The Sci Fi Guy

Reading some of the reviews of I Am Legend, Will Smith’s new post-apoc movie (which, I haven’t gotten to see yet but I will while it’s still in theaters), one thing stands as fairly obvious. Will Smith has the clout and character to stay on screen, by himself, for apparently an hour or so. Tom Hanks accomplished this same feat (successfully) in Cast Away, not even getting the chance to have a dog and a huge city, but rather a rain soaked island in the middle of nowhere.

Bruce Dern is not that actor. Silent Running is not that movie.

Okay, I’ll grant that Silent Running (released 1972) was written and created during a time when hippies were infiltrating Hollywood and were stating their pro-environment case without having chief advocate extrardinare Al Gore. Here’s the quick & simple of Silent Running: Space ships hanging out around Saturn house the last of Earth’s forests and nature resources (read: cute bunnies). Bruce Dern plays a gardener that cares for the forests, while his 3 cohorts on the space ship are just space jockeys, in space for the paycheck and rearing to get back home.

The plot really moves forward (sarcasm) when a radio call from the “central” somethingorother comes in announcing that the forests in the domes on the space craft are no longer needed. Jettison them, nuke ‘em, and come on home to Earth, where apparently the worldwide temperature is 75 degrees, there’s no disease, no poverty, and full employment.

Here’s where contemporary science fiction audiences everywhere should go “What?” I know I did. The writers basically gave us one sentence about the plight of Earth – it’s perfect. San Diego, worldwide. And for some reason, on Earth’s way to utopia, we shipped the remnants of our forests to outer space. Not even nearby space – Saturn. Way the hell out there space. Nobody-can-figure-out-why space.

So what does Lowell (Dern’s character) do when the call comes in? He murders his 3 spacestronauts, to save the last dome. Don’t mind the ethical argument this movie is making. Don’t mind the fact that the forest actually doesn’t serve anyone other than Dern.

Frankly, the only thing that borders on keeping this movie watchable for even a few minutes are the “Drones” which have more life and character motivation than the dimwittedness of our main (only) character. They plunk around sorta like R2D2 of Star Wars fame might have if denied his scooter wheels.

Moral of the story: Silent Running fails on so many levels. It’s not like Logan’s Run, which is arguably a bad movie but with great intentions, and basically an interesting story. No, I wrapped up Silent Running and was pissed off that our main character killed 3 people for his own personal cruise ship through space in the forest. Modern Science Fiction at least (usually) gives a better justification for it’s premise. My problem with Silent Running is that I can’t imagine a world where we’d all volunteer to ship nature to space. Apparently that was plausible in the early ’70′s.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Science Fiction Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.