Silent Running (1972)

Let me start right out by saying that there are a LOT of things wrong with Silent Running, not the least of which is THE MESSAGE, which it beats you over the head with until you're dizzy. Here's the set up. Earth is ecologically destroyed. So, the human race in its wisdom has taken all of the earth's remaining natural habitats, enclosed them in these really cool glass domes, attached them to these two-mile-long space ships and sent them on a round the solar system cruise while we clean up the earth and get it ready to receive its forests once again. Ah, but people being the greedy and short-sighted cretins that they are decide that they really don't need all of those trees as much as they need those really cool space ships, which could be pressed into service hauling fee-paying cargo to...someplace. So the crews of the ships are ordered to jettison the domes and - wait for it - blow them up! But one poor sot named Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) can't accept this. The forests must be saved at all costs. So he kills his fellow crew members in order to save the last dome. Then he takes control of the ship and heads out away from earth where he will ostensibly find...I dunno...something. To help him run the ship and tend to the last dome, Lowell has three little robot companions that he names Huey, Dewy and Louie. And so this happy quartet happily maintains their ship and forest. But, guilt begins to wear on Lowell. And his little robot companions start to get picked off one by one. Finally, there's Lowell and one good droid remaining. Realizing that he is going insane with grief and that the remaining ships from earth are pursuing him, Lowell teaches the his one undamaged droid to tend the forest on its own. Then he jettisons the dome and blows up his ship, killing himself and his remaining crippled droid. The last thing we see is the little dome floating in the vastness of space as Joan Baez clobbers us over the head once more with THE MESSAGE.

So what's wrong with the film? Well, okay, for starters, why are the domes in outer space to begin with? I mean, if the earth is so polluted that all of the remaining forests have to be put under glass, wouldn't it have been a whole lot cheaper - not to mention safer - to build the domes right there on terra firma, rather than blasting them into deep space? And couldn't a world capable of building such awesome spaceships figure out a way to protect its remaining natural resources? And if the little droids could be trained to take care of the plants and animals in the domes just as well as a person, then why did they need the people up on the ships to take care of the domes? Why not just program the robots from the start? And when they decide to return the ships to commercial service, why BLOW UP THE DOMES?? Why not simple jettison the domes with the little robots on them to take care of them and send the ships home? That way they could always go back and pick up the domes at some future date when they wizened up. After all, it's not like they need the domes - they BLEW THEM UP! And finally, why did we have to have Joan Baez driving THE MESSAGE home in song like someone driving spikes through our skulls? The movie pushed THE MESSAGE just fine without her whiny singing.

Having said all of that, I would now like to say that I really love this movie. No, it's true. Silent Running has great visuals, outstanding models (this from the era when they used to actually construct space ship models), a pretty good story, and what is probably Bruce Dern's finest on-camera performance ever. I mean, Freeman Lowell is a really complicated character. Here's a guy who commits a serious wrong (killing all of his crew mates) in order to prevent another serious wrong (the wanton destruction of earth's remaining habitats) and then goes slowly insane trying to deal with the grief he's suffering on account of what he's done. And Dern pulls it off brilliantly. This is essentially a one-man movie (not counting the robots, who almost steal the show). Dern is passionate, even zealous in his love of nature. Yet he's also a scientist, and so he has the cold, rational aspect to him as well. But above all, he's a human being who cannot deal with the fact that he has taken the lives of other human beings and that he must spend the rest of his life in isolation. It takes a really good actor to pull all of this off and make it believable. The only other actors I've seen do it as well are Will Smith in I am Legend and Paul Mantee in Robinson Crusoe on Mars. I will also point out that the destruction of the Valley Forge at the end of the movie is so well done that it puts the destruction of the Death Star at the end of Star Wars to shame. Lucas should have taken a cue from Douglas Trumbull and gone with the less is more theory.

Silent Running is rated G and has a runtime of 89 minutes. It's filmed in technicolor and widescreen.

Metropolis (1927)

You've all seen the images before. The city of the future, its monumental buildings that soar hundreds of stories into the air. Elevated highways along which people and cars move effortlessly. Clean people living in a clean world free from care and strife. Flying cars. Robots. And the dark secret under their feet. Every utopia has its ugly center hidden within its fluffy shell. Hoards of downtrodden workers, tired, hopeless, living in squalor, working the great machines that keep the city running. The Labor upon whose backs Capital lives. This is the city they thought we would be living in today. This is the future that never was. This is Fritz Lang's masterpiece, Metropolis.

Metropolis has existed on the periphery of my life since I was ten years old. That was the year that I discovered science fiction. That was the year that my uncle gave me a Jules Verne novel to read. That was the year I first saw such classics as The First Men in the Moon, Master of the Universe, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and many others. That was the year that my cousins introduced me to the SciFi and Horror fan mags. On their pages I first saw the iconic images from Metropolis, images that were seared into my consciousness. They became metaphors against which I judged the world about me. It is because of those images that I became a fan of science fiction. I wanted to see that movie. I was obsessed with seeing it. But these were the bad old days, prior to DVD, to VHS. The only way to see a film like Metropolis was to wait and hope that it would air on the Friday Night Creature Feature - after all, robots are creatures too. If you lived in a large enough city, you might be lucky enough to have it shown at an alternative movie house. Neither happened for me. I was in my mid-thirties before I was finally able to view it. I was transfixed from the moment it started until the last credit rolled. It's not often in life that the reality measures up to the expectation. Metropolis did just that.

What's the point of me summarizing the plot. You know it already. The cold and distant head of the government, seated in his lofty office high above the city, concerned only with efficiency; his naive and idealist son; the beautiful young woman who's intent on saving her people and who the son will undoubtedly fall in love with; the evil mad scientist who is bent on destroying every one's good time; the oppressed workers, too downtrodden to even raise their heads as they trudge to work on the great machines. And the robot. How can I leave out the robot, iconic image of an iconic film? She - yes, it's a girl robot - is the grandmother of C3PO and the centerpiece of the movie, almost its star. See her rise slowly from her throne and approach the distant head of the government. Watch in amazement as her metal body, wrapped in rings of electric power, is covered with flesh and transformed into a wicked likeness of the beautiful young woman. See how she uses her new body to destroy everyone in the great city.

Metropolis is the grandaddy of all science fiction movies. Have you seen Blade Runner? The Fifth Element? Dark City? The City of Lost Children? Star Wars? They all owe their existence to this movie, because they all copied it. In fact, it's fairly safe to say that ALL movies made since the release of Metropolis about futuristic cities derive their imagery from this film.


Sadly, Metropolis is also the most butchered movie in the history of cinema. First released in Germany at 210 minutes, it was hacked down on its American release to 114. That's 96 minutes of film gone. 144,000 frames of film. That's not editing. That's slaughter! The movie has not been seen in its entirety since then. In 2002, the Murnau Foundation released a restored version of the film with a 123 minute run-time, and title cards describing what the restorers thought was occurring in the missing sections. Then, in 2008 a nearly complete version of the film was discovered in an archive in Argentina. Unfortunately, the film was badly deteriorated. And it was 16mm. Still, restorers were able to create a new version, released in 2010 with a 145 minute run-time. Barring some miraculous discovery, this is probably the most complete version of Metropolis we will ever get to see.

Metropolis is rated G. Although the film has been lovingly restored, the quality of the film varies due to the level of deterioration of various segments.

I, Robot (2004)

Alex Proyas' I, Robot, is not a bad movie. In fact, it's really quite a good movie. It's just not the movie that anyone wanted. I, Robot is based on the short story collection of the same title by the late Isaac Asimov. Unfortunately, about the only thing it shares with Asimov's book is the title and the fact that it's about robots. All similarity ends there. Proyas's film is about a Chicago cop named Del Spooner (Will Smith) who has a thing against robots. As the time period is 2035, and robots are quite literally everywhere, doing the laundry, walking the dog, emptying the garbage, this is something of a problem for Spooner. That Proyas chose a black man to portray a man who is prejudiced against a bunch of thinking machines is a statement about bigotry that you don't really need me to point out -it's so big, you'll trip over it on your way to get more popcorn!

As the story opens, Spooner is called to the scene of an apparent suicide. The man responsible for inventing robots for U.S. Robotics, Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), has just thrown himself out of a thirtieth-floor window. The case seems cut and dry, but Spooner has his doubts. While investigating the Lanning's office with his assistant, Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), Spooner finds Sonny (voiced by Alan Tudyk), one of U. S. Robotics' newest model of robots. Sonny flees Spooner, but is soon recaptured, and Spooner accuses him of murdering Lanning. This is, of course impossible, since all robots must follow the three laws of robotics, which prevent a robot from harming a human in anyway or from allowing a human to be harmed. In other words, robots must sacrifice themselves, if necessary, to prevent a human from being harmed in any way - or from harming themselves. And this is where the new model of robots turn ominous. As soon as they are delivered, the new robots begin to taking over society, because they have been programmed to prevent humans from harming themselves. So the robots decide that they need to take care of us, like a parent taking care of a little child, preventing them from doing anything that might cause them injury. You can probably see how this could present problems for humanity. Spooner, with the help of Sonny and Dr. Calvin, must not only figure out who really killed Dr. Lanning but also how to stop the new robots from taking over the world.

And as I said before, I, Robot is really not a bad movie. In fact, it's really quite entertaining. It's fast paced, there's a lot of action, and the CGI sequences look pretty good. Smith - who is fast becoming the go-to guy for scifi films, a position once held by Charlton Heston - does a very good job with his character, as he always does. The robots look good and are pretty believable. If I had a rating system, I'd give the movie four out of five stars. It's just NOT Asimov's story, and I really think that Proyas should have given it a different title. If you want to know what Asimov's story could have - maybe should have - been like, then I suggest you pick up a copy of I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay. There you will get a glimpse of what the greatest science fiction movie never made might have looked like. But if you don't care about any of that, and you just want to see a good, fast-paced action film, then by all means rent Alex Proyas' I, Robot. You won't be disappointed.

I, Robot is rated PG-13.