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Sci-Fi Collector's Pack (Capricorn One - StarGate - Millennium) |
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Sci-Fi Collector's Pack (Capricorn One - StarGate - Millennium)
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by Live / Artisan
Sales Rank: 169604
Price: $39.98
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Time-hoppers from the future, led by Cheryl Ladd, are abducting airline passengers about to crash, and transporting them a millennium hence in order to reseed a future blighted by environmental disaster. This is a dangerous business, plagued by the specter of accidentally creating time paradoxes, which could throw the future out of whack. Unfortunately, they've lost a couple of the stunners they use to subdue troublesome passengers, and these fall into the hands of a curious physicist (Daniel J. Travanti) and an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (Kris Kristofferson). Cheryl Ladd must retrieve these devices before a time paradox wipes out her world, but manages to complicate things by developing a romance with Kristofferson. All of which is very intriguing, having come from the short story, "Air Raid," by science fiction luminary John Varley, who also is credited with the screenplay. The part about airline abductions to save the disastrous future is straight from the original story, and the rest is expanded (you wouldn't say extrapolated) from it. The results are not very happy. About a third of the film is maddeningly wasted by repeating action from a different point of view. Seems natural when there are disparate timelines to deal with, but here nothing is added by the conceit. Only Travanti turns in a creditable performance as the physicist, bent on proving his theories about the future. He seems hungry for discovery, which is one of the things you want from a science fiction story, that sense of awe. But here it's just, "Aw, shucks!" <I>--Jim Gay</I>
Viewer Reviews
John Varley's time travel story "Millennium" which came out both as this film and as a full length novel with the same title in the 1980's is one of his best pieces of writing.
Varley's initial concept was first published as the short story "Air Raid" and he was commissioned to write the screenplay for this film version: at about the same time as the film came out he published an extended version of the short story, lining up with the film but including some rather broader themes and more detail in several areas, as the novel "Millennium."
If you have read the novel and are wondering whether the DVD measures up, it was not practical for the film makers to get the full scope of the novel into this film adaptation, but they did a pretty good job. Most of the political comments about air safety in the book, particularly those about the battle between Ronald Reagan and the air traffic controllers did not make it into this film, and neither did the quasi-religious aspects of the book. But most of the guts of the story did.
In particular, the film is faithful to the plot and tone of the novel, including both the central romance and some of the most gripping action scenes. Both the book and the film captures brilliantly some of the most memorable scenes in the story, and incorporate one or two quite funny moments, none of which I can begin to describe without spoiling the story.
Kris Kristofferson is excellent as an air crash investigator, who discovers some unusual anomalies in the wreck of an aircraft. Cheryl Ladd is equally brilliant as the mysterious woman who sleeps with him and then disappears. As the story continues we learn more about the investigator's past, and why the mysterious woman reminds him so much of someone he remembers from his childhood.
I can recommend both the book and the film. If you might want to experience both I don't think it makes any difference in what order you do it.
DVD extras are a little basic: they include a trailer, short filmographies on Kristofferson, Ladd, and one or two other people, a short synopsis of what the producer was trying to do, and an alternative ending, which differs only in the backdrop to the Winston Churchill quote which provides the very last words of the film.
Varley made a joke about this book (and film) in one of his much more recent novels, "Mammoth" which I can also highly recommend.
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