A pretentious film...

You're thinking about it way too much. After all, it's not an original story, but rather, it's a screenplay based on a short story that appeared in the British weekly sci-fi comic book "2000 AD".


"The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."

Although I understand why many people like this film, and I don't deny that it has its finer points, Coldee hits on much of why the film did not appeal to me and why I would conclude that this was a below-average movie overall. Yes, it had a great look and feel, and yes, Shades is an excellent character (and well-acted), but the writing was generally poor, with too many contrivances, weak lines of dialogue, and incongruous character actions. The film attempts to rise above being just a cool post-apoc action flick, but it ends up falling far short of the thematic depths to which it aspires while it strays too far from its action story core, dying a slow, awkward death somewhere in the wasteland in between both territories.

I found that the machine's magical powers of self-assembly broke my willing suspension of disbelief; it just didn't fit the hard science fiction context to have the robot's hand walking around like Thing Addams, or to have its head telekinetically command wires to move about and hook up a power relay (among other things).

I saw this movie on video over two decades ago, shortly after it left theaters, and remember being pretty disappointed back then; the only scene that stuck with me as a positive memory was the part during Moses' death scene where we push in on a fractal spiral. It seemed to capture perfectly the essence of spiraling out of consciousness into death.

As I recall, the movie's big claim to fame was that it was the first movie (or one of the first) to receive the new "NC-17" rating. I watched the film again this week, with the completely fresh perspective of objective, intellectual distance and a much broader and deeper repertoire of film viewings, and I still did not find much in the film worthy of praise. Much like reading a rough essay draft whose too-frequent grammatical errors make it impossible to discern the ideas within, the film's many flaws (including its unoriginal plot and themes) made it nigh well impossible for me to enjoy its several praiseworthy elements.

G-

==

*Clean* food, please.

Hardware? Pretentious? I don't think it's anything of the sort. It's so over-the-top and as camp as science-fiction can get, which is why me and my friends get such a blast out of it whenever we watch it - we love it because it provides humour, intentional or not. I wouldn't really call it pretentious, I'd just call it straightforward fun.

I thought the first 20 minutes or so were the best part of the thing - when it was still trying to be a movie. After that it just became Saturn 3.

Just watched this for the first time today and thought you raised some points in this thread. I don't necessarily agree, but it's a valid point of view.

My initial reaction to the movie is that it's 100% of its time. The horror genre didn't really have a direction in 1990. The slasher era was winding down and Silence of the Lambs hadn't come along yet to turn everything into a psychological thriller. AIDS was scaring the *beep* out of everybody, the Internet just came on the scene, and there was no more USSR to hate. Everything got a little weird because you couldn't point your finger anywhere and say "that's the bad guy." The things that scared us started to change from nuclear war to more unclear things like disease and the technology boom.

This movie straddled the transition from old school slasher horror to the new school of 90s angst. It's a first attempt at taking on themes of unease and mistrust in a modern way, but it's so firmly rooted in 80s gore. This is why the movie collapses. It fails in a really interesting way, and I think this is why it feels pretentious. In the end, it's still a very watchable movie. Just need to know there are flaws going in.


-Pecs like melons and knees of fringe

What a bore.