Millenium (1989)

Title: Millenium (1989)

Director: Michael Anderson

Cast: Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, Robert Joy

Millenium is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film about a future in which the human race is dying because they’ve lost the ability to reproduce. Apparently there is so much toxic waste in the air that it’s not even breathable. But wait! There’s still hope! The world might be messed up beyond repair, yet these crafty dudes from the future have somehow managed to perfect time travel technology! Their solution to earths population problem is to steal people from the past moments before they are about to die, then they take them to the future so they can start repopulating the earth. The problem comes when these time travelers get clumsy and leave weapons and gadgets behind in time; you see, leaving things from the future in the past can create deadly world destroying paradoxes! Will the future people manage to recuperate their gadgets before a paradox occurs that will destroy their world?

The good thing about Millenium is that it’s a film with an interesting premise. It pulls you in with its mystery around the whole time travel element. The whole premise about a decrepit, decaying future was interesting. In this future, the air is so polluted that these guys have to smoke special cigarettes that keep them alive! Their skins are decaying, even robots are rusting away; to me that was a cool concept, everything looks old and putrid. Unfortunately, the film decides to turn into a soap opera of sorts, with Kris Kristofferson’s Bill Smith falling in love with Louise Baltimore, the girl from the future. Suddenly, it’s a love story about Bill and Louise hitting on each other, those silly awkward moments on a first date and finally, Bill seducing Louise. At heart I guess that Millenium is really more of a love story; which makes perfect sense when we take in consideration that these future people can’t reproduce, and they live in such a dreadful future with no apparent hope in sight. So I guess you should be ready for a film that places its emphasis mostly on the love side of things.

But the sci-fi angle is not to be ignored. We get people going through shiny blue time portals, robots that serve as peoples consciences and ancient people who can survive only by living inside of life supporting tubes! We get to see crying robots! Time paradoxes that cause earthquakes and characters that say the cheesiest lines on the planet! Yeah, let’s get that straight, this film might get a laugh or two from you at times, characters just talk in the silliest ways and do the silliest things. For example, the future is decayed, everyone is sick and dying yet the time traveling girls apparently have the time to put on make up and get perms! The world might be dying but Louise Baltimore is going down in style! Ha! It’s hilarious! When she goes to earth, she looks like a stewardess, but when she goes to her world, suddenly Bam! her hair is like a freaking 80’s hair band! It’s pretty funny; it looks so out of place!  Another funny thing, every time they finish smoking one of their healthy cigarettes, they don’t have to worry about an ashtray because a lazer beam comes out of nowhere and disintegrates the cigarette! Ha! No need for ashtrays on this future! On this future we have cigarette disintegrating lazer beams! Just imagine the logistics behind that idea!

Even funnier is the fact that the whole time traveling set up is run by a guy on a wheel chair that looks like a zombie! Everyone standing around looks more adequate for the job than this guy who looks like he has one foot in the grave; want more funny? Okay here it goes, they can see the past like a movie, on a little t.v. screen! They have walky-talkies with which they can communicate through time! This means somebody that is in the past can actually talk with someone from the future! So we have audio waves that travel through time as well! Ha! There is this really funny sequence in which Louise travels back to the future, and after she walks through the time portal, an invisible force fixes the bed of the hotel she was staying in, because you know, it’s not polite to leave a room untidy after time travel! Point is, there are a lot of goofy situations and plot holes on this one; you can have fun simply by going through them as you watch the film.

Millenium is a film that resembles many others that came before and after it. The one it resembles the most is James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984). There’s the time travel angle, there’s the love story between someone from the past and someone from the future. If you look at it, The Terminator is also a love story at heart. Millenium also reminded me of Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (2006) because of the whole thing about humanity loosing the ability to procreate; though in reality, this is a recurring theme in post apocalyptic films. It has the quintessential sequence in which someone has to explain the whole logic of time travel, ala Doc Brown in Back to the Future II (1989) which strangely enough was released in the same year, only with far superior visual effects. I guess, even for it’s time, Millenium’s production values where kind of low and goofy. Visual effects wise, Millenium seems to have stayed back in time; which could explain the films low box office intake. Speaking bluntly the film was a box office bomb.

This was a production that spent a good amount of time in development hell. The project had been making it’s rounds in Hollywood since 1977 when Douglas Trumbull the director behind Silent Running (1972) and the effects work on Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) was going to direct it; that project fell through; yet the project kept on going through various possible directors and rewrites. The short story in which the film was going to be based on was called ‘Air Raid’ by John Varley, yet the project was in development hell for so long that John Varley had plenty of time to expand the short story into a novel, which he printed in 1983. Finally the project came together and directing duties fell upon Michael Anderson, the director behind the multi award winning Around the World in 80’s Days (1956) and also of the sci-fi classic Logan’s Run (1976). In the end Millenium was a film made by an experienced director who turned in a very goofy movie that still has its own campy charm to it.

Rating 2 ½ out of 5

Logan's Run (1976)

Title: Logan’s Run (1976)

Director: Michael Anderson

Cast: Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Peter Ustinov, Farrah Fawcett

Review:

Logan’s Run is one of these movies that presents us with the idea of a utopia. A seemingly perfect society in which nothing goes wrong, everyone is happy and continually elated. Everyone lives under these domes that have weather regulation and protect society from the harsh conditions of the world outside. In these domes, people live only for pleasure and physical beauty. There are arcades, spas, plastic surgery clinics, and gymnasiums for everyone to enjoy. People seem to live on a never ending party. As long as you play by the rules that is. And the rules say that when you turn 30, you have to sacrifice yourself in an event called ‘Carousel’. Essentially, in Carousel you willfully let yourself be disintegrated into oblivion. Supposedly, according to their beliefs, when you die in Carousel you are instantly reborn or ‘renewed’ as they call it, in a new body. You come back as a newborn and start living your life once again. In this way, society avoids over population and food shortage.

But what happens when you don’t want to sacrifice yourself when you turn 30? Well, then you become a runner. You run from the government appointed Sandmen. These Sandmen will hunt you down and make sure you are terminated for good. But not all runners are caught by the Sandmen. There’s an underground movement of rebels that are constantly searching for a place called ‘Sanctuary’, a place where people over 30 can live without the fear of being hunted and killed. A place where people can grow old and die in peace.

This is a film that plays with many themes at the same time, some are more prevalent than others. Logan 5 and Jessica 6 (the films main characters) are two people who suddenly see themselves becoming rebels. They go against the ideas that the grand majority think. In the society represented on this film, questioning the status quo of things is something that is not encouraged. In one scene, a fellow Sandman tells Logan “You question too much for a Sandman” which lets us know questioning is not something that should be considered, you should just take things for granted and do as you are told. Logan isn’t like that, he is constantly questioning the how and the why of things. In one moment he asks a fellow Sandman “have you ever seen anyone renewed?” So right off the bat we know that Logan doesn’t take things for granted, he needs to know why things are the way they are.

Logan 5 and Jessica 6

Unfortunately, Logan is chosen by the system to go and find the rebels sanctuary. They fast forward his life clock and suddenly he finds himself becoming a runner himself. This is a common thing in films that deal with an oppressive system. They are told from the point of view of someone who used to work for the system, but suddenly finds him or herself becoming an enemy of the state. This is exactly what happens to Logan himself. He used to be a Sandman but now he is hunted by them, so if he doesn’t want to be zapped out of existence, he has to run; which he does. Jessica follows. Together they will find out if there is something beyond the walls of the domed city. So at heart, this film is really a film about rebels trying to see past the lies that they have been taught. And their search for the ultimate truth.

Farrah Fawcett makes an appearance as a plastic surgeon's assitant

Once they finally make it out of the domed city and into the real world, they suddenly find it to be a harsh post apocalyptic wasteland. We see abandoned buildings that have been overtaken by nature. Man has become so disconnected from nature that Logan and Jessica find the out doors horrible. Yet, little by little they adjust. And on their trek through the wasteland they stumble upon something they had never seen before: an old man. In the dome, people didn’t want to properly deal with getting old and dying. In that society they preferred to die young and avoid old age completely. This is one of the films main themes, the acceptance of old age and death as a natural part of life. There is a scene where all the young people in the dome encounter the old man and see him as something strange and alien to them, they come to embrace and accept him. The ultimate message is, old people have their charm. They have their good humor, their interesting stories, and their wisdom. Old people need not be ignored by the young. They should be embraced and accepted as an important part of our society.

The Old Man

Logan’s Run is also about true love vs. physical/sensual pleasure and the difference between the two. In the dome people engage freely in sex. You hit a couple of buttons in a controller and some hot chick or guy teleports him or herself into your room to have sex with you. They also have a place called ‘Love Shop’ where people engage in sexual orgies. In the domed city, sex is something cold and calculated. It’s simply about the pleasure, never about the love, the caring or the warmth. Once Logan and Jessica escape the dome and explore the real world outside of it, they come to depend on each other for survival and this brings them closer together. They soon discover the pleasures of true love. Lets face it, theres nothing better then sex and true love all rolled up into one and Logan and Jessica discover that in their adventures on the outside world.

So as you can see, this film covers all sorts of themes and issues that make it interesting. My only problem with the film is that once they encounter the old man, the movie screeches to a halt. I don’t mind the fact that the film focuses on Logan and Jessica’s encounter with him, because its an essential part of the story, but I think they dwell a bit too long in it, in these scenes the dialog is slow and boring. But that all quickly changes when Logan and Jessica decide to go back to the dome to tell everyone that they can be free and live in the real world without life clocks and without having to sacrifice themselves when they turn 30.

The films effects were inventive for their time, but by today’s standards they are extremely dated. For example, the miniatures are obviously miniatures. Matte paintings are obvious as well. One thing is still solid though: the art direction in some sequences was awesome. Loved the look of some of the sets. So retro. Sadly, in other scenes it is obvious that the film was shot inside of a mall in Dallas Texas. They used this old trick of making real locations look ‘futuristic’ by adding a few props, the result didn’t always work, so the film is uneven in that sense. A remake was in development with Bryan Singer attached to direct it, but when Synger's Superman Returns bombed, I guess Singer decided to go with other projects that would assure his stay in Hollywood. As of right now, the film is in the proverbial development hell. Lets hope that Bryan Singers new X-man movie is a hit so that the Logan’s Run remake gets renewed someday. I’m curious to see how this one would look updated, in my opinion, its one of those movies that could actually benefit from getting remade.

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5

 

Some rebels are way hotter then others