Bad Sci-Fi

Back when I reviewed District 9, I called it the most original sci fi film I'd seen in ages. Others disagreed, some even thought it just plain bad. Which is fair enough, I'm not here to argue the point or change anybody's opinions. But if you want bad sci fi, I'll give you bad sci fi... I've seen three of the buggers just this week.



Pandorum doesn't have a particularly bad premise. The writer obviously had some interesting ideas about population growth, evolution, and longhaul space travel. Nothing staggeringly original, but there's enough intelligence on display to merit Hollywood throwing money at him.

Unfortunately, the director doesn't seem interested in making the script he has before him. Instead, he wants to make The Descent-in-space. Which wouldn't be too bad either - it's the best horror film of the last ten years - if he had a fraction of the talent of Descent director Neil Marshall. Unfortunately, he doesn't. In fact, he can't direct a fight or attack scene to save his life. So whenever his pale-skinned, cannibalistic, hugely derivative monsters attack, the screen turns into a blur of fast nonsense, flashing lights, and weird angles... and you're left scratching your head, counting the corpses, and asking "what just happened?"

Pandorum stars Dennis Quaid (who can often be very good; and sometimes be a poor man's Harrison Ford - guess which he opts for here), Ben Foster (Claire's wimpy boyfriend in Six Feet Under; Angel in X-Men 3 - hardly an action hero), and German actress Antje Traue (who's the best thing in it).



Imagine you could live your life through a robotic surrogate - a sexy, confident, virtually indestructible version of yourself (apologies if you're already sexy, confident or virtually indestructible - lucky you) while your real body lies around in bed going to pot. According to Surrogates, pretty much the entire human race would jump at the chance. Fair enough, I suppose it's only like creating yourself an online avatar, then using it in the real world. As premises go, it's not unimaginable that you might be able to get a decent story out of this.

Sadly, the writers here don't use their imagination at all. Instead they set up the most hackneyed, predictable plot possible (if you can't guess the criminal mastermind behind the plan to destroy all surrogates by the end of the first reel, you must be asleep), throw in a couple of unexciting action sequences, and shovel on some preachy, worthy message bollocks that isn't worth the effort to type out here. Obvious, tedious, patronising, and pointless. Though you might at least gain a smidgen of amusement in such unanswered questions as:

1. If Bruce Willis can choose to live his life as the fittest, sexiest, most knockout version of himself possible - why would he choose such a REALLY BAD WIG?

2. If the surrogate humans can leap tall buildings in a single bound as easily as Rahda Mitchell's character does in the movie's one half-decent chase scene... why aren't they doing it all the time?

3. If... no, I'm sorry, my surrogate has better things to do than write this.

Apparently Surrogates was based on a graphic novel. Either it wasn't a very good graphic novel to start with, or else the screenwriters have wowed us with the sort of hatchet job normally reserved for Alan Moore adaptations. If so, congrats on that.



"Vikings versus aliens - how can it fail?"

This was the question posed by my frolleague 'I' who was out-of-his-mind desperate to watch Outlander at the cinema earlier this year (his favourite movies are Predator, Conan The Barbarian, and The Thirteenth Warrior). Sadly it didn't show round these parts, so we had to wait for the DVD.

Thank feck for that!

Where do I start? The not very vikingy vikings? The ham of Hurt? (John, John, whatever happened to you?) The rubbishest CGI monster since Beowulf? (It looks like a dog crossed with a dragon, complete with Triffid-style tentacles, and headlights. Yes, headlights.) Oh, you get the idea...