Pandorum (2009)

Title: Pandorum (2009)

Director: Christian Alvart

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Antje Traue

Review:

Don’t know about you guys, but lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the “end of the world”. There has been a recent slate of films where the films main premise and main theme is that humanity either has already ended, or is about to end. This recent fixation with “end of the world” movies probably stems from the coming of the year 2012. Some people out there actually think the world is going to go caput on that year. It could also have something to do with the economy, and how life isn’t really as easy as it used to be. My take on it is that every generation eventually ends up thinking that the world is going to end during their time. The sometimes chaotic nature of life can make us think that way. One look at sci-fi movie posters from the 50’s will let you know what I’m talking about, back then, people were just as obsessed with 'the end of life as we know it' as they are now. So many movies back then exploited this angle, this fear that the human race will one day disappear from existence. Truth is, time keeps going, the planet keeps going, and so far, so do we. My advice is to take it easy, soon it will all blow over, well get old and realize there was really nothing to worry about. Or maybe a giant meteorite will wipe us out and we wont even know it. In the mean time, we got some movies to watch. Like Pandorum, a film that also explores this notion.

On Pandorum, we are presented with an interesting premise. Planet Earth as we know it ceased to exist. It’s not specified how (“it was probably nuclear!”) but planet earth and all of humanity disappeared from the cosmos. Fortunately, one last spaceship was sent out into space with the last of the humans. They are headed towards a new planet that has been discovered and that has shown signs of being “earth like”. Only two people are needed to run the ship, the rest are safely kept away in hyper sleep. Movie starts out when two members of the flight crew wake up from hyper sleep to an abandoned and lonely ship. No one is running it, the power has failed, and no one really knows why. This is where the mystery begins. What has happened? Why is no one flying the ship? Did we make it to the planet or not?

So I liked that about this movie. It starts out with a great big mystery. No one knows anything, and we along with the two awakening crew members are slowly figuring everything out. It’s that initial sense of mystery that pulled me into the movie immediately. The not knowing what’s happening. I loved the setting of this gigantic haunting spaceship. It’s one of the main reasons why I love Event Horizon (1997) and The Black Hole (1979) so much, exploring the gigantic and ominous spaceship. The art direction was great in this film, the dark corridors of the spaceships, the different rooms in the ship were well executed, and yeah, its true, more then a little influenced by Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), the film that Pandorum uses partially as its blue print. At least in look and feel. Its whole first half is a lot like Aliens (1986) as well. The crew waking up from hyper sleep. We even get a mysterious girl who has been surviving on her own and has turned almost savage in nature, ala Nute in James Cameron’s Aliens.

The makers of Pandorum fed from more then just the Alien franchise to make their film. It’s also got elements from films like Silent Running (1971) and more recently Wall-E (2008), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) and Knowing (2009). It even fed of some sci-fi novels. I’m a huge Arthur C. Clarke fan, for those who don’t know, he is the Author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other excellent sci-fi novels. A lot of Arthur C. Clarkes books dealt with this premise of a spaceship with the last remaining members of the human race. The one that comes to mind is Songs from a Distant Earth (1986). In that novel a spaceship with the last remaining humans are on their way to another planet they hope will be their new home. And it’s a very interesting premise; unfortunately this angle wasn’t explored so much because the film was more concerned with becoming just another monster movie, and not a very original one at that.

Personally, I’m burned out on movies that go for the “good guys running from the monsters” premise. And that’s entirely what this movie turns into. This is one of the main reasons why I was absolutely bored to death with Quarantine (2009). It’s so boring when we know exactly what’s going to happen in a film. I totally disconnected from Quarantine for this reason. But I stuck with Pandorum because I liked the “last members of the human race” premise and I wanted to see where they were going to go with that. But basically, these cannibal like creatures are running through the space ship and the good guys have to fight their way through them so that they can arrive at the ships power generator. Good guys need to turn the generator on so that the ships power is restored and they can make their way to this new planet they are supposed to reach at some point. That whole second act of the film, where we start to figure out what the creatures are, their behavior and how much of a threat they are bored me to death. There’s nothing new or different about it.

To me, if you are going to do something dealing with the good guys running away from the monsters, you have to make sure it’s something original, something we have not seen before. Unfortunately, the original route is not the one this film wanted to take. The creatures resemble those we have seen in many other films. The one that first popped to mind was those creatures we saw in Neil Marshall’s The Descent (2005) where these creatures have been in the dark for so long they have become cannibals, they have begun to breed, they have pale skin and white eyes. If you’ve seen The Descent, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect from these beasties, they even have a similar scene in which the good guys fall in this pool of blood and skeletons...just like in The Descent! To the films credit, I will say that the make up effects were handled well, but these creatures don’t go past the guy in a suit thing we’ve seen thousands of times before. They are violent and filled with rage, similar also to “the reapers” seen in Joss Whedon’s Serenity (2005).

Somewhere around its third half, the film kicks back into an interesting gear; when the whole mystery is completely unraveled. Interesting thing is that with each human we meet on the ship, the further away from being civilized they are. I thought that was cool about the movie, obviously commenting on how easily our civilized behavior can disappear in extremely difficult circumstances. Also, the film has a very interesting twist in its last half that I loved.

Performance wise everyone did a good job, but nothing to call home about. I mean, is it just me or has Dennis Quaid been phoning in a lot of his performances lately. I don’t know, the guy just doesn’t seem to be trying anymore. His presence in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) for example was so replaceable. No special effort is put into his performances, same goes for Pandorum. His character works, but its nothing special.

Overall, this film wasn’t that bad. But it wasnt good either. It just wasn’t too original. Its second half with the monsters running after the bad guys almost had me disconnecting from it because it felt so “been there done that”. Same problem I had with another recent science fiction film called Outlander (2009) which was yet another sci-fi film that fed off a gazillion other movies we had already seen before. If I referenced a bunch of other films during this review, its because I couldnt help it, this movie rips off to many others. Here’s a message to all those filmmakers out there: you have to try harder with movies! You can’t keep given us the same old drivel we’ve seen on countless occasions before! You might have the budget, the production values, good direction, but if its more of the same, you risk audience disconnection. This is Lt. Film Connoisseur signing out, reporting from the blogosphere, anybody listening out there?

Rating: 3 out of 5

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Title: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Director: Stephen Summers

So the latest craze in Hollywood is taking a cartoon from the 80s and turning it into a big budget special effects filled movie. It happened with the Transformers, which Michael Bay and his trigger happy crew turned into a huge box office success. Not to mention that the film already spawned an equally successful sequel, which by the way was for me one of the worst films made this year, but that’s a whole other review. The latest of these 80’s cartoon adaptations is G.I. Joe, which was one of the most successful cartoon series to emerge out of the 80s. Whoever was a kid during those years has to remember the show. It lasted half an hour and basically served as a commercial to sell the Hasbro produced G.I. Joe toy line. Its basic premise was that of a top secret military operation which was trying to stop Cobra, a terrorist organization hell bent on conquering the world. Aside from that, the show itself also served as a propaganda machine for the U.S. Military. Now I see that, but when I was a kid I did not realize this at all, to me it was just a cool show. In reality, it was a show trying to infuse kids with a desire to serve the U.S. Military services with pride, get that patriotic pride going at an early age. I guess it was made in part to get kids to want to serve their country just like the characters did in the show. The main slogan of the show lets you know this: “G.I. Joe! A Real American Hero!”

The premise of this new film has the Joe’s trying to stop Cobra from destroying the world with a new kind of technology. Basically, a bomb of nano machines (read: microscopic machines) that will eat through anything and continue eating through whatever comes along its path. The Joe’s have to stop Cobra from using this new weapon to bring the world to its knees.

Basically this movie was exactly what I was expecting. Not much invested in depth or a good story, but lots invested in special effects an action. The movie brings absolutely nothing new to the table in terms of storytelling, in fact, it feels tired and done. Many of the plot devices on this film can be traced down to other films we’ve already seen before. For example, when you see the final confrontation between G.I. Joe and the Cobras where the Joes infiltrate Cobras hidden underwater lair, you kind of feel like you are watching a remake of Return of the Jedi or something. Right down to having the Joe’s go into the underwater base as if they were infiltrating the Death Star and escaping mere moments before it blows up into smithereens, just like the death star blows up in the last moments of Return of the Jedi. There’s a confrontation between two ninjas in the film (named Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow) that feels and looks a heck of a lot like the final confrontation between Darth Maul and Quai Gon Jin in Star Wars Episode I. The suits that the Joe’s use in the film which augment their strength and agility are directly influenced by Paramount Pictures Iron Man (2008). Scenes like that just let me see that the director wasn’t trying to be original at all. He was just going down the easy path of doing what others have already done. For Christ sake, we even get a character who is evil but tries to turn good, just like Anakin.

That’s the main problem with films like this one. They are produced so fast, and so little time is taken to come up with a worthwhile story to tell that we just end up getting more of the same. But aside from that, did the film entertain? Let’s face it, while watching a film of this kind, I don’t going in expecting a masterpiece. I was just looking for a fun time, and I went to the theater simply out of nostalgia for this old cartoon show I use to watch when I was 12 years old. I went to see these characters Id seen in my childhood brought to cinematic life. And I have to be honest, that’s exactly what I got. We get some of the key characters from the show, and they looked exactly like what I would have expected them too. The premise of the film mimicked that of the show, which was always about trying to stop Cobra from trying to take over the world. There was nothing ever truly profound of life changing about the shows themes, it was just a poorly animated show made to sell toys. The movie took the cartoons basic premise and went with it.

Have to admit it, nostalgia got the best part of me. It was cool to see the Joe’s secret facilities with all these nifty vehicles and jets, it brought me back to when I was 12, watching the show . It was cool to see Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow kicking each others asses. It was cool to see Cobra becoming Cobra and Destro becoming Destro. And I’m sure this is a movie that many a little kid will find entertaining. Me, I was just a big kid in the theater remembering the Joes. And I had a good time in doing so, there’s lots of car explosions, lots of non stop action sequences, and lots of fx to keep you entertained for half an hour. After a while though, you might feel the CGI overdose light go off inside your head, cause let me tell you, there are times when I felt like the only real thing in the film where the actors and the other 90% of the film was made up of computer generated images. But whatever, that’s a whole new genre of films that’s emerging. That’s where Hollywood wants to go now. I guess it brings down costs some, its cheaper to build something in a computer then building it for real. Sadly, this is the state of big budget special effects films, 90% of what you see on screen exists only within the confines of a computer.

But most of director Stephen Summers movies have always been like this. One look at his resume and you will find CGI infested films like The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Deep Rising and Van Helsing. Also one look at this films cast and you see that Summers has brought many of his old friends back, like Arnold Vosloo who played the mummy in The Mummy movies. Heck, even Brendan Frasier is here in a small role training some of the newer Joe’s.

It was a fun movie for what it was. I recommend it to fans of the G.I. Joe cartoons. Those thirty something guys who grew up watching this show in their afternoons after school. I’m sure they will be happy to see their childhood heroes brought to life. Movie goers who do not what the hell G.I. Joe is will find an empty yet entertaining special effects driven film, that’s derivative of other films and doesn’t try in the least to show us something new or meaningful. It simply wants to wow you with its gee whiz effects, never keep you bored for its entire duration, and have you leave the theater feeling like you just had a sugar rush, only thing is you'll probably forget the film five seconds after you leave the theater.

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5