'Bad' sci-fi fails to deliver

Every so often, my friend goes out of town and asks me to watch her house for her, which mostly means watching her dog (and her cat, also, when he deigns to make an appearance). At these times, I almost always get an urge to watch bad sci-fi films, so I usually head out to one rental place or another. Last time around, I watched Mission to Mars and found it pretty damn stupid, but consummately watchable, at least once. (I can't really imagine sitting through it again, however.) That time I also watched Sphere, which was much worse than I thought it possibly could be.

This time, I rented another bad film about going to Mars, Red Planet, as well as another bad sci-fi I've been wanting to catch for some time, The Chronicles of Riddick. Both let me down in very different ways. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD



Red Planet fails because it's good enough to sit through once, just like Mission to Mars, but it ultimately fails in just about every other way possible, including being ultimately unengaging in any way. The characters are more believable (or at least less unbelievable) than those in MtM, although Carrie-Anne Moss ('Trinity' in Matrix trilogy and related, 'Natalie' in Memento), as Cmdr. Kate Bowman, seems awfully young to be in charge of a mission this costly and important -- and Bowman's less-than-exemplary personal conduct seems to betray that fact, that she's too young and inexperienced to be placed in charge of an operation like this. Navy training or not, there's more to commanding a vital space mission than being tough in a crisis and not being afraid to die. Her great competence at fixing the damaged ship doesn't balance for me with her tolerance of the crew's illicit still operation (even sitting around drinking with them), and her dalliance with Val Kilmer's Robby Gallagher. The gratuitious shower scene with Tom Sizemore's Dr. Quinn Burchenal also seemed more than just a little inappropriate for someone who's supposedly in charge.

Beyond the uneven casting and characterisation, the science is barely adequate for the suspension of disbelief necessary to watch any sci-fi film that wants to be taken seriously. It's never explained to us, for example, precisely how the oxygen levels in the atmosphere got up so high so quickly, and why no one noticed until one crewmember, dying of hypoxia, decides to end it quickly and open his helmet. There's some vague chatter about mysterious nematodes perhaps being responsible, but it all comes across as so much cheap sci-fi quackery. Besides, real-life nematodes are extremely tiny primitive worms (the biggest ones are only 5 mm in length), not the large (several cm), clearly well-evolved insectoids in the film. But why should we want to have the whole biosphere mystery explained? I mean, it was only the entire reason for the mission, and thus the entire premise for the story, right? I think my favourite script blunder, however, is when they discover that the habitat that's supposed to be waiting for them has been destroyed. Oops -- good thing we checked first, during that whole long time were in orbit before committing to coming down, right? And while the 'nematodes' seem capable of some pretty serious mahem, it's still hard to accept them completely tearing apart the habitat. And then there's the 'solar flare' that wreaks havoc just as they're planning for planetfall. (Isn't it amazing how random space accidents always happen at exactly the wrong moment? Really, how believable is that?) Consider that we usually get a few days' warning of major solar activity right here on earth, right now. So why couldn't anyone give them warning? And for that matter, given the sophisticated telemetry that sparked the mission in the first place, how come that same telemetry can't tell them anything useful about the planet they're going to? And finally, in the end, Cmdr. Bowman seems to have every technological gadget she needs to rescue Gallagher, including what amounts to a canopener for space suits. But what she doesn't seem to have on hand is something that's on every bus and boat that I take wherever I go: a portable defibrilator. Like so many other things in this film, it just doesn't add up, and the discrepancy is both glaring and embarrassing.

Okay, now that the bad science is out of the way, let's look at some other failures. They have this thing on board, called AMEE, some kind of navigational gadget ostensibly on loan to them from the Marines. Of course, AMEE just also happens to be a sophisticated, nearly indestructible killing machine. (Never mind that it's more commonly the Army, not the Marines, who possess advanced ground-based military gear.) AMEE really makes no sense, on any terms, especially in context of the film's own setting. The thing switches from 'Navigation' mode to killing mode with the flip of a switch, like any stupid gadget you might have around your own house. How much sense does that make? What if you're some hapless Marine, and you just happen to flip it the wrong way? "Oops -- now I'm not only lost, I'm also going to get killed." On board the ship in orbit, Bowman has the use of some kind of really sophisticated locational and visual gear. But for whatever reason, that same technology can't be provided to the guys on the ground; it only come from the military, who can't supply it without it also being a very real danger to everyone around. AMEE's marbles get knocked around in the bungled planetfall (and it is very literally a fall), so of course now she's out to kill everyone; it only makes sense that it should be that way, instead of her just failing to operate -- because of course, the military would never design a very dangerous AI weapon to shut down in case of malfunction, just in case it might want to kill everyone. There's so much more about AMEE that I could say, but I'll just point out a glaring inconsistency: When first introduced, they say that AMEE can operate on her own for up to eight hours; but in the film, she operates for way longer than that. Oops. I'm still trying to decide which totally unnecessary element -- AMEE or the nematodes -- is the stupidest part of this movie.

There's even more about Red Planet that's unforgivably silly, but it should suffice by this point to say that it fails at almost every opportunity, even creating more opportunities for more failure. This film is just plain stupid. The only thing I will give it credit for is not involving aliens, although it comes close, in senseless and uncalled-for surrogates like the bugs and the nasty killing machine.


The Chronicles of Riddick failed me in an entirely different way. See, I expected something along the lines of Pitch Black (well, is that so out of line? it is set in the same universe, after all), but without the intelligence provided by Radha Mitchell's Pilot Carolyn Fry. And I got myself suitably prepared for that, by drinking all the way through Red Planet. I was not expecting the film that I got. I was not expecting a film with texture, content, or depth. Unfortunately for me, and against all my expectations, Riddick is surprisingly good.

The overall texture of the film borrows a lot from 'gothic' and 'steampunk' sci-fi films such as The City of Lost Children, Twelve Monkeys, Dark City, and the like, and it includes a lot of rich cultural elements that I wasn't expecting. Some parts, such as the lengthy section of the film set on Crematoria, are gritty to the point of absurdity, recalling the feel of Mad Max or Waterworld, but even then it fits in well enough with the overarching style the film sets for itself. And the society of the central bad guys, the Necromongers, is genuinely compelling. (The DVD provides a good deal more about their history, which I wish had been included in the film.)

As with Pitch Black, this is primarily an action film, befitting the central character's talents. But it's also a political drama, with powerful religious elements; it's no Dune of course, but you can see where they're sipping at the same well. The film is at its best where it delves into the mysterious Necromonger cult. Pitch Black relied on some kind of compassion from Riddick, and this film goes a good bit farther, involving his kid sister, who is some kind of teenage ninja, and by all rights should also be insane, but somehow she's not, or at least doesn't seem to be.

A few complaints: It would be very easy to bitch about the science, but this film is more steampunk than sci-fi, so I'll let most of that go. However, since the 'science' of the planet Crematoria is such an important plot element, I will bitch about that: I don't understand how this planet could work in real life: 700 C in daylight, -300 C in darkness. And yet -- a breathable atmosphere? Doesn't make sense. In daylight, everything melts to a kind of lava. But still -- a breathable atmosphere? At daybreak, a thermal inversion sweeps across the land, supercharged air burning up everything in its path, a literal wall of fire. And yet -- a breathable atmosphere. Of course, the characters must race ahead of twilight, meaning at nighttime -- and yet none of them freeze to death. And in a dayling scene, where a character who walks out into the sun is incinerated before our eyes, Riddick is unaffected, because he's in the shade. Okay, so if the daylight is 700 C, and we know that water boils at 100 C, it's just not possible that it's below boiling in the shade -- remembering, again, that there's a breathable atmosphere on this world.

The bounty hunter Toombs is appropriately revolting, but the term 'merc' (for 'mercenary') is routinely misused by him and others in this film. Properly, a 'merc' is a soldier for hire, a professional -- not a particularly savoury professional, to be sure, but a professional nonetheless. But the thugs that Toombs hires are just that -- thugs, not professional soldiers. They might be professional thugs -- thugs for hire -- but thugs all the same, the unskilled labour force of the underworld. In real life, mercs do battle, not bounty hunting, and bounty hunters, even revolting ones like Toombs, are more professional. Toombs is the only authentic comic book character here, almost too goofy even for this kind of film. His voiceovers in the DVD extras are laughable. There is one interesting 'merc' character, who even has a full name -- Eve Logan -- but for whatever reason, she's never developed, despite some implications.

The film ends rather abruptly, leaving us with some questions, most especially, what does Riddick do with his legions of Necromonger followers? He obviously can't just let them keep on doing what they're doing, but can he really make them stop, just by virtue of his authority, won by right of blood? And why do they accept him anyway, when they know he's not one of them, not of their faith? Some clarification would be nice. But overall, Riddick is a lot better than I thought it would be. I might even watch it again.