Some films and a TV series to catch up with:
Film: Seventh Son
(2014)
The cast of this fantasy epic looked promising: Jeff
Bridges, Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander being the big names, alongside the
always good Olivia Williams and a brief cameo by Kit Harington (of Game of
Thrones fame). The hero (Ben Barnes) is a young man who is, natch, a seventh
son with unusual abilities, and as a result is recruited by Gregory, the last
of the Spooks; a band of witch-hunters. Gregory certainly needs all the help he
can get since the Witch Queen has broken free of her long imprisonment and is
after revenge. The relationships all get rather tangled with almost all of the principals
turning out to have a past history or to be related in some way to at least one
of the others (and the hero predictably falling for a young witch who can't be
all that bad, being Vikander). Inevitably, the climax is a pitched battle
between the forces of good and evil, and guess who wins?
This film received poor reviews and was not a success at the
box office. I find that a little surprising; I have seen worse movies treated
more kindly. I suspect that the low ratings were down to disappointment that
something more original did not emerge, the plot being predictable and the strong cast somewhat
wasted, but there are worse ways to spend 100 minutes or so.
Film: Jurassic World
(2015)
I enjoyed the first Jurassic Park film (1993) but felt that
the two sequels were a bit too similar. The format doesn't lend itself to much
variation, after all: recreated dinosaurs get loose and terrorise lots of
people (as well as eating a few who really deserve it) before being defeated,
and only the peripheral details vary.
My expectations were therefore not that high for the
first episode of the second trilogy. Just as well, as it didn't vary from the
formula. The additional details this time concerned a genetically manipulated
and highly intelligent super-T-Rex, plus plans for "taming" the
velociraptors to make them more useful in a military role. Chris Pratt does his
usual hunky hero stuff, but he is ably supported by his co-star (Bryce Dallas
Howard) who actually saves the day when all seems to be going badly. Nice to
see the female lead being given a bold and courageous role, rather than being
eye-candy who gets to scream a lot while awaiting rescue by the hunky hero. All
in all, this film is adequate without rising above the ordinary. I gather that the
next episode (Fallen Kingdom) is
supposed to be better – I might get around to it sometime.
Film: Forbidden
Planet (1956)
I almost certainly saw this film long ago, but had forgotten
all about it. My first surprise was that it is in colour; it's so old that I
expected monochrome! The plot is well known, and is said to have some
similarities with Shakespeare's The
Tempest, although it's too long since I last saw that play for me to
comment.
A starship travels from Earth to visit Altair IV in order to
rescue any survivors of an expedition which landed there twenty years before.
To their surprise the starship crew find one of explorers, Morbius, living in
some style and in command of highly advanced alien technologies including a
robot. With him is his daughter, who was born on the planet before all of the
expedition members except for Morbius and his wife were torn apart by some
unseen entity. Needless to say, the daughter creates quite a reaction among the
all-male starship crew, but then the destructive entity reappears and starts
killing the crew.
The film is of course now very dated, but not as much as I
expected. I thought it was roughly on a par in all respects with the early Star
Trek TV series which came along a decade later – in other words, The Forbidden Planet was well ahead of
its time and is still worth watching.
TV – Missions (2017)
This a French TV serial (with subtitles), set in the near
future, about the first manned missions to Mars. Ulysses, a European space
craft funded by William Meyer, a fabulously rich Swiss entrepreneur, is
arriving in Mars orbit when they learn that they have already been beaten to
the planet by a much faster American craft, funded by an equally wealthy US
businessman, Ivan Goldstein. It becomes evident that the US craft experienced
major problems on landing, so the European crew decide to attempt a rescue.
They manage to land nearby (not without their own problems) and find one
survivor in a spacesuit, but he has a surprise for them. After this, the plot
evolves from a routine "trip to Mars" to something of much greater
significance.
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