Science Fiction At Its Best And Least

A lover of science fiction should  check out Duncan Jones's 2009 movie Moon. This movie is pure science fiction without any of the silliness which accompanies most science fiction these days. The plot is very simple: Sam Bell is at the end of his three-year contract with Lunar Industries to harvest helium-3 from the dark side of the moon. The communications setup is damaged, so he can only speak to his family from a time-delay arrangement, bouncing the signal off an antenna on one of the outer planets. The only thing he can communicate with on a real-time basis is GERTY, his Hal-like computer companion. With two weeks to go on his contract, there is an accident at one of the harvesters. Sam goes to investigate, against company instructions, and makes a startling discovery.

No, I'm not going to spoil it, but suffice to say, the movie takes its idea to a very satisfying conclusion. Moon seems to hail from the science fiction of the 1970s, and I don't mean Star Wars. Moon is more in the vein of Silent Running or 2001, A Space Odyssey with its slower pacing and visual style. As well, the special effects are mostly “practical”, which means that they're done with models and miniatures, which gives the movie a much grittier feel than if the effects were done with computers. You can actually see the particles of dust everywhere. That may seem like a minor point, but nothing makes a special effect look real better than good, old-fashioned dirt.

As well, Moon also adheres to something called “science” with it's conventions. What I mean is that you don't get some of the silly scientific inconsistencies that tend to pop up in movies of this genre, like sound in space, space ships acting like they're flying in an atmosphere, or hyperdrives. (Hyperdrives I can accept as a necessary deus ex machina, but when you put them together with all other nonsense, the movie gets silly.) The only place the movie doesn't follow science conventions is in the space base where the main character moves about as if he's on earth with earth's gravity. Due to the low budget of this movie, made for an astounding $5 million dollars, I can forgive this.

If you want to see a movie with astounding special effects of zero gravity, watch Apollo 13. Yet here the word special effect should be used wisely, because the zero-gravity scenes in this movie aren't all effects; they're real weightlessness done on the Vomit Comet, a special airplane designed to briefly create a zero-gravity environment.

The unfortunate problem with Moon is that the language is, at times, rather adult, which makes it inappropriate for middle schoolers.  That said, a high school teacher looking for a good “hard” science fiction movie need look no further. Even better, if you have a Netflix account, it's available for live streaming.

Interesting Echo: “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “Harry Potter”

I've talked about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe movie before, but I wanted to discuss an interesting moment in the movie. It begins in London during the air raids of WWII, something the book mentions only in passing. The four Penvesie children survive some bombs that fall near their house and are soon sent away from London, like many other children were, to live in the countryside.

While the bombing scene itself is a bit hackneyed and clumsy, it provides an unneeded basis for Edmund's priggish and self-serving behavior, the scenes that follow it are surprisingly powerful. The children are at one of the major railway stations with their mother along with hundreds of other families. The children have labels hanging from their coats, a necessary step to make sure they reach the correct destination but it also dehumanizes them a bit. Parents, mostly mothers (the fathers are at war), are saying farewell to their children as they are shipped out to the countryside. As the Penvensie's mother mostly keeps a brave face on, the children go into a compartment with strange children, each waiting for their stop. Here they will be picked up by unknown adults and cared for, for better or worse. For some of the children it will clearly be for worse.

Like most effective scenes, it's the human element which is the most gripping. The children are frightened but don't want to show it. The parents are upset but don't want their children to see that. When the train pulls out of the station, we then get a powerful image that echoes strongly (I can't imagine the director wasn't aware of this) the Hogwarts Express. Yet while the train in the Harry Potter series seems to be heading off into true adventure, the fate of the children on this train is much less sure. They will be alone, which is frightening, and their parents will be exposed to danger. As the trains chugs through London of the 1940s, we get an image of a grubby city hunkered down against a terrible enemy sending it's children out of harm's way, and it's surprisingly effective. As an adult with children, I was very moved.

Interestingly the book itself ignores these emotions. That may simply be C.S. Lewis focussing on adventure instead of sadness, but one wonders why the author, himself a veteran of the slaughter of WWI, didn't pay closer attention to some of it.

Two (Movie) Versions of Dune

Frank Herbert's book Dune has been filmed twice: once by David Lynch and the other time by the SciFi Channel (now SyFy because they're embarrassed that play science fiction, but they're not embarrassed to have professional wrestling). Both movies would be effective tools for teaching the book Dune but they have their strengths and weaknesses.

David Lynch's Dune has a baroque visual style that's very compelling. Every scene looks opulent in some way, either with decoration, costuming or architecture. Many scenes feel rusty and gritty, as if the entire future were powered by high-tech steam. As well, the special effects hold up well for model audiences, mostly. There are some moments of cheesy blue-screening but the model effects with the gigantic sand worms are spectacular.

This movie also has a terrific, charismatic cast. Kyle MacLechlan as Paul Atreides is stiff, but he carries the gravity of the movie effectively. Jürgen Prochnow as Duke Leto Atreides, Paul's father, is charismatic and convincing as a man who might one day challenge the Emperor of the galaxy for supremacy. In smaller roles, Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard!), Brad Dourif, José Ferrer, Freddie Jones, and Sian Phillips are effective.

This movie falls down for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's incoherent at times. Dune is a sprawling, epic book that has many subplots (“plans within plans”) which are difficult to bring across in a two-hour movie. David Lynch has his characters say cryptic sentences to bring the plot along, but they end up sounding pretentious. As well, David Lynch adds at least one new idea to the book, changing the fighting styles of Duke Leto's forces and the Fremen from a futuristic martial art to a new system of weaponry based on sound. It's actually an interesting idea, and it makes for some cool growling on-camera, but it's a distracting change.

The next issue is, to me, just as distracting. Duke Leto's adversary, the Baron Harkonnen, is played by Kenneth McMillan as a raving psychotic. He's deformed, perverted, and monomaniacal. (I actually don't blame the actor here: the fault lies in David Lynch's direction.) This baron is simply too insane to be a formidable enemy to the obviously cool-headed and intelligent Duke Leto. This distorted portrayal of the Baron is simply depraved, and David Lynch takes this depravity to levels that are completely inappropriate. While the book does make clear that the Baron is a homosexual (for Frank Herbert that's a reasonable justification for his evil) and fat, he's also a brilliant schemer. The movie Baron's two nephews, the Beast Rabban and Feyd Rautha (played distractingly by the singer Sting), serve as little more than nutty accomplices.

This said, the movie is a lot of fun. For a teacher interested in teaching the book, this movie would be effective for it's excellent sense of visual geography. Each planet looks very different. As well, the performances carry the sometimes fragmented script to a satisfying conclusion.

The SciFi Channel version of Dune is an entirely different beast. (Get it? Like the “Beast” Rabban? Oh, never mind.) It's a six-hour miniseries, not a two-hour movie. This gives the movie far more time to take in the sprawling plot, and, to my money, does a far better job. You get the story. There are no leaps of understanding necessary to understand what's going on.

Where the miniseries falls down is in the acting. Duke Leto is played by William Hurt, whose a fine actor but not at all charismatic in the way Duke Leto should be. Instead this Duke seems to mope from scene to scene, as if he's already anticipated his own death and is going through the motions. Paul is played by Alec Newman, a relatively unknown actor who doesn't quite have the gravity to carry his role of savior of the planet Arrakis. Surprisingly, the portrayal of Baron Harkonnen by Ian McNeice is very effective. He plays the villain in an understated, intelligent way that makes the Baron seem like a real threat, not just a dangerous maniac. As well, I liked the plucky actress Julie Cox who played the Princess Irulan. She was intelligent and scheming, just as a person at her level should be.