Moving Word Written Image

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick

SCREENWRITER: Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick

FILM STARS: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack, Robert Beatty, Sean Sullivan, Douglas Rain, Frank Miller, Edwina Carroll, Penny Brahms, Heather Downham

COUNTRY: UK-USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Arthur C. Clarke

TYPE: Novelisation

PUBLISHER: Arrow

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1973

COUNTRY: Great Britain COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1968

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Sci Fi

WORDS: 2001 A Pretentious Space Boredom.

I speak heresy to some but luckily the generation (which includes some of mine) that were enthralled with this film are shrinking. Now, only film students, pretentious types, want to be intellectuals, pot heads or people who feel the need to “name drop” to show they know something about film, revere this film.

Harsh?

The film has its merits. The leads (Lockwood and Dullea) are good, the visuals (as in most Kubrick films) are stunning, the music is well chosen, the story is potentially interesting and the effects and set design are impressive, but all that is padded out with so much chaff. The filler combined with the weight of highbrow expectations that the film must be loved makes me kick the other way, perhaps more that I would have done otherwise, though the pacing alone, which is (typical of late period Kubrick) slow and deliberate (and more than a little dull) would have been enough of a fault in my mind. I’m not sure why pretentious critics like such ponderous films … there is an assumption that if it moves it can’t be good or serious …. sort of goes against what moving pictures are all about.

Another criticism, and one I didn’t come up with but is readily obvious if you watch enough Kubrick is that none of the humans are remotely human. They are cold and one note. This has always been a Kubrick problem when he is left to his own devices … his characters are marionets. Unfortunately, the lack of humanity in a the characters results in a lack emotional connection between you and the character. You may be impressed intellectually (though even that is debateable) but you are never involved or moved. It was critic Andrew Sarris who once said (in The American Cinema (1968)…one of my favourite books on film … “Kubrick spent five years and ten million dollars on a science fiction project so devoid of life and feeling as to render a computer called Hal the most sympathetic character in a jumbled scenario”.

Which is, perhaps, fitting as the film is about HAL and intelligent almost human computer (though even HAL isn’t as “human” or as interesting as Edgar the computer in Electric Dreams (1984))

As the on-board computer for a mission to Jupiter, HAL controlled everything from electronic systems, weapons, to adjusting an astronaut’s headrest. He boasted of his error-free record, but when he mistakenly declares a piece of equipment to be faulty, the two working astronauts (three others are in suspended animation) discuss the problem and decide to deactivate him (it). He (it), however, reads their lips and tries to terminate them before regressing, like some mentally unbalanced human criminal, into a childlike nature.

The novel by Arthur C. Clarke was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick’s film version (they worked on the book together but only Clarke got credit initially) and published it after the release of the film but is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including “The Sentinel” (first published in 1951 under the title “Sentinel of Eternity”). I don’t really need to read it or the novelization. I like near future sci fi but the film has soured this for me.

Arthur C. Clarke called the eventual emergence of a HAL-like computer inevitable. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, a detractor of “2001” (but a friend of Clarke’s) dismissed it as speculation and fantasy and said computers were no more than libraries. The whole intelligent sentient machine argument in interesting though not for in depth discussion here. With the way technology has evolved (and with how sci fi has evolved in popular culture – Terminator and the rise of the machines anyone?) it is easy to lean to Clarke though there is something appealing about Bradbury’s position.

I know the film is meant to be thought provoking and intellectual but it’s so much much armchair pop philosophy. I mean it’s like reading Noam Chomsky instead of Aristotle for philosophy. There may be more catchy phrases but you aren’t going to learn much or get passing results.

Andrew Sarris famously panned 2001 when it was released (then reversed himself (apparently) after seeing it under the influence … there are no studies on how many people fell asleep during the film whilst under the influence). At the time he said:

“2001: A Space Odyssey is a thoroughly uninteresting failure and the most damning demonstration yet of Stanley Kubrick’s inability to tell a story coherently and with a consistent point of view. His film is not a film at all, but merely a pretext for a pictorial spread in Life magazine. Kubrick, like Lelouch, is an undeniably competent photographer, but photographers seldom make the best directors. 2001 has little writing or acting to speak of and makes little sense. The first section of the film begins where Planet of the Apes left off at the “Dawn of Man.” Kubrick and science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke employ a bunch of monkey masks and monkey suits to present a very debatable theory of human evolution in terms of force and acquisitiveness. We then suddenly leap into a routine moon voyage described in great brand-name-plug detail (Bell, Pan-Am, Howard Johnson’s, Hilton) with Poverty Row players like William Sylvester and Robert Beatty. A big, black slab figures in each section of the film, but we never find out exactly what it is or what it signifies. The third section, by far the most interesting, features Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood as two automaton astronauts pitted against a computer that speaks in insidiously wheedling tones. Ironically, the computer seems to have more feelings than the humans do, a curiously pessimistic attitude toward a project of this magnitude in predicting scientific “progress.” The ending is a mishmash of psychedelic self-indulgence for the special effects people and an exercise in mystifying abstract fantasy in the open temple of High Art”.

https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/2001-a-space-odyssey-1968-reviews-by-andrew-sarris/

Later Sarris said: “I think the great impact of ‘2001’ is curiously a humanistic impact,” he says. “One thing that was uncanny about the movie and seemed like a shortcoming at the time was that it was boring and overlong. But it prophesied how boring space travel is, how outsized and incommensurate it is compared to human life and human consciousness. No matter how far into outer space we go, we can’t escape ourselves.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1992/01/12/just-for-the-hal-of-it/9baad638-3c6a-4a94-bcee-2f56fb64d4b8/

The defence to the dreariness is usually the film was prophetic about space travel … really?

I haven’t seen it under the influence, so my opinion remains.

And, in any event, 2001 has come and gone and we no nearer to travelling to Jupiter than we are to the rings of Uranus (pun intended). Will we be closer one day? … yes of course but if the timeline is that far out for experts Kubrick and Clarke out then so is the premise of the film, especially in its estimation of our abilities and of all the crap and shit that goes into making us human, which has nothing to do with the intellect.

When it comes to computers out of control, John Carpenter’s first film (as low budget as 2001 is expensive) Dark Star (1974), which was also something of a response to 2001, is far better (it’s a masterpiece). It has everything 2001 doesn’t – humanity, humour, and the acknowledgement of human intellect but with an understanding of our physical limitations. Yes, it is all very well travelling to Jupiter but it becomes a lot more difficult if the toilets don’t work.

It’s clear I’m not a Kubrick devotee but I’m not a hater. His films are all worth watching and well photographed (he was a glossy magazine photographer after all) but the middle-class pretentiousness and lack of humour kills them for me. Rarely do you watch them more than once (well some people do) and if you do you rarely watch them as a whole but find yourself rewatching specific scenes. His best films are his early B&W films (Killer’s Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956)) when he was constrained by small budgets and which are wonderfully inventive), and his big studio productions which owe more than a little to star / producer Kirk Douglas (Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960)). The joys of Lolita (1962), Dr Strangelove (1964), Clockwork Orange (1971), and The Shining (1980) and there are joys, owe more a lot to external factors forces (Lolita owes more to author Nabokov and James mason’s performance, Clockwork Orange to author Burgess and actor Malcolm MacDowell’s performance, The Shining to Stephen King and Jack Nicholson’s performance) though they all seem a little dated. It may be true that Kubrick never made a bad film (and it says something that with his most well-known films you can see the money on the screen) but I’m not sure he made a truly great one.

Ultimately, he is part of the belief cult that the fewer films you make the better director you must be (here 13 films in 47 years) … of course all your films are going to be prima facie good when you don’t have to churn them out. But the directors that did churn them out year after year are ultimately more interesting, especially if they learnt from and transcended the commercial requirement to churn them out.

He (Kubrick), is much like those other great craftsmen (John Huston, Fred Zinnemann, David Lean) who, generally, found it difficult to make something out of nothing but always looked impressive on big budgets based on literary sources with A list actors. Yes, that was a backhanded compliment to all those mentioned.

Apparently, Kubrick continues to be cited as a major influence by many directors, including Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro, Lars von Trier, Bryan Singer, Sam Mendes, the Wachowskis, Darren Aronofsky, and Gaspar Noé. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick

This is perfect and only reinforces my position on Kubrick.

See it once … on the big screen (yes, I saw it on the big screen at a revival). Take stimulants.

LINKS

TRAILER

the reissue trailer

 THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Richard A. Colla and, Alan J. Levi

SCREENWRITER: Glen A. Larson

FILM STARS: Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Lorne Greene, Herbert Jefferson Jr., Maren Jensen, Tony Swartz, Noah Hathaway, Terry Carter, Lew Ayres, Wilfrid Hyde-White, John Colicos, Laurette Spang, Jane Seymour, Ray Milland, Ed Begley Jr., Rick Springfield, Randi Oakes, David Matthau.

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston

TYPE: Novelisation

PUBLISHER: Futura

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1978

COUNTRY: Australia

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1978

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Sci Fi

WORDS: In the wake of Star Wars (1977) all sorts of big(ger) budgeted sci fi films (The Black Hole (1979), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Superman (1978), Time After Time (1979), Alien (1979), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Battle Beyond the Stars (1981), Flash Gordon (1980), Saturn 3 (1980), Outland (1981)) and TV series (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981), Jason of Star Command (1978–1981)) appeared, and  … of all that came immediately after, Battlestar Galactica (along with Star Trek) was perhaps the best suited to challenge the all encompassing behemoth that was Star Wars.

This film (now known as “Saga of a Star World”) started out as a pilot, an expensive one, for the television series of the same name It was re edited and released as a stand alone film on both television and in cinemas. It was a big hit.

The television show, Battlestar Galactica (1978–1979), that followed was cancelled after a season despite being popular at the time. It was, initially, a ratings success, but was cancelled in mid-April 1979 due to declining audiences, though the decline in audience may have something to do with changing its time slot to a less lucrative one. The shows cost was always a problem with the television network as well.

Its cancellation didn’t stop the fandom. It developed a cult and pop culture following spawning a media franchise which included comics, theme park attractions, games, and sequels.

“Battlestar Galactica … began with the original television series in 1978, and was followed by a short-run sequel series, Galactica 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games. A reimagined version aired as a two-part, three-hour miniseries developed by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick in 2003, followed by a 2004 television series, which aired until 2009. A prequel series, Caprica, aired in 2010”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica

As an aside I note that those kids at the time who loved the original film and TV show grew up, and were the ones who rebooted the show. As with many of these 70s era reboots the frivolous joy of science fiction escapism one enjoyed as a teen had to be put to one side. People grow up, they can’t be frivolous, purely escapist in attitude, or light in outlook …. and this is something that affected (adversely). All the reboots – Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron, Terminator became increasingly darker and more serious and even the already serious sci fi – Alien, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes became even more serious and darker, if that is possible. FFS it’s sci fi not theology.

This film, the pilot, is full of great 1970s special effects and like Star Wars (1977) it’s primarily an adventure with a serious backstory (something that flipped on the reboots on both films). It has its own universe, characters who represent values and types, and its own internal history. At the time it was considered the poor man’s version of Star Wars which is a pity as the story is compelling.

In a distant star system twelve colonies of humans, living on different worlds, have been fighting a one thousand year war against the robotic race, the Cylons, who seek to exterminate all of humanity. The Cylons have unexpectedly sued for peace. But the plan is a trap. Only Commander Adama, of the battlestar Galactica has doubts and survives with his ship the slaughter of humanity. With the Colonies in ruins, Adama collects as many survivors as possible, and orders every intact civilian ship to take survivors, follow the Galactica and flee to a better world of legend. They hope that the Galactica can protect this ragtag fleet long enough to find that legendary thirteenth human colony. A planet called Earth.

It is an adventure but the cylons genocidal hated of humans is aped in the terminator movies and perhaps, also, takes inspiration from the religious haltered the east had for the west and Jews in the 70s (and more recently). There is something more than a little religious in Adama’s leadership and search for a new world.

There are also similarities to both Star Wars and Star Trek. And in a case of make sure there are no skeletons in your wardrobe: “In June 1978, 20th Century Fox sued Universal Studios (producers of Battlestar Galactica) for plagiarism, copyright infringement, unfair competition, and Lanham Act claims, claiming it had stolen 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from their 1972 film Silent Running, notably the robot “drones”, and the Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s. 20th Century Fox’s copyright claims were initially dismissed by the trial court in 1980, then the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit remanded the case for trial in 1983. It was later “resolved without trial”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_a_Star_World

Glen A. Larson (creator of the television series Alias Smith and Jones, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, Quincy, M.E., The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, B. J. and the Bear, The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider) was the creator and executive producer of Battlestar Galactica. He claims he had conceived of the Battlestar Galactica premise, which he called Adam’s Ark, during the late 1960s (he had had been working on the concept since 1968 with former Star Trek producer Gene L. Coon mentoring him in its early development). The series incorporated many themes from Mormon theology, such as marriage for “time and eternity”, a “council of twelve”, a lost thirteenth tribe of humans, and a planet called Kobol (an anagram of Kolob – Kolob is a star or planet described in the Book of Abraham, a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement). A coincidence? Probably not as Larson was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Battlestar Galactica was finally produced in the wake of the success of Star Wars (1977) and underwent a name change from “Adam’s Ark”, allegedly, because Larson was convinced to include the word “star” in the title to capitalize on Star Wars, hence Battlestar Galactica. Well, there was probably other easons – it also sounds tougher than Adam’s Ark or even something like Adam’s Starark.

Oddly, the film, and the concept to the film, strikes me as owing more than a little to John Ford’s masterpiece Wagonmaster (1950) (whose television non official spinoff Wagon Train (1957–1965) was an inspiration to Star Trek) about a Mormon wagon train circa 1880, led by the Elder Wiggs, escaping persecution and heading west to the promised land of the San Juan River country. Along the way the wagon train is joined by a ragtag assortment of people, a stranded medicine show troupe, some cowboy drifters, a peaceful band of Navajo indians, and together they face bad weather, and a malevolent slightly psychotic outlaw family, the Clegg gang. Given larson was a Mormon and this was one of the few classic films to have Mormons as characters this can’t be a coincidence.

For what is then, ostensibly, a space western it is perfect casting to have Lorne Greene as Commander Adama. His father, patriarch, and landowner figure, Ben Cartwright, in the ultra successful western series Bonanza (1959-1973) was ingrained in the mind of people across the world. Adama was just Cartwright in space. The other two male leads (the show was heavy on male leads, much like Bonanza) are Richard Hatch as Captain Apollo and Dirk Benedict as Lieutenant Starbuck. Like Han Solo (especially in the case of Starbuck) they are essentially space cowboys and they provide the action and humour. The rest of the cast is peppered with familiar stars of years past Lew Ayres, Ray Milland, Wilfrid Hyde-White and up and coming youngsters Ed Begley Jr. Australian singer Rick Springfield and Jane Seymour. The film, being a TV pilot, has a TV feel at times but the budget hides some of the (then) TV limitations.

The film was a box office hit and rightly so ..it is entertaining and manages to capture the balance between adventure and drama.

The novelisation is a straight novelisation. Though there are differences between the film and the TV series that followed it the novelisation seems to follow the film. Many other books followed all written by Glen A. Larson with other co-authors. Co-author here, Robert Thurston (28 October 1936 – 20 October 2021), was a prolific science fiction author well known for his works in popular shared world settings The books were critically disparaged, but proved popular, with this, the first novel, selling over a million copies within its first year.

TRIVIA

• Larson also was a member of the folk revival/satire group The Four Preps.
• In the 1990s, Hatch attempted to revive Battlestar Galactica. He began writing novels based on the series (Hatch wrote a series of seven tie-in novels set in the original Battlestar Galactica universe)

LINKS

TRAILER

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Jonathan Mostow

SCREENWRITER: John Brancato, Michael Ferris

FILM STARS: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Kristanna Loken, Claire Danes, David Andrews, Mark Famiglietti, Earl Boe, Jay Acovone

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: David Hagberg

TYPE: Novelisation

PUBLISHER: Tom Doherty Associates Book

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2003

COUNTRY: USA

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2003

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Sci Fi

WORDS:  Which Terminator was this?

Like all franchises based around a very defined narrative premise the films start to look the same after a while and, usually, decrease in entertainment quality as familiarity sets in. Producers try to offset this but making things “bigger” (more action, more explosions, more elaborate set pieces) but, ultimately despite their efforts you get less bang (sic) for you buck.

The protagonists and antagonists are the same even if some of the characters are different. It’s same old same old with updated clothes.

The first Terminator (1984) was excellent. The second Terminator, Terminator 2 (1991), was perhaps (unusually for a sequel) even better. The story should have finished there, but there was more money to be made and so on it went.

Worse still what were essentially action films became more and more serious until the filmmakers (and their hardcore bolted on believer audience) were ultimately exploring philosophical concepts whilst pulling lint from their navels. It happens to many franchises, and usually sci-fi ones. I mean, most sci-fi is, rarely, based on anything remotely real. Even near future which I like but near future my ass – Just Imagine (1930) set in 1980, 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968) set in, errrr, 2001, and Blade Runner (1982) set in 2019 were way off base. And where is my hoverboard (Back to the Future II (1989)?) The world can’t figure out what’s going to happen tomorrow let alone what the “near” future will look like. The ball float toilet cistern is the best toilet system we have (OK, the most common) and they are forever leaking and, worse still, they are a farker to fix unless you have a plumbing degree so don’t talk to me about any dystopian future run by robots, cause I can hear the toilet leaking in the background. Until I have a replicant that can fix, and clean, my toilet I say fark off!

In any event, as audiences “grow up” they want to distance themselves from the youthful fun they had as young people watching these action movies (why, I don’t know ..people of all ages can enjoy well done but ultimately mindless action). So they add layers of meaning to the original premise which become so convoluted (probably because the original premise did not envisage philosophical layers and extra storylines being dumped on it) that one’s enjoyment is lost. If you want philosophy and meaning read a book written by a Greek scholar or a monk let the movies entertain

This strained seriousness has affected many franchises … Star Wars (1977) (a western crossed with a swashbuckler in space), Alien (1979) (a monster movie in space), Tron (1982) (OK more thoughtful than normal but how a guy transported into a video game led to the stupidities of Tron Legacy (2010) I don’t know), and any of the superhero franchises (for fark sake – they are just people in capes (the capes is a generalisation) doing good deeds). All these and more have been compromised or ruined by increasing seriousness or the need to be “dark” (because “dark” means “serious “and “grown-up”). No doubt some of the audience want this … because as they grow older they want people to think of them as serious adults. These are the same people who call comics “graphic novels” (which also have been largely compromised by increasing seriousness). I’ve read a few “graphic novels” and the meaning and darkness is only impressive because it’s being done as a comic .. you think “wow that was good … for a comic”. How can a comic ever say as much as a novel (or a film)? Books explain everything long hand, and films, entirely separate, work on a visual and emotive level by tapping into our memories of what we have seen and heard. I mean a tracking shot up a city street, a vista of mountains or a wide shot of a city are not easily described in a book and have their own (visual) language. Comics are both but not as much as either and neither here nor there.

I’ve strayed.

19 years had elapsed between the first Terminator film and Terminator 3 … yes, the original fans were 19 years older and many of them wanted more meaning. You have to keep them happy because the lovers of any franchise are the backbone to ticket sales … but you have to attract the kids.

Terminator 3 did that. It earnt $433.4 million worldwide and finished its theatrical run as the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2003 but there were diminished returns in quality (and legacy). Is anyone of any generation going today Terminator 3 was the best terminator film?

Terminator 3 was the terminator film which rehashed the first two but also set up the universe for the others that follow. What is particularly unsatisfying is it’s not a standalone film like the first two. You need to have seen the earlier films to be truly invested in what is going on.

What’s going on? Evil corporations, misguided individuals and smart robots lead to a worldwide catastrophe … and more sequels.

Pfffft.

It is what it is. Entertaining as long as you don’t think about it too much. You won’t be offended but you won’t be thrilled (despite some impressive set pieces) and you are unlikely to hold the film as high as the first two films.

James Cameron who directed the first two films is a better director than Jonathan Mostow who directed T3. Mostow’s films are slick and well made but Cameron, equally slick, has a little madness amongst his slickness.

Arnie is good but he isn’t giving us anything new … but then again should a cyborg give us anything new?

Screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris were a American screenwriting duo, whose notable works include Watchers II (1990), Bloodfist II (1990), Femme Fatale (1991), The Net (1995), The Game (1997), Catwoman (2004), Primeval (2007), Terminator Salvation (2009), Surrogates (2009) and others, none of which are a recommendations. You don’t need two people to paint by numbers.

The franchise got worse.

There is no need to read the novelization. That is for the hardcore …. assuming they read.

LINKS

TRAILER