From the Archive: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

As I’ve mentioned before, I often receive e-mails asking me to review specific films. One of the most oft-requested reviews is for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), which is widely-regarded as the worst Star Trek film to feature the original cast.

I don’t know this for certain, but I strongly suspect this particular review is requested in the hope that somehow, in some way, this poorly-reviewed William Shatner film might be rehabilitated in popular imagination. For instance, requests for a review of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier spiked after my positive review of The Motion Picture. My supposition thus leads me to believe that a lot of Star Trek fans must — secretly? — enjoy the oft-derided fifth film, and are seeking valid, well-enunciated arguments in support of it.

 I can relate to that.  Big time.

After all, I am a Star Trek fan, and can see the silver-lining in every Star Trek movie. So I am happy to enumerate the aspects I appreciate and admire about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

However, for the record, it is also necessary for me to note where and when things go dramatically wrong with the movie. So — to quote Joss Whedon — this review isn’t going to be all “hugs and puppies.”

That fact established there are indeed many components of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier worth lauding and I will explain in detail below why I feel that way.

Let’s start, however, with a brief re-cap of the plot. The fifth Star Trek picks up with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew on vacation on Earth — in the paradise-like setting of Yosemite — when a dangerous hostage situation unfolds in the Neutral Zone. There, on Nimbus III — on the “planet of Galactic Peace” — a Vulcan renegade named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) has taken hostage the Romulan, Klingon and Federation counsels. He has done so with an army of devout “believers.” Sybok’s gambit is to capture a starship so he can set a course for the center of the Galaxy and find the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree (named after Sean Connery), where he believes “God” awaits.

An unprepared U.S.S. Enterprise, with only a skeleton crew aboard, is assigned to rescue the hostages. The attempt fails, and Sybok commandeers the Enterprise using his particular brand of Vulcan brainwashing to persuade the crew to follow him. In particular, he frees each man he encounters of his “secret pain.” Kirk soon learns that Sybok is Spock’s (Leonard Nimoy) half-brother, a heretic who rejected Vulcan dogma and came to believe that emotion, not logic, is the key to enlightenment.

With a Klingon bird of prey in hot pursuit, the Enterprise passes through the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy and encounters a mysterious planet. There, on the surface, awaits a creature who claims to be “God.” Kirk questions the Being, and soon a vision of Heaven goes to Hell.

Because It’s There: The Search for the Ultimate Knowledge; The Search for a Film’s Noble Intentions

From Captain Kirk’s effort to climb El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in the film’s first scene to Sybok’s probe through the foreboding and mysterious Great Barrier, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier concerns, in large part, a typically-Star Trek conceit: the human quest to reach a higher summit and to find at that apex a new or deeper truth about our existence.

When Mr. Spock asks Kirk why he would involve himself in an endeavor as dangerous as climbing a mountain, Kirk answers simply, “because it’s there.” That’s a simplistic but apt shorthand to describe one of our basic human drives. What our eyes detect, we want to explore, to experience. Enlightenment, for us, is often attained on the next plateau.

Sybok terms his search for “God” the search for the “ultimate knowledge” and he too seeks to climb a mountain after a fashion: penetrating the Great Barrier which protects a secret at the center of our galaxy. The means by which Sybok conducts his quest are not entirely kosher, however (kidnapping diplomats and hijacking a starship). But his quest, though coupled with his vanity, is sincere. An outcast among his Vulcan brethren, Sybok believes that if he can “locate” God, his beliefs will be validated, and thus perhaps re-examined by those who made him a pariah.

At one point late in the film, Kirk seems to suddenly realize that Sybok and he share a similar drive; that he has stubbornly refused Sybok the same liberty he affords himself, not merely to “go climb a rock,” but to see, literally, what awaits at the mountain-top. Upon this realization, Kirk gazes knowingly at an old-fashioned captains’ wheel in the Enterprise’s observation deck. His hand brushes across a bronze plaque engraved with the legend “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” a re-iteration of the franchise’s “bold,” trademark phrase.  In a world where so many sci-fi movies depend on black-and-white portrayals of “good” and “evil,” it’s quite bold that The Final Frontier actually establishes a connection — and one involving the meaning of life itself — between protagonist and antagonist.

It should be noted here, perhaps, that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is not out on some wacky limb, franchise-wise, in exploring the existence of “God,” or a planet from which life sprang. On the former front, the Enterprise encountered the Greek God Apollo in the second-season episode “Who Mourns for Adonis” and on the latter front, discovered the planet “Eden” in the third season adventure “The Way to Eden.”  In a very real way, The Final Frontier feels like a development of this oft-seen Trek theme, as much as The Motion Picture was a development of themes featured in episodes such as “The Changeling” and “The Doomsday Machine.”

What remains laudable about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, however, is that screenwriter David Loughery, with director Shatner and producer Harve Bennett, carry their central metaphor  — discovery of the ultimate knowledge — to the hearts of the beloved franchise characters. Star Trek V very much concerns not just the external quest for the divine, but a personal and human desire to understand the meaning of life.

Or, at the very least, the path to understanding the meaning of life.

What that desire comes down to here is one lengthy scene set in the Enterprise observation deck. There are no phasers, transporters, starships, Klingons, or special effects  to be found. Instead, the scene involves Kirk, Spock, Bones and Sybok grappling with their personal beliefs, with their sense of personal identity and history, even. Sybok attempts to convert Spock and McCoy to his agenda by using his hypnotic powers of the mind. “Each man hides a secret pain. Share yours with me and gain strength from the sharing,” he offers. One at a time, Kirk’s allies crumble under the mesmeric influence. Then Sybok comes to Kirk, and the good captain steadfastly refuses Sybok’s brand of personal enlightenment.

In refusing to share his pain, Kirk notes to Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) that “you know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!”

This specific back-and-forth is the heart of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The Kirk/Sybok confrontation embodies the difference between Catholic Guilt (as represented by Kirk), and New Age “release” (as represented by Sybok). In terms of a short explanation, Catholic guilt is essentially a melancholy or world-weariness brought about by an examined life. It’s the constant questioning and re-parsing of decisions and history (some call it Scrupulosity). And if you know Star Trek, you understand that this sense of melancholy is, for lack of a better word, very Kirk-ian.

As a starship captain, James Kirk has sent men and women to their deaths and made tough calls that changed the direction of the galaxy, literally. But he has never been one to do so blindly, or without consideration of the consequences. “My God, Bones, what have I done?” He asks after destroying the Enterprise in The Search for Spock, and that’s just one, quick example of his reflective nature. In short, Kirk belabors his decisions, so much so that McCoy once had to tell him (in “Balance of Terror”) not to obsess; not to “destroy the one called Kirk.”

What Captain Kirk believes – and what is crucial to his success as a starship captain — is that he must carry and remember the guilt associated with his tough decisions. He must re-hash those choices and constantly relive them, or else, during the next crisis, he will fail. His decisions are part of him; he is the cumulative result of those choices, and to lose them would be — in his very words here — “to lose himself.”  Pain, anguish, regret…these are all crucial elements of Kirk’s being, and of the human equation.

By contrast, Sybok promises an escape from melancholy. His abilities permit him to “erase” the presence of pain all-together. This a kind of touchy-feely, New Age balm in which a person lets go of pain (via, for example, ACT: Active Release Technique) and then, once freed, suddenly sees the light.

Sybok’s approach arises from the counter-culture movement of the 1960s (the era of the Original Series), and might be described — albeit in glib fashion — as “Do what feels right” (a turn-of-phrase Spock himself uses in the 2009 Star Trek). But Sybok is a master of semantics. He doesn’t “control minds,” he says, he “frees” them. Left unexamined by Sybok is Kirk’s interrogative: once freed from pain, what does a person have left?  What remains when a person’s core is removed?  An empty vessel? 

Isn’t pain, borne by experience a part of our core psychological make-up? The New Age depiction of Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier led critic David Denby to term this entry “the most Californian” of the Star Trek films (New York, June 19,1989, page 68).

In countenancing the false god of Sha Ka Ree, these belief systems collide. Sybok — freed of pain and self-reflection — is unaware of his own tragic flaws. Eventually he sees them, terming them “arrogance” and “vanity.” But Kirk, who has always carried his choices with him, is able to face the malevolent alien with a sense of composure and entirely appropriate suspicion. Kirk is able, essentially, to ask “the Almighty for his I.D.” because he has maintained his Catholic sense of guilt. He’s been around the block too many times to be cowed by an alien who wants to appropriate his ship.

The lengthy scene in the observation deck, during which Sybok attempts to shatter the powerful triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is probably the best in the film. Shatner shoots it well too, with Sybok intersecting the perimeters of this famous character “triangle” (of id, ego, and super-ego) and then, visually, scattering its points to the corners of the room when doubt is sewn.

And then, after Kirk’s powerful argument and re-assertion of Catholic Guilt, the triangle (depicted visually, with the three characters as “points”) is re-constructed. Sybok is both literally and symbolically forced out of their unified “space.”

In point of fact, Shatner uses this triangular, three-person blocking pattern a lot in the film. Variety did not like the movie, but noted the power of this particular sequence in its original review: “Shatner, rises to the occasion,” the magazine wrote, “in directing a dramatic sequence of the mystical Luckinbill teaching Nimoy and DeForest Kelley to re-experience their long-buried traumas. The re-creations of Spock’s rejection by his father after his birth and Kelley’s euthanasia of his own father are moving highlights.”


While discussing Shatner, I should also add — no doubt controversially — that Shatner boasts a fine eye for visual composition. The opening scene on the cracked, arid plain of Nimbus III, and the follow-up scene set at Yosemite reveal that he has an eye not just for capturing natural beauty, but for utilizing the full breadth of the frame. As a director, Shatner came out of television (helming episodes of T.J. Hooker), but his visual approach doesn’t suggest a TV mentality. On the contrary, I would argue that there are moments in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that are the most inherently cinematic of the film series, after Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Abrams’ big-budget reboot of 2009.

What Does God Need With a Starship? Pinpointing the Divine inside The Human Heart and in the Natural World

I’ve noted above how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier involves the search for the ultimate knowledge, and uses two distinctive viewpoints (Catholic Guilt embodied by Kirk and New Age philosophy embodied by Sybok) to get at that knowledge.

What’s important, after that “quest” is the film’s conclusion about the specific “ultimate knowledge” gleaned from the journey.

In short order, in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the angry Old Testament-styled God-Alien reveals his true colors and demonstrates a capricious, violent-side. After Kirk asks “what does God need with a starship,” “God” is wrathful and violent. And this is what the site Common Sense Atheism suggested was really being asked by our secular, humanist hero.

“One might ask, “What does God need with animal sacrifice? With a human sacrifice? With a catastrophic flood? With billions of galaxies and trillions of stars and millions of unstoppably destructive black holes? What does God need with congenital diseases and a planet made of shifting plates that cause earthquakes and tsunamis? Isn’t the whole point of omnipotence that God could make a good world without all these needlessly silly or harmful phenomena?” 

Moreover, why should humans obey the commands of someone as capricious, jealous, petty, and violent as the God of the Jewish scriptures?

This critical line of thought reminds me of my experience seeing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in the theater with my girlfriend at the time, a devout Jew.

Afterwards, she was utterly convinced that Kirk and company had indeed encountered the Biblical, Old Testament God. And that they had, in fact, destroyed Him. Her reasoning for this belief was that “God” as depicted in the film actually looked and acted in the very fashion of the Old-Testament God.

On the former, front (God’s appearance), The Journal of Religion and Film, in a piece “Any Gods Out There?” by John S. Schultes, opined: “This being appears in the stereotypical Westernized figure of the “Father God” as depicted in art. He has a giant head, disembodied, depicting an older man with a kind face, flowing white hair and booming voice.”

On the latter front — behavior — there are also important commonalities. The Old Testament God was cruel, self-righteous, unjust, demanding, and acting according to a closely-held personal agenda (moving in a mysterious way?) without thought of courtesy or explanation to humans. Consider that the Old Testament God destroyed whole cities (like those of Sodom and Gomorrah), and that it’s his plan to kill us by the billion-fold in the End Times, if we don’t believe in him. The Old Testament God is indeed one of violence and punishment.

And this is precisely how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier depicts this creature. He wants to deliver his power — his violence and judgment — to “every corner of creation.” Naturally, Kirk can’t allow this brand of subjugation…even it comes from God.

Over the years, I have come to agree more and more with my former-girlfriend’s assessment. The alien portrayed in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier may indeed be the Old Testament God of our legends. Just as Apollo was indeed, Apollo of Greek Myth in “Who Mourns for Adonis.”

And, in fact, Captain Kirk kills God here. (Or rather, it’s a cooperative venture with the Klingons…). In doing so, Kirk frees humanity (and the universe itself) from the oppression of superstition, judgment and tyranny.  Ask yourself, keeping in mind Gene Roddenberry’s visions of humanity and religion (expressed candidly in the TNG episode “Who Watches the Watchers”): is that Star Trek V’s ultimate message?

The ultimate knowledge, according to this Trek movie is that God only exists “right here; the human heart,” as Kirk notes near the film’s conclusion. Accordingly, The Journal of Religion and Society explains that this conclusion represents a narrative wrinkle true to “the collective history of Classic Star Trek,” a re-assertion of Roddenberry-esque, secular principles. In his essay, “From Captain Stormfield to Captain Kirk, Two 20th Century Representations of Heaven, scholar Michel Clasquin concludes:

“In “Final Frontier“, Heaven turns out to be Hell: the optimism is deferred until the heroes have returned to the man-made heaven of the United Federation of Planets. The film ends where it began: with Spock, Kirk and McCoy on furlough in a thoroughly tamed Earth wilderness. This, the film tells us, is the true Heaven, the secular New Jerusalem that humans, Vulcans and a smattering of other species will build for themselves in the 24th century, a world in which the outward heavenly conditions reflect the true Heaven that resides in the human heart.”

Clasquin’s point here absolutely demands a re-evaluation of the book-end Yosemite camping scenes of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Many critics complained that the film takes a long time to get started, since the crew must “laboriously” be re-gathered from vacation.

However, if Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’s point is that “God” resides in man’s heart (and is, in fact, man himself) and that the Garden of Eden, or Heaven itself is “a tamed Earth wilderness,” — a finely-developed sense of responsible environmentalism, in fact — then these two sequences of “nature” prove absolutely necessary in terms of the narrative. Heaven on Earth is within our grasp, the movie seems to note. We don’t have to die to get there. We merely must act responsibly as stewards of our planet (or in Star Trek’s universe, planets, plural). The human heart, and the Beautiful Earth: these are Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’s (atheist) optimistic views of where, ultimately, Divinity resides.  If you desire a Star Trek movie with some pretty deep philosophical underpinnings, look no further than William Shatner’s The Final Frontier.

“All I Can Say is, They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To: A Movie Shattered (not Shatnered…) by Poor Execution”

William Shatner handles many of the visual aspects of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with flair and distinction. His impressive efforts are badly undercut, however, by three catastrophic weaknesses. The first such weakness involves studio interference in the very story he wanted to tell. The second involves inferior special effects, and the third involves slipshod editing.

On the first front, William Shatner sought initially to make a serious, even bloody movie concerning fanatical religious cults and God imagery. His plan was shit-canned in large part, by Paramount Studios.  Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) had just proven a major success, and the Powers That Be judged this was so because the movie evidenced a terrific sense of humor, particularly fish-out-of-water humor. The edict came down that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had to include the same level of humor.

Frankly, this edict was the kiss of death. The humor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home grew organically out of the situation: advanced people of the 23rd century being forced to deal with people and activities of the “primitive” year 1986.  The scenario there called for fish-out-of-water humor, and no characters were sacrificed on the altar of laughs.

Above, I described the thematic principles of Star Trek V: seeking the ultimate summit both externally and internally, and discovering that the Divine is inside us — or is, actually, the Human Heart. So how exactly, does Scotty knocking himself out on a ceiling beam, or Uhura performing a fan dance, or Chekov rehashing his “wessel” shtick fit that conceit?

The short answer is that it doesn’t. Such humor had to be grafted on here, and it shows. It’s forced, awkward, and entirely unnecessary. The inclusion of so much humor actually runs counter to the grandeur and seriousness of the story Shatner hoped to tell.

And then — in a typical bout of bean-counter nonsense — what does Paramount do next? Well, it advertises and markets Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with the ad-line “why are they putting seat belts in theaters this summer?” suggesting that the movie is an action-packed roller-coaster ride! This is after they demanded the movie be a comedy! Talk about assuring audience dissatisfaction. Tell audiences that the movie they are about to see is super-exciting and action-packed, and then give them Vulcan nerve-pinches on horses, Uhura and Scotty flirting with each other, and crewmen singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”  Quite simply, The Final Frontier’s marketing campaign didn’t do a good job of managing audience expectations.

The second aspect of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that damages it so egregiously involves the special visual effects. A movie like this — about the search for God, no less — must feature absolutely inspiring and immaculate, awesome visuals. We must believe in the universe that includes Sha Ka Ree, and the God Creature.

Originally, Shatner envisioned Sha Ka Ree turning into a kind of Bosch-ean Hell, featuring demons and rivers of fire. But what we get instead is a glowing Santa Claus-head in a beam of light, and…a much too familiar desert planet.

What’s worse is that many visuals don’t match-up. When Kirk’s shuttle flies over the God planet initially, the surface of the world looks like a microscopic landscape (a sort of God’s Eye view of the head-of-a-pin, as it were). But when the shuttle lands the planet just looks like a terrestrial desert. This is Heaven?

Perhaps Star Trek V could have surmounted this problem, since the TV series was never about special effects anyway, but about ideas. But the special effects in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier fail to even adequately render believable and “real” such commonplace Star Trek things as starships in motion or photon torpedo blasts. Watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a little bit like watching Golan and Globus’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1986): the cheapness of the effects make you wince, and stands in stark contrast to a franchise’s glory days.

And the editing! Oh my, to quote Mr. Sulu. 

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is edited — in polite terms — in disastrous fashion. During Kirk, Spock and McCoy’s escape on rocket boots through an Enterprise turbo shaft, the same deck numbers repeat, in plain view. 

When Kirk falls from his perch high on El Capitan the movie cuts to a lengthy shot of Shatner — in front of a phony rear-projection background — flapping his arms.

And just take a look at how Kirk’s weight, make-up, hair-cut, and disposition shift back-and-forth in his final scene with General Koord and General Klaa aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey. This mismatch was due to post-production re-shoots when the original ending was deemed unacceptable.

Forget the script (which might have worked without the studio-demanded humor). Forget the acting (which is pure Star Trek ham bone — and, in my estimation, perfect for a futuristic passion play), it’s the editing that scuttles this film.Whether it’s allowing us the time to notice that Sybok’s haircut and outfit change on Sha Ka Ree, or permitting us to linger too long on visible wires in two fight scenes, Star Trek V’s cutting is just not up to par.

There’s a Star Trek fan out there on the Net who has taken it upon himself to re-edit Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and you know something? It’s a worthy enterprise. Preferably, Shatner should do a director’s cut, and trim his misbegotten film down to a mean, lean eighty-five minutes. The worst editing, effects, and jokey moments would be excised, and audiences would be surprised, perhaps, how visually adroit, how dynamic, how meaningful and even spiritual this Final Frontier could be sans the theatrical release’s considerable problems.

Let’s face it, modern criticism often thrives on hyperbole, so it’s fun and dramatic to declare that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is one of the ten worst science fiction films EVER! The only problem is, it’s not necessarily true.

I don’t even know that The Final Frontier is actually the worst Star Trek film, to be blunt, especially after watching Generations and Nemesis recently.   Star Trek V: The Final Frontier conforms to Muir’s Snowball Rule of Movie Viewing. Allow me to explain. Because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is perceived by the majority of critics and Star Trek fans as “bad,” everything about the film gets criticized, when — in point of fact — many other Star Trek movies feature many of the same goofy errors. For instance, I have read some Star Trek fans complain vociferously about the fact that the Enterprise travels to the center of the galaxy here in a matter of hours.

The fact that in First Contact, the Enterprise gets from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in time to join a battle against the Borg, already in progress, goes unnoticed or at least uncommented upon. So, the starship got there in like, you know, a few minutes, I guess. But because First Contact is beloved and generally evaluated as good, it generally doesn’t garner the same level of negative attention or scrutiny. When it fails in a spot here or there, it gets a pass.

Whereas, by contrast, the details in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier definitely draw heavier scrutiny. The “bad movie” snowball, once rolling down a hill, just grows larger and larger. We forgive less and less.  Every aspect of the film is nitpicked and called into question, deservedly or not.  It becomes harder, then, to register and recognize the good.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is an ambitious failure. But ambitious may be the operative word here. The movie certainly aimed high, and hoped to chart some fascinating spiritual and philosophical ground that feels abundantly true to the Star Trek line and heritage.

But plainly, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Again, I renew my call for a Shatner-guided 85 minute version.  One closer to his original vision, with improved special effects, and better editing.  A new official release, re-modulated as I suggest, may be the only way for opinion-hardened Star Trek fans to see the good points of this admittedly problematic entry in the film canon.

Movie Trailer: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

“Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain! “

– Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

The Five People You Don’t Want to Get Lost in Space With…

In the cult television Valhalla, viewers have encountered several lost or wayward space travelers: human men and women isolated in the void of outer space, and seeking a new home (Space: 1999, Lost in Space), a way back to Earth (Star Trek: Voyager, SGU) or even a mere respite from pursuit (Battlestar Galactica).

In virtually every well-known TV tale of “lost” space travelers, however, the human community struggling to survive has been forced to contend not just with externals dangers such as strange space phenomena or hostile aliens…but with threats from within their very group.  These internal dangers – these treacherous characters — are perhaps the trickiest to manage, and these menaces often cause tremendous discontent and strife.

So without further introduction, here are the five characters you’d least like to be lost in space with.

5. Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle) on SGU (2009 – 2011).  Admittedly, Dr. Rush is not flat-out evil, like at least a few of the names you’ll note on this list, but he’s certainly…difficult.  

A genius and a dedicated scientist, Dr. Rush finds himself trapped aboard the Ancient starship Destiny, a vessel flying out of control and headed beyond the confines of our galaxy.  Although we learn in the episode “Human” about the tragic death of Rush’s wife, Gloria (Louise Lombard), that personal background detail hardly excuses Rush’s secrecy, his arrogance, or his schemes to see life on Destiny unfold by his agenda.  Early on in the first season, Rush frames the ship’s leader, Colonel Young (Louis Ferrara) for murder, so that he can continue to study Ancient technology unimpeded.  After Young exiles Rush on a desolate planet, Rush manages a return (thanks to a little alien abduction…) and returns to Destiny.  Once there, he agrees to cooperate fully with Young for the well-being of the crew, but in the very next episode, sets about trapping Young aboard a shuttle, and seizing control of the Destiny for a faction of civilians. 

In short, Rush is a valuable asset in terms of his intelligence and knowledge, but absolutely unreliable in terms of loyalty or team-work.    

4. Seska (Martha Hackett) on Star Trek: Voyager (1995 – 2001).  Seska is a member of Commander Chakotay’s (Rorbert Beltran) Maquis crew when she joins Voyager in the Delta Quadrant in the series pilot “Caretaker.”   Introduced in the second episode, “Parallax,” Seska quickly proves that she isn’t exactly Starfleet timbre.  She constantly second-guesses attempts to integrate the two disparate crews, and deliberately goes against Captain Janeway’s orders of non-interference in the episode “Prime Factors,” opting to steal alien technology that could provide a short-cut home.

Of course, the kicker with Seska is that she is incredibly deceptive.  She is not the Bajoran she appears to be, but rather a Cardassian spy! When Janeway’s command style proves to her intense disliking, Seska reveals her true colors and begins secretly working with a villainous Kazon sect that hopes to seize Voyager.  Finally — making her the intergalactic equivalent of Fatal Attraction’s Alex Forrest — Seska impregnates herself with Chakotay’s DNA and then uses Chakotay’s child as bait to entrap Chakotay and the Voyager crew.

On the plus side, Seska is apparently the only person in history to find Chakotay interesting…

3. Commissioner Simmonds (Roy Dotrice) on Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977).  When the moon is blasted out of Earth’s orbit, Moonbase Alpha is manned by 311 dedicated scientists and astronauts. 

Plus, there’s one politician tagalong…Gerald Simmonds. 

In the first episode, “Breakaway,” Simmonds is revealed to be your typical political animal, a man who would do and say anything to avoid making a tough call, and at the same time maintain his position of power authority.  He’s a weasel and a bureaucrat, one who would easily let Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) take the fall for a difficult decision.

But in his second appearance in “Earthbound,” Commissioner Simmonds proves rather more malicious than his behavior in “Breakaway” suggests.  When visiting aliens called Kaldorians arrive on Moonbase Alpha, Simmonds contrives to take any action necessary – including blackmail – to assure that he gets a seat (or stasis tube…)on their spacecraft, which is headed to Earth.  Specifically, he threatens Alpha’s life support unit, and holds several technicians at gunpoint.

Cruel, imperious, and eminently capable of violence, Simmonds is a “superior” officer, but an inferior human being.  As his actions in “Earthbound” make plain, Simmonds puts his own well-being ahead of the lives of everyone on Alpha.  As Captain Zantor (Christopher Lee) notes of Simmonds, he is a “diseased” individual.  And as Paul Morrow (Prentis Hancock) observes, Alpha is “well rid of him.”

2.    Count Baltar (John Colicos) on Battlestar Galactica (1978 – 1979).  In the first episode of the original Glen Larson series, Baltar betrays the entire human race to the genocidal Cylons. He does it with a smile, which makes it worse.

The Cylons spare Baltar’s life only so that he may pursue the fleeing rag-tag fleet and destroy the Galactica.  But Baltar, strangely, seems to switch loyalties…again.  In “Lost Planet of the Gods,” he meets Adama (Lorne Greene) on the sacred planet of Kobol and presents a plan to attack the Cylons, even releasing Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) from captivity to prove his sincerity.  Adama doesn’t believe him, and Baltar is left to die on the planet surface

In a later episode, “War of the Gods,” Baltar is back.  This time, he’s fearful of the Ship of Lights and visits Galactica to propose a universal truce.  Instead, he is immediately imprisoned and taken to the Prison Barge, where he attempts escape (“Baltar’s Escape”). 

And finally, in “The Hand of God,” Baltar again navigates the narrow line between friend and foe, promising the Colonials critical information about the lay-out of a Cylon base-star if only they grant him his freedom and maroon him on a habitable planet. 

The problem with Baltar, of course, is that betraying and exterminating nine-tenths of the human race is an offense that’s tough to walk back from.  But that doesn’t stop him from trying.  Why propose a truce?  Why propose teaming-up?  No one can guess what really motivates Baltar, besides his own lust for power. 

1. Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris) on Lost in Space (1965 – 1968). If Dr. Smith is near, you have plenty to fear, to turn around a popular character catchphrase.

This “reluctant stowaway” aboard the Jupiter 2 in Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space started out as a saboteur and villain, and then became – for three years – a constant irritant to the heroic Robinson family of space pioneers.  Cowardly, manipulative, and insulting (especially to the robot), Smith managed to land himself and usually the Robinsons too into all kinds of trouble over the years.   In “My Friend, Mr. Nobody,” he nearly killed a peaceful alien so as to possess a cache of diamonds.  In “The Oasis,” Smith used-up the last of the family’s precious water…for a shower.

Smith causes accidents (“Wish Upon a Star”), sabotages spacecraft (“The Raft), covets alien items (“The Magic Mirror”), requires constant rescue (“His Majesty Smith”), is transformed into a stalk of celery (“The Great Vegetable Rebellion”), and even attempts to sell the family robot as spare parts (“Junkyard in Space.”)   In short, he makes life miserable for the Robinsons. 

It has often been suggested that Dr. Smith be shown the way to the nearest airlock on the Jupiter 2, and booted into space.  It’s a testament to the Robinson family’s good-nature (and the family friendly atmosphere of the series…), that this never occurred.  But Smith surely represents all the worst in humanity, from greed to treachery to disloyalty.  It would be miserable to be lost in space with this guy.

In fact, just imagine being lost in space with a crew consisting of Dr. Rush, Seska, Commissioner Simmonds, Baltar and Dr. Smith.

Which of ’em would get kicked out the airlock first?

Memory Bank: Laserdiscs

Once upon a time, I was certain that the future of home entertainment media belonged to the laserdisc format. 

From about 1992 to 1999, I amassed a huge (now virtually worthless…) collection of laserdisc films and television programming, and paid a pretty penny for those discs too.  I remember that when Goldeneye(1995) came out on laserdisc in the mid-1990s it sold at (the now-defunct) Media Play stores for the princely sum of forty-five dollars.

But still — for a while anyway — laserdiscs were the best game in town.

At some point, probably during the mid-1980s, film lovers, scholars, and critics began to see and understand the inherent limitations of the VHS home-video format, and that’s what created an opening for laserdiscs, I suppose.

For one thing, most movies on VHS saw their original aspect corrupted, reducing the rectangular frame of the silver screen to a box.  I remember seeing somewhere (was it on Siskel and Ebert at the Movies?) a side-by-side comparison of a scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in theatrical format and VHS format, and feeling pretty darn upset at how much of the frame was sacrificed on the latter.

One of the tremendous benefits of the laser disc “optical storage” medium was that, as a collector’s format, it most often featured films in their original, theatrical widescreen ratio.  You didn’t losing anything of value, frame-wise, and the picture was crystal clear. 

Laserdiscs were wonderful as well, for their capacity to navigate frame-by-frame (in CAV mode, anyway).  They could also feature a host of extras outside the film itself, both on the discs and on the over-sized, record album-like packaging.   The laserdisc for Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989), for instance, featured extended cuts of the film.

But I’ll be honest: I didn’t join the laserdisc revolution because I had to see my favorite films in immaculate widescreen and with extra material. 

I purchased a Pioneer laserdisc player in late 1993 because that format represented the only way I could view the entirety of Gerry and Sylvia Andersons’s Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977) again, for the first time in over a decade.  Image Entertainment and J2 Communications had released (virtually) all of the four-dozen or so episodes on laserdisc, and, well, I was determined to see the series again after it had disappeared from the spotlight.  If this was the way I had to see it…well, so be it.

Not that finding all of the episodes was easy or cheap. 

It was a months-long and expensive proposition to hunt down all the laserdisc volumes of the series.  Fortunately, I found an outfit in Fairfield New Jersey called U.S. Video Source (“America’s Laser Disc Store”) that was selling a number of the Space:1999 releases, at $26.96 a disc (consisting of two hour-long episodes).  

To demonstrate what a crazy and obsessive collector I am (as if I haven’t already…) I still own many of my invoices from U.S. Video Source during the span from 8/25/93 to 01/05/94.  I have no idea why I’m still keeping these documents, except that they reflect a time in my life that I remember fondly. 

There was something wonderful and exciting about hunting down every laserdisc volume of Space: 1999 I could find at both at both remote venues like Video Source and at real locations such as the Camelot Music store that was located on Central Avenue in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I have great memories of that Camelot Music store laser disc bin, although the store is long-since closed.  It was there that I found some truly great (and bizarre…) deals.  Still, I’m not sure what fever possessed me to buy a laserdisc of Mom and Dad Save the World (1992).

But for me, the absolute truth is this: I became a professional writer in large part because I had to legitimize with my then-girlfriend/now-wife the amount of time and money I had sunk into collecting all the Space: 1999 volumes.  In the end, it turned out okay for me, of course…and here we are.

Over the years, I collected everything I could on laserdisc.  I even began collecting Star Trek: The Next Generationepisodes in that format…even though I didn’t like them so much that I had to own them. 

On the other hand, I’m thrilled that today I own the Star Wars Original Trilogy on laserdisc, sans the CGI changes of the Special Editions and DVD and Blu-Ray releases. 

I also love re-reading the liner notes on my Star Wars laserdisc.  George Lucas – who sued Battlestar Galactica(1978 – 1979) for copyright infringement – commented there (“Behind the Scenes”) that he made Star Wars “so everyone will copy it.  Then I can go see the copies and sit back and enjoy them.”

Uh-huh.

Anyway, laserdiscs (LD) never really took off in the United States, and even after several years on the market were only in something like 2% of American households.  And then came the real kicker: DVDs were on the horizon by the mid-1990s, and the new, cheaper format represented the death knell for laserdiscs.

Today, I still possess my Space: 1999 laserdiscs, though many have succumbed to the dreaded condition called “laser rot.”  And, I’ve again bought the series on DVD and once more (Year One, anyway…) on Blu Ray. 

Given my penchant for collecting, my wife is extremely happy that DVDs and Blu Rays are much more affordable than laserdiscs.  Yet there’s something about that oversized format that I still cherish. And yes, I’m nostalgic for it. 

Although, I suppose, I don’t miss getting my ass up off the sofa to flip laserdisc sides…

Collectible of the Week: Buck Rogers Laserscope Fighter (Mego; 1979)

In 1979, the post-Star Wars, Glen Larson version of Buck Rogers took the sci-fi world by storm.  I was nine year old at the time, and both the feature film and the follow-up TV series on NBC were right up my alley. 

The franchise starred Gil Gerard as Buck, Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering, and Pamela Hensley as Princess Ardala.  The tone of the enterprise was cheeky and knowing, and the special effects, for their day, were absolutely stellar.  Down to the sexy opening credits, the film version played like James Bond in the future, or in space, perhaps.

Accordingly, I was thrilled when I began to see toys from Mego lining the shelves at Toys R Us.  Among the first of these was a spaceship toy with a design you never saw featured on-screen: the “Laserscope fighter.” 

This sharp-nosed space fighter “with simulated lasers and explosions” featured a cockpit for the 3.5 inch Buck Rogers figures.  But more interestingly, it possessed a rear-mounted view screen through which you could track, target, and incinerate enemies.

The box explains: “Look through the view-screen and line up your target, press the switches – see and hear the lasers fire – the target will appear to explode right before your very eyes!”

Also according to the box legend, this Buck Rogers Laserscope fighter featured:

·         Laserscope viewscreen

·         Twin stub wing handles

·         Telescopic focus control

·         Realistic laser sounds

·         Swing-open cockpit

·         Fits any Buck Rogers figure.

Of course, I must confess that when I was generously given the Laserscope fighter as a gift, I was a bit disappointed because I really wanted the Buck Rogers star fighter, a craft which was featured on the show and boasted an infinitely cooler design aesthetic. 

But once I actually got the star fighter for the Christmas of 1980, I could enjoy the Laserscope fighter as a kind of “alternate” ship for the intrepid Buck.  The fighter sort of fit with the universe of the TV series, because Buck often ended up going undercover for the Earth Directorate, flying ships of various designs.  So it was kind of cool to be able to play out that scenario with a ship other than an “official” one.

Also, if I understand my toy history right, the “Laserscope fighter” was also released in Europe, but as a toy from a different Mego license: The Black Hole (1979).  

Of course, the design of the ship doesn’t fit that particular franchise any more than it resembles something you saw on Buck Rogers…

Cloned from a Mutual Zygote: Third Eye Edition

(suggested by reader SGB).

The Alien Movie Matrix

I’ll present my detailed, spoiler-filled review of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012) one week from today, here on the blog (so see it before then; twice if you can…).

While watching the new film, keep in mind this matrix, and see how many categories Prometheus fulfills.  This may be one manner of judging how much of an Alien “prequel” the Ridley Scott film really is.  Does it live or die by the conventions of the established series, or does it feature new tropes and ideas?

Title	Alien (1979)	Aliens (1986)	Alien3 (1992)	Alien Resurrection (1997)
Android	Ash	Bishop	Bishop	Call
Company Man	Ash	Burke	85, Bishop	No
Comic Relief	Parker, Brett	Hudson	Morse, 85	Perez
In awe of the alien	Ash	Bishop	Golic	Gediman
Joseph Conrad	Nostromo Narcissus	Sulaco	Sulaco	No
Pregnancy/Gestation	Kane	Colonists	Ripley. Dog.	Alien Queen Purvis
Self-Sacrifice	No	Gorman Vasquez	Dillon Ripley	Christie Purvis
Failed Mission	Dallas in the vents trying to flush out alien	First engagement with aliens in sub-level 3	Prisoners attempt to entrap alien	Military attempts to breed and control aliens as bio weapon.
Ship/Facility Destroyed	Nostromo	LV-426 Colony	Evacuation pod	Auriga
New Alien Life Form	Space jockey Egg Facehugger Chestburster Adult alien	Queen Alien	Dog Alien	Newborn
Surprise Death/Attack	Kane chest-bursted. Alpha-male Dallas killed half-way through. Ash decapitated.	Bishop pulped    by Queen on Sulaco.	Andrews dragged   through Cafeteria ceiling	No

The Horror Lexicon #17: Bio-Hazard Suits

Once upon a time, the wardrobe of the horror genre consisted of diaphanous white gowns and black vampire capes.  

But by the 1970s, traditional Gothic wear was out-of-fashion, and high-tech horror chic was in.  

In films such as Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain(1971), environmental, hazmat or “bio-containment suits” were often the only thing that could protect heroic scientists from a new and insidious form of monster: the virus or “germ.”

And yet, during the same era, in harrowing films such as George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973), the hazmat suit also became a short-hand for terror itself.  There, American soldiers occupied Evans City, PA, in bio-hazard suits, and declared martial law during the military’s attempt to contain a biological weapon code-named “Trixie.” 

These American soldiers carried flame throwers and guns, and saw the innocent families and denizens of the town as something akin to expendable cattle.  Therefore, the protective suits – on one hand a protection from danger – also became a barrier to communication, an impediment to human and humane behavior on the part of those who wore them.  Behind those suit masks, we couldn’t see how the soldiers felt, or if they were agonizing over their difficult choices.  We could only see how (horribly) they acted in the face of fear.

In short, that’s the yin-and-yang of the hazmat suit in horror films.  This wardrobe can work as a defense if a hero wears it, but represents a form of alienation or fear if worn by callous-seeming others or villains.  

Some films, such as Outbreak(1995) play with the conventions of the hazmat suit by featuring scenes wherein the protective suits rip and tear, and our heroes are exposed to a bug and therefore mortally endangered.  At another moment in the film, a scientist (Dustin Hoffman) is so convinced that he has discovered the cure for hemorrhagic fever that he (foolishly, in my opinion…) removes his helmet in the presence of the infected.  Fortunately for him, his gamble pays off.

The late 1980s and early 1990s represents the era of what I term “the Horror Genome Project,” wherein many genre films featured “science gone amok” story lines.  These new age Frankenstein tales concerned irresponsible scientists who experimented with life – with the very building blocks of life – and created only…terror. The remake of The Blob (1988) concerned this idea, as did such efforts as Mimic (1998).  In these settings, the hazmat suit was the scientist’s garb of choice.  We know that“clothes make the man” (or woman), so therefore the hazmat suit became a  de rigueur fashion touch in stories of scientists confronting their own creations, as well as seemingly alien or unknown terrors; Phantoms (1998) for instance.

In Steven Spielberg’s science fiction films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982), the hazmat suits are utilized by the master director as fearsome indicators of powers that audiences can’t understand.  The suits and helmets themselves obstruct transparency, hiding either conspiratorial government deceit, or “grown-ups” who obscure their “heart-lights” beneath layers of inhuman, inexpressive protection. 

The bio-hazard suit is featured in (but not limited) to appearances in films such as:

The Andromeda Strain(1971), The Crazies (1973), Close Encounters (1977), E.T.(1982), The Blob (1988), Alien ³ (1992), Carnosaur(1993), Return of the Living Dead III (1993), The Puppet Masters (1994), Mimic(1998), Phantoms (1998), Sphere (1998), The X-Files: Fight the Future(1998), [REC] (2007), Carriers (2009), and The Crazies (2010).

Cult Movie Review: John Carter (2012)

I grew up reading the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the author’s Princess of Mars “pulp” novels, so I was saddened to see the cinematic adaptation of the saga, John Carter (2012) bomb at the box office last spring. 

But — as difficult as it is for our money-focused, bottom-line-concerned, consumer modern society to recognize such things – financial success isn’t necessarily the most important aspect of a movie’s legacy or artistry.

And in regards to John Carter, I reckon that general audiences missed the boat – and a nice treat — by giving the film a pass.

In short, John Carter is a beautifully-conceptualized and gorgeously photographed “sword and sandals-” in-space epic.  Only the fact that virtually every sci-fi blockbuster from Star Wars (1977) to Attack of the Clones (2002), to Avatar(2009) has cribbed mercilessly from the Burroughs’ epic burdens the picture with an unfortunate surface impression of sameness. 

At this point, frankly, we’ve probably seen enough desert planets (Star Wars [1977], Dune [1984], Star Trek V: The Final Frontier[1989], Stargate [1994], Star Wars: The Phantom Menace [1999] etc.) to last us all a lifetime. 

Yet if you gaze underneath such familiar visual trappings, you may detect that John Carter possesses a droll, sure-footed imagination, and the rollicking senses of humor and, yes, joy, that many recent space adventures have deliberately forsaken in favor of darkness, angst, and doubt.

Directed by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo [2003], Wall-E [2008]), John Carter is yet another one of those recent releases that met a cruel reception from reviewers; a reception that speaks more trenchantly about those reviewers and their own shortcomings than those of the film in focus. 

For instance, some critics were quick to term John Carter an Avatar “reject” without considering the fact that Burroughs’ John Carter practically originated the sci-fi adventure genre a century ago. 

Other critics only wanted to discuss inside baseball and reinforce a behind-the-scenes story:  The film was too expensive at 250 million dollars!  The director had shifted from animation to live action…why? 

Finally, some dunderheads even suggested that John Carter is incomprehensible, and that it is too “hard” to follow the film’s story.  I wonder what these same critics would have made of Star Wars when it first premiered in 1977.  

Who are these Jedi Knights we keep hearing about?  Who are all those aliens in the cantina? Why all this endless talk of an Imperial Senate that we never actually see?  Boring….  

But the cardinal sin is this one: So many critics focused on what was happening behind-the-scenes (admittedly, a marketing disaster) or the film’s “familiar” subject matter that they didn’t actually contend with the specifics of the film’s text itself, or with the creative and often amusing ways that John Carter tackled its narrative. 

In short, director Stanton adopts a stance of quirky individualism and wonder throughout the film, humanizing his lead character by deploying unexpected editing flourishes and off-kilter compositions that visually mirror the hero’s quest.

So yes, narrative-wise, the story of John Carter has been re-purposed many, many times. No point denying that.

But perhaps in recognition of that very fact, Stanton infuses his silver screen effort with a strong sense of romance, a quality of unfettered joy, and even a keen eye for detail that plays, finally as tribute to the genre’s history. 

Beyond those laudable values, a mild updating of the material (to include elements of the second Carter adventure, Gods of Mars) provides for an interesting commentary in our modern, twenty-first century era.  In particular, the film’s “civilized” villains — the god-like Therns — mirror how the rich and powerful manipulate religion, technology and even PR sleight-of-hand to drive an agenda that may be good for them — the few — but are wholly tragic for the rest of us, the many.

As Jeffrey Anderson insightfully wrote of John Carter at The San Francisco Examiner,this is a film that absolutely “celebrates the concept of adventure.”  

It’s a shame that for a lot of folks, that’s not enough.

“You are ugly, but you are beautiful. And you fight like a Thark!”

Following the Civil War, confederate Captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) of Virginia goes in search of gold in the west. After running afoul of U.S. cavalry officers and Apache warriors, Carter hides in a cave and comes across a device that can transport him to another world…to Mars.

Carter wakes up on the dying planet — here called “Barsoom”— to find excessive strife.  And oddly, the gravity differential on Mars has granted Carter the strength, speed and agility of a superman.

Still, John is quickly captured by the warrior-like, green-skinned, twelve-foot tall Tharks, and trained as one of their number.  But a usurper to the throne, Tal Hajus (Thomas Haden Church) makes trouble for the Tharks’ noble leader Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) after he allows Carter and his daughter Sola (Samantha Morton) to escape from captivity.

Soon, John teams up with a beautiful “Red” princess, Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) to help defeat a conquering warlord named Sab Than (Dominic West).  The daughter of Helium’s king (Ciaran Hinds), Dejah is slated to marry Than unless she can find another way to repel his war fleet, and defeat his new, awesome power “the ninth ray.”

Attempting to find a way home to Earth, Carter comes to the rescue of Dejah, and learns that Helium and even Sab Than are being manipulated by dark, shadowy overlords known as Therns.  Their agent on Barsoom — Matai Shang (Mark Strong) — reveals that his people feed on societal divisions and strife, and are manipulating the planet Barsoom towards total disaster.

As Dejah’s wedding day nears, Carter must recruit the savage Tharks to his valiant cause, and he tests his mettle in a Thark arena against a monstrous white ape…

“We do not cause the destruction of a world, Captain Carter. We simply manage it. Feed off it, if you like.”

John Cartereffortlessly cruises through a two-hour plus running time, in part because director Stanton doesn’t hew to tradition or convention in terms of visual presentation. Specifically, Stanton takes full advantage of unconventional editing techniques – jump cuts, for instance— to craft humorous montages out of small moments that might have been neglected or ignored in another director’s hands

Take for example, John Carter’s repeated but futile attempts to escape the U.S. cavalry.  Stanton stages these moments with fierce abandon and with flourishes of heroic music on the soundtrack.  Carter leaps into action and attempts to break free.  But the editing sets up a joke/punch-line dynamic.  After Carter lunges into action, he gets smacked down…hard.  This happens repeatedly (perhaps three times in all), and each attempt only lands Carter in deeper trouble: bruised, bloodied, and finally incarcerated in prison. 

But the persistent jump cuts from the initiation of Carter’s daring escape gambits to the unfortunate results of his efforts prove very funny, and quite unexpected.  They almost immediately announce the film’s intention to play the story not as camp, but as good, entertaining fun.

Yet the sequences featuring these jump cuts reveal character traits ably as well.  Carter is resilient and indomitable, even when he doesn’t possess the upper hand.  This is a trait that will come in handy on the desert plains of inhospitable Barsoom. 

Also, the moments of Carter jumping up – and getting smacked down hard – play as direct and deliberate contrast to those later moments on Mars when the gravity difference allows the protagonist to leap into the sky….and successfully fly into action.  On Barsoom – where he belongs – nothing can hold Carter back.  The pointed contrast with the earlier jump-cut shots thus represents a visual recognition of destiny achieved.

Another great moment occurs as Carter teleports to Mars and attempts to stand-up and walk for the first time.  Again, the unexpected occurs:  he falls down.  Once, then again, then again and again.   Carter is not instantly portrayed as a physically-competent superman, able to conquer natural forces in a single bound 

Instead, we see him fall flat on his face over and over, looking every bit the fool.  Again, this off-kilter moment reveals something of the main character’s resilience.  It would have been easy (but wrong) to omit Carter’s physical training, and just have him emerge on Mars a superhero  Instead, we get another humorous montage that reminds us of Carter’s human nature.  He may get to be a superman in time, but first he has to take his licks, looking like an idiot.  We understand why he’s humble and righteous, not arrogant and over-confident.

Stanton finds other ways to puncture any unnecessary solemnity.  The Tharks continually refer to John Carter as “Virginia,” even after he asks them not to, and they also give him a kind of alien bull-dog sidekick that he can’t escape from. In both instances – again – viewers are asked to reckon with a hero with feet of clay, with frailties and limitations.  It’s no fun, after all, if our hero is unbeatable, or if power comes too easily to him.

Another good joke comes later in the film: Carter’s inability to stick a landing while piloting a Martian flying machine.  This comedic situation serves the same function as all the other jokes, making Carter relatable and bearable to us in the audience instead of some unsympathetic ubermensch.

For me, the emotional honesty and dynamic lyricism of Stanton’s directorial approach comes to the forefront in another unconventional but magnificent moment.  During a fierce battle with Tharks, Stanton deploys incessant cross-cutting to flash back from the height of the savage attack to a character defining moment in the past when Carter returns home from the Civil War and discovers his family – his wife and child – murdered. 

The cross-cutting is vitally important here because it permits us to understand why Carter has again embraced war (“a shameful thing,” he notes at one point).  When he kills – and kills on a near-cosmic scale – he is remembering the tragic loss that destroyed his life, his very identity. Sword blades slicing through the air cross-cut with images of a shovel striking dirt…digging a grave.  Again, director Stanton has found a way to adroitly and economically visualize this hero’s essential character.

I also very much appreciate the “fan” homages that Stanton delicately and unobtrusively threads into the picture.  Eagle-eyed viewers will recognize, at one point, a familiar expanse of Vasquez Rocks, where Captain Kirk famously fought his green-skinned Gorn opponent, in Star Trek (1966 – 1969). 

And one scene set in a canoe directly mirrors a moment in the Forbidden Zone with Charlton Heston on an inflatable yellow raft, from Planet of the Apes(1968).  John Carter is veritably seeded with these canny visual allusions to previous genre classics, thus graciously noting that it is part of a longstanding continuum, even if Burroughs was really an initiator, not imitator, of the literary “pulp” adventure.

Above, I mentioned the social commentary embedded in John Carter, and there’s no doubt of its presence.  Several times during the course of the film, for instance, we witness the workings of what can only be called a large “fracking” machine, one damaging and degrading the very stability of Barsoom.

Furthermore, the Thern leader – an advanced would-be God – notes that he “manages” and “feeds off” the destruction of worlds while “societies divide.”  This is a wicked metaphor for the very debate we see playing out in our national dialogue about the role of “vulture capitalists,” like those at Mitt Romney’s Bain.  Such men champion “creative destruction” and shepherd the chopping-up and selling-off of resources…so that they alone profit.  This is indeed the very dynamic we see played out with Matai Shang, a creature “managing” the destruction of Barsoom for his own benefit.

Another element of that dynamic, of course, is the 1% argument we associate with the Occupy movement.  The Therns represent only a few people, but their agenda rules the planet as the various, diverse denizens of Barsoom battle over dwindling resources such as water, or new technologies such as the ninth ray.  The many are distracted by manufactured wars or partisan divides while the vultures fly in and feast on a world (or country’s…) natural wealth.

In no way is this movie a “message” picture, but as always, great art reflects the dynamics of the time period in which it was produced.  Like John Carpenter’s yuppie aliens in They Live (1988), the Therns of John Carter are both resource-guzzlers and puppet masters, managing a largely-unaware, highly-distracted population.  Some of those avenues of control involve the sowing of racial division (humanoids versus Tharks), and the manipulation of religious rituals, namely marriage.  Again, one need only to gaze at current headlines to see how some political forces “feed” on such disunion in real life.

Outside this commentary, John Carter also boasts an opinion about — as reviewer Anderson noted – the very concept of adventure.  John Carter escorts viewers from the last American (mythic) realm of adventure – the Old West – into the new frontier of space adventure.  This conceit from Burroughs’ literary canon is so brilliant because it connects our past to our future, and reminds us that our mythology’s forms may vary or shape-shift over time, but that the human content remains largely the same.  Like many a Western icon, John Carter is the stranger who rides into a new town, and finds injustice there.  He rectifies that situation because – as an outsider – he has no “dog in this hunt,” to turn a phrase used in the film.

Unfortunately for John Carter, period sci-fi adventure movies almost never succeed with the public, as I’ve reported in the past.  The Rocketeer (1991), The Shadow (1994), and The Phantom (1996) all failed too, because, I suspect, at some level we desire to see our modern, technological corollaries up there on the big screen in science fiction adventures, not anachronistic men from an age long past.  Still, I enjoy how John Carter keeps one foot in the past and one in the future.  The very idea is reflected in Carter’s tomb inscription: “Inter Mundos.”  That phrase meaning “between worlds” describes not just the film’s two separate planets, but its two distinct traditions of myth and adventure.

John Carterfeatures gorgeous photography (particularly in the scenes set on the river of Isis), but more importantly, highlights a charming romance.  Carter and Dejah fall in love – with all the expected sparks and hardships– and for once in a movie of this type, the scenes resonate and provoke interest rather than inducing winces.  The film possesses that otherworldly quality of charm, to quote Harve Bennett, and you can detect that charm in the fun (but not annoying) bull-dog sidekick, in Tarkas’s humorous dialogue, and most importantly in Stanton’s selection of shots and editing techniques.  

On the latter front, just consider that if the Carter/Dejah romantic scenes did not work so well, the triumphant punctuation of a scene in which Carter appears to return to Earth would not play as nearly effectively as it now does.  As it stands, it’s a great and surprising twist, and one told with a sense of convincing and confident simplicity; a simple tilt of the camera towards the ceiling.  To me, this scene represents one of those perfect movie minutes when all the elements work precisely as intended, and the audience is really drawn into the world of the characters.

Finally, I would like to report that I felt like Tars Tarkas did while watching this film – that when I saw John Carter I believed it was a sign that something new can come into this world.  

That didn’t happen, exactly.  Our culture is too saturated with similar films, perhaps, for John Carter to achieve escape velocity as a Star Wars-sized, tradition-busting, fad-inducing, trend-setter. But at the very least, I’m satisfied that I’ve seen in John Carter a refreshing change of pace in terms of modern blockbusters.  It’s a well-made and wholly joyful film, and it deserved a better reception. 

John Carter is one of the few cinematic heirs to Star Wars that actually includes all the elements I have sought and treasured in space adventure movies since May of 1977: heart, soul, humor and wonder.   If those sound like qualities you can buy into, I recommend the movie wholeheartedly.

Now if someone would just make a movie of another favorite “pulp” adventure from my childhood: E.E. “Doc Smith’s The Skylark of Space (1915).