at the time. What we got on the cinema screens in 1977, was basically a compromise between what Lucas wanted and what could be agreed upon by the lever pullers. 

Perhaps we wouldn’t have a franchise at all if the executives had gotten their way. The deplorable Christmas Special almost destroyed Star Wars. But that’s another story. 

All in all, The Phantom Menace could never have been made without establishing the concept of Star Wars with A New Hope and that’s evolution, folks.