Jul/092
Moon & Solaris
MOON and SOLARIS have the same premise – strange goings on at an isolated space station. The main characters Sam (Sam Rockwell) in MOON and Chris (George Clooney) in SOLARIS are trying to figure out what is happening to them. Yet MOON works and SOLARIS doesn’t. Why? The short answer is the emotional journey of the characters. Sam’s is compelling and Chris’ isn’t. Sam’s one lifeline is getting back to see his wife and baby daughter after his three year tour on the moon with only a robot for company. As he slowly falls apart, he discovers the truth of his situation. He is a clone with a three year life span. The bottom of the space station is full of drawers of other Sams waiting to be activated and take over running the mining operation. There is no going home. He is perpetually enslaved. We are rooting for him to escape. For him to return home that is only a memory, to his wife and baby daughter, who aren’t waiting for him anymore. This dilemma is incredibly compelling with complex thematic questions about what it means to be human. These Sams aren’t the “real” Sam, but their emotions and feelings are just as human and just as real. Don’t they deserve a chance too?
SOLARIS wants to examine these same kinds of themes, but falls short. Chris is dealing with the death of his wife. We learn about their tempestuous relationship in flashback, including that she committed suicide. This should be an emotional set up. But we never hook into Chris’ grief because he is so disconnected. It is clear that he loved his wife, but it is also clear that they were not good for each other. He is ambivalent about losing her because she was so difficult. This ambivalence makes him hard to root for. He seems cold instead of damaged. Even when his dead wife miraculously shows up on the space station, his reaction is muted. This is not a heart-felt reunion. Instead he is cautious, sure that she will be just as troubled as before. If Chris had welcomed this second chance with his wife, the movie would have been riveting. It would have been a tragic love story and a story of wish fulfillment. Instead, we just don’t care about them. Furthering this feeling of disconnectedness, the explanation for the strange events is philosophical rather than being grounded in any sort of reality. The characters posit that the planet they are orbiting is connected to God or is God. This idea is cerebral rather than emotional so that the movie feels like a philosophical exercise instead of an entertaining story. Even in science fiction movies with big themes, the story must be rooted in compelling, relatable emotion.
Jul/090
Terminator Salvation
Oh where to start. This movie was a major disappointment. When you are working with a franchise, the most important thing is not to throw out the characters and situations that have been set up in past movies. The first misstep was in creating the new character Sam. The movie immediately became about him instead of the franchise hero John Connor (Christian Bale). Marcus (Sam Worthington), a human who’s been turned into a machine, is compelling as he struggles to understand his humanity. He’s figuring out not just who he is, but what he is. A story, especially a big epic action movie, cannot have two heroes and that is what the addition of Marcus did to the franchise. He even dies heroically, giving his heart to John. Besides Marcus usurping John Conner’s role, the idea of a human terminator feels ripped off from the cylons in the rebooted BATTLESTAR GALACTICA series.
Here’s what I think the movie should have been. At the center of the story is John Connor as the reluctant leader of the Resistance. We see him struggle with the burden of knowing his future. He has doubts about his ability to be the leader that his mother told him he would become. In TERMINATOR 3 we met his future wife Kate and she was a gutsy woman. I wanted to see Kate in a kick ass role instead of barely having any lines. Also, in the movie she’s pregnant. Impending fatherhood would be a further burden to John Connor. He would want to defeat the machines to make a better world for his child. In the last movie Kate and John come together as partners in the fight against the machines. I wanted to see this partnership continue, to see the evolution of the couple as leaders of the Resistance. I would want to see John meet his father Kyle Reese, who through the wonders of time travel is a kid. In the movie they barely have one scene together. Their screwed up father son relationship should be at the heart of the story. The movie should be John mentoring the kid and becoming a father figure to him. All of this is emotional, juicy stuff. None of which is in the movie. Kyle and John don’t have a relationship. Kate hovers in the background, saying nothing. We never see John lead so his men’s loyalty is a mystery. What is supposed to be his rousing speech to the troops asking them to stand down from the planned attack is vague and nonsensical. Sigh, the movie could have been so good. Nothing bums me out more than wasted story opportunity.