A Planet Where Imperial Evolved From Metric?!
 "In the Outer Zone, You Need a Friend." Starring Michael Paré, Lisa Eichhorn, and Dean Devlin Written by Oliver Eberle, Roland Emmerich, Dean Heyde, and P.J. Mitchell Directed by Roland Emmerich West German, 1990 This is a Roland Emmerich (!) film. Independence Day. Godzilla. Stargate. Moon 44. This is an early Emmerich film, and it shows. It just proves that we've all got to start somewhere. This movie is so full of clichés and so predictable that I felt like Nostradamus as I watched the film. As soon as Paré's character arrived on the moon and I saw the other characters, I knew how the movie would end. I kid you not. Let's begin. The movie starts out with a message displayed with some eerie music: "By the year 2038, all natural resources on Earth have been depleted. Multinational corporations have taken control of the universe.Already, I've got a problem. You're telling me that in the next 34 years (be fair, when the movie was made it was 48 years), ALL of Earth's air, water, and land will be consumed? Uh huh. Okay. So far, so gloomy, right? I felt like I had seen this sort of introduction before in many other movies, but never mind. We see a shot of a bluish planet in space with the caption "Moon 47 mining operation in the Outer Zone." A large ship flies towards this moon. It's quite obviously a model, but I've seen far worse. Then we get a shot of a large piece of mining equipment dredging up the surface of this moon. This effect doesn't look so bad. Suddenly, flying objects appear around the mine. They resemble flying cars from a distance. They're piloted by robots that look vaguely humanoid. I thought this was kind of dumb. If you have computer technology that can automatically fly an aircraft, why would you put it in a robot body and seat or mount this robot in the aircraft? Why not integrate the two together? Oh well. These flying robots are attacking the mine and little explosions pop up here and there. The explosions don't quite look so good. We cut to a boardroom with maybe a dozen or so people seated at a table. They're watching a large monitor on the wall. A distress call is coming from Moon 47, and the guy on the screen says that Pyrite drones are attacking them. Isn't Pyrite a kind of rock? The man says they'll all be killed, and he looks really desperate. Then the signal cuts out. The board looks worried. One woman in particular gets agitated. She says that Pyrite is stealing all their moons and their own company is going broke. She argues with another man on the board, who seems concerned with defense. We are told by a third person that Pyrite is more militant than their company, and spends more of its money on offensive gear. The man is PO'd. He jumps up and points to a big chart on the wall. Here we learn their company is called 'Galactic Mining'. He says that Pyrite has captured Moons 51, 46, and now 47, and that the next one in line is a moon called 44 (are there no mining planets, just moons?) Moon 44 is the company's most important one, and it had a defense system consisting of pilots to fight off any robotic invasion, but he laments that it was dismantled. When someone points out that it was cancelled because its pilots were dying, he insists it was because of the moon's weather. He goes on to say that he is going to revive this security system. He sent fresh, new navigators up to Moon 44 two weeks earlier. However, nobody is volunteering to pilot, so he made the wise decision to send convicts from prison to the moon so they can become company pilots. If I were on that board, I would demand a no-confidence vote on this guy or something, but never mind. The CEO is understandably skeptical, but he's got a backup plan. He says that what's important is not the moon itself, just the expensive mining shuttles that collect the minerals, thus contradicting the first guy. Apparently, the mining equipment we saw earlier being attacked has the ability to take off from the surface and fly to Earth fully loaded. The CEO announces that, when the attack inevitably comes, the mining shuttles will automatically take off and get back to Earth as fast as possible. Unfortunately, this leaves the men of the mining station behind to fight a losing battle, but the CEO decides they're not as important as the shuttles. Thus we see a moral emerging: corporations are all bad. The board is dismissed, but one lady stays behind. She says that there's a problem on Moon 44. The CEO decides to send an Internal Affairs agent up to investigate the as-of-yet unnamed problem. It is a suicide mission given the impending attack, but the CEO doesn't care. We finally get the credits, and an opening scene featuring Paré that reminded me of the opening scene in Apocalypse Now mixed with a little Bladerunner. Trust me, this isn't the only part of this movie that has been ripped off from others. We get a shot of a large city that is a derivative of Bladerunner's Los Angeles. Paré's character is transporting some prisoner to Earth. As they get ready to go, the criminal gets the cop's gun from its holster and takes the cop hostage. They leave the ship together, but with ease (and predictability), the cop regains control of the situation. The two of them share some clichéd dialogue, and the criminal gets dragged away. The cop lights a cigarette. He's always smoking. We see more city, this time with the caption "The year 2038. Galactic Mining headquarters." The cop picks up his pay from his last job, and goes to his small apartment. There, he is summoned to see the CEO. In the boardroom, the cop gets interviewed by two of the board members. The cop, Felix Stone, was once in the military as a fighter pilot, but left because he "wasn't good at taking orders." He got a job at Internal Affairs because they let him work alone, the way he "liked it". Puh-leeeeze. Stone has tried several times to terminate his contract. When asked why, he tells us that he doesn't like the company's prison system. Being a cop, I expected he thought it wasn't harsh enough, but he goes on to say that it doesn't rehabilitate the criminals. If ever a liberal wrote the part of a heroic character, this is the part. Anyway, we also learn that if Stone quit, he would move on to study Classical Literature. I sort of guessed this cop would have a second, softer side. They always do. The CEO shows up with an offer. There are 100 mining shuttles on Moon 44. They transport the raw materials to Earth for processing into solid fuels. The company needs them. Then the CEO says this: "Someone meddled with the primal forces of nature."By that, he means corporate profits. Yeah. He says that their shuttles are vanishing in mid-flight. They've lost 2 so far. At first, the company thought it was technical error, but one of the navigators on Moon 44 suggested that they're being stolen. Stone must investigate this, and to do that, he will be traveling to Moon 44 with the shipment of convicts/pilots. The CEO, of course, neglects to tell Stone about the attack that's coming. In exchange for this, Stone will be freed from his contract. Stone agrees. We cut to a prison. We see shots of rows of bars with angry prisoners shouting and sticking their arms out into the halls. It's one of the movie's many clichés. Guards are taking some of the prisoners from their cells and walking them out of the prison. All the prisoners are muscular and they all have the proportions of football players. They get yelled at and insulted by one of the guards, and then are flown to Moon 44 in a large ship. Moon 44 is another blue moon that looks identical to Moon 47, which we saw earlier in the film. I'd call that 'cutting corners'. Also identical are the surface conditions. As the convicts land on this moon, we see that it's dark at the surface, and very windy. It's a desolate place. A lot like LV-421 in Alien and Aliens, these two movies being the prime sources of inspiration for the sets in this movie. The convicts are herded off their large ship and into a smaller one, which takes off and flies to the base, where they will eat, sleep, and work. This base is nowhere near the mining equipment. During the trip from the mine to the base, the cons look Stone over, not recognizing him. Stone is sitting there with his spectacles on, reading a novel. The others call him 'Einstein' and tease him. So the convicts/pilots arrive at the base, and the navigators watch them. Just like the guy in the boardroom said, they're all eighteen to twenty years of age. Let's pause, and consider the situation that Emmerich followed as the following equation:
Teenaged boys + Hardened convicts – Any real law and order
Like you, I too knew what would happen at some point in the film. One of the navigators, the one called 'Cookie', is a drug dealer and eager to sell his products to the cons. A military man appears, who identifies himself as Sergeant Sykes. He yells at the new pilots, and he is just a typical boot-camp yelling guy. He reminded me of Sgt. Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. Sykes says that if the pilots are good and if they obey orders, their prison sentences will be shortened or ended. Then he goes over to a few specific cons. One of them, named O'Neal, is in prison for murder one. O'Neal says it was in self-defense. I immediately knew he would be a 'good bad guy' who would play some pivotal role later in the film. Sykes works his way over to Stone, and goes over his fake record. Stone is smoking again. Sykes demands that he put it out, and predictable Stone talks back to the sergeant and is generally disrespectful. The base commander is introduced as Commander Lee (Malcolm McDowell). Because he was played by Malcolm McDowell, I automatically knew he was the bad guy, the one responsible for stealing the shuttles. Lee is reading Stone's record. The cons get issued clothes, and they are eager to see females. Right on cue, a woman (Lisa Eichhorn) walks past them. Her name is Terry. She discusses the company's new policy of criminal pilots with Lee, and she doesn't like it. This conversation establishes, once again, that Galactic Mining is ruthless and uncaring and demanding. I get it. Lee tells Sykes that he wants Stone on the first training flight. Meanwhile, the cons are making themselves at home in their bunks. One of the navigators, Tyler (Dean Devlin), tries being friendly by saying 'hi', but each convict predictably ignores him. Another navigator, Marc, is relaxing and listening to music as the cons arrive. One con grabs him and asks him a perverse question. Marc gets slapped around, being called 'pretty boy', and another convict named 'Scooter' seems to be either a weirdo or a genuine pedophile. This whole scene is so ridiculous, and assumes that all convicts have cravings for younger members of the same sex. The equation seems to be working! The abuse of the navigators continues. Cookie has a rat, and one of the cons rudely objects to its presence. In general, all the navigators are getting pushed around and abused. O'Neal is busy making fun of Stone and his reading. Another con empties out Tyler's bunk and takes it. When Tyler protests, O'Neal threatens Tyler, but Tyler won't back off. I guess Tyler is supposed to be the tough one. In the nick of time, Sgt. Sykes appears, but he seems to side with the cons with reference to the taking of the bunks. He also tells Stone that he's on the first training flight. Stone is ready to fly. With perhaps a bit of hesitation (or maybe it's bad acting), Stone boards his aircraft. It resembles an Apache helicopter. Sykes teases him a bit. The navigators sit inside the base, in special chairs. Tyler happens to be Stone's navigator. The other cons are standing with the navigators to watch Stone fly. Terry, perhaps the only female on the base, explains the system to the pilots: the pilot flies the helicopter, but the weather is really bad on this moon, so the navigator has the instrument readouts and using them, guides the pilot around. The navigator also does the shooting. Why can't the pilot do that? Navigating is done now in today's fighter jets, isn't it? Anyway, Stone takes off. Did I mention he was smoking? At least when he took off, he pulled his cigarette out and stuck it in a slot in his helmet. Lee watches with interest. He's pure evil. So begins the flying scene. Stone flies around the base and inside a canyon. Is it just me, or does Roland Emmerich have a thing for canyon-based combat scenes. Wasn't there one in Independence Day, between Will Smith and an alien ship? Never mind. For the next 2 minutes and 43 seconds, we get to hear various instances of 'pull up', 'slow down', 'look out goddamnit', stuff like that. Stone sees wreckages of other helicopters on the canyon floor. On his way home, we hear some ashtray/cigarette lighter humor. At one point in the flight, Terry shouts at Stone to listen to Tyler. Lisa Eichhorn really can't act too well. She seems ineffectual when she shouts. Tyler greets Stone when he arrives back on base. Tyler says that an attack on the base is imminent, despite what the company says. In each of the other surprise attacks, there are no survivors. Tyler is the so-called 'whistleblower', the one who has evidence that the mining shuttles are being hijacked. Stone questions Tyler about these hijackings, but Tyler wants some monetary compensation in exchange for the information. Sgt. Sykes appears and yells at Tyler in a 'comedic' sequence that REALLY reminded me of Sgt. Hartman's semi-comedic sequences. Cut to the cafeteria. Even in the line for food, the cons are roughing up the navigators. Cookie, Marc, and Tyler eat lunch together. Marc says that he's afraid of them. Cookie tries to sell drugs to the convicts, but they turn him away. Cookie keeps his various drugs inside a ghetto blaster. O'Neal invites Stone to eat with him, but Stone rather rudely ignores O'Neal. Once again, we're trying to establish that Stone is some kind of renegade badass who rejects authority and whom we're supposed to think is really cool. Sgt. Sykes appears, and institutes a program to encourage pilot-navigator co-operation. He achieves this by getting the pilots to spill their food all over the floor, and then getting one of the navigators to clean it all up. I have a feeling I missed something, but in my copy of the movie, that's what I saw. In this case, it's Tyler's turn. During this, Sykes asks Tyler to prepare lunch for him. I think you can guess what Tyler will do. Meanwhile, Terry sits down with Sykes and asks him to ease up a little bit. He insults her, since she's a civilian and a woman, and she shoots back by questioning why, if he's such a good leader, he's not an officer. He has no response. What a cohesive group we have here! In the kitchen, Tyler is dumping various chemicals into Sykes' food. Stone is with him, reading Tyler's evidence, and he seems unimpressed. Tyler says he has more. Then he puts a cricket he finds on the floor into Sykes' food. He serves the food to Sykes, and Sykes eats the cricket in another 'comedic' scene. Oh, my sides were splitting... yeah. It wasn't like I could see that joke fifty miles away. We cut to Stone, snooping around the bowels of the base alone. The base looks so much like the Nostromo sets from Alien that it isn't even funny. I don't know whether to think Emmerich did a good job to create a mood or if he did a good job blatantly stealing scenes from other films. Anyhoo, Stone goes down to a door marked 'Shuttle Control', but can't get past the door's locking mechanism. Tyler shows up with a computerized device that unlocks doors (he intends to market it when he gets back to Earth). The door opens, and we go in with Tyler and Stone. Tyler figured the shuttles were stolen according to a theory of his, one he called 'Contiguous Geometric Mathematical Probability Theory'. I guess that the writers didn't know mathematics too well. Maybe it is I who doesn't know mathematics too well, because that name sounds like a load of hooey (feel free to correct me though). Tyler says that according to his theory, the odds of a cargo ship vanishing due to technical errors was 1 in 1429. Yet ships were vanishing once a month, which was far too often. So basically, the odds said they weren't vanishing due to technical faults. Tyler explains that the mining shuttles are automated, following a flightplan back to Earth that is set at the base. Stone brilliantly deduces that a saboteur on the base is tampering with the computers. Tyler agrees, but doesn't know how or who is doing it. Tyler goes to one terminal in particular, the one for shuttle 117. It is due to take off in 20 hours. Tyler says that this one will be stolen next. We get a useless 12 second-long shot of the actual mining operation. We cut back to Shuttle Control. Tyler and Stone leave, and Sgt. Sykes watches them go. Mwahaha. Tyler wants to help Stone, but Stone wants to work alone (more one-dimensional character development– if there is such a thing.) Tyler is scared, and wants to leave Moon 44. He says that he's a street kid who signed up for this job because he thought it would be fun. He knows if he helps solve the mystery, the company will dissolve his contract. Tyler doesn't want to be at the base when it gets attacked, so he asks Stone to put in the good word for him when he gets back to Earth. Stone gives him a cryptic answer, and leaves. Next, we have the shower rape scene. It is totally unnecessary to the film, and could have been handled in numerous, more tasteful ways. Marc is in the showers with a bunch of the cons. Unfortunately for him, he is next to Scooter, who starts the scene. The cons throw Marc around, and Marc feebly protests. Scooter grabs him and speaks 'clichéd prison pedophile talk' about little girls and keeping them pretty. He then proceeds to rape Marc. Only one prisoner raises mild objections, but nevertheless leaves Marc with Scooter despite Marc's pleas. Why would the company, knowing it is using criminals as pilots, allow a pervert like Scooter to work with teenaged boys? I would think any logical mind would create some screening system to weed out pedophiles and rapists. I mean, what if Charles Manson were in that group. Now this movie is just stupid. The scene lasts 1 minute and 14 seconds. Sgt. Sykes reports to Lee that he saw Tyler and Stone snooping around Shuttle Control. Lee really is the evil one! He honestly is the bad guy! Hell will freeze over before Malcolm McDowell plays a villain! Anyway, Lee decides he wants to kill Stone. Sykes seems hesitant to go that far, but Lee gives him a motivational line: "They've been screwing us for a long time, now it's time we screwed them."Lee has the master keys for the shuttles, which he uses to reprogram their destinations. Sykes seems to have more a conscience and is reluctant. Tyler enters the showers after the cons are gone, and finds Marc huddled in a corner. Marc has been beaten, and is terrified and really wanting to be alone. Tyler punches the wall in a fit of frustration and vows revenge. We cut to more training flights. Here, we have a competition between teams of pilots. It's essentially a dogfight. O'Neal will be against Stone. However, Sykes secretly arms O'Neal's missiles while everyone is getting ready to go. Here we find out another situation that I knew was coming well in advance. Marc is Scooter's navigator. To make things worse, Scooter teases Marc over the radio. Cookie is O'Neal's navigator, much to O'Neal's chagrin. We get to flight scenes. O'Neal almost catches Stone, not knowing his weapons are active. When O'Neal fires (actually, it's Cookie who fires), Stone suddenly pulls up on Tyler's order, and O'Neal looks horrified at what his weapons have done to the canyon wall. They return home, and Stone smokes. This scene lasted roughly 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Terry complains (of course) to Sgt. Sykes about his responsibilities and how he failed to check the weapons were offline, as well as his treatment of the people to Commander Lee. We see Sykes in his room drinking a raw egg in his drink. Sykes' phone rings, and he gets summoned to Lee's office. There, Lee gives him the shuttle key and tells Sykes to take care of the shuttles. Lee will handle Stone. Another flying scene. Scooter is flying down the canyon and teasing Marc over the radio. Scooter wants to go faster, but gets told to slow down. Scooter taunts Marc again, and Marc loses it. Somehow (?), Marc seizes control of the helicopter, and makes it go faster and faster and faster. Scooter starts freaking out, and says he will kill Marc when he gets back. Tyler jumps up and tries to stop Marc, but it's too late. Scooter's helicopter scrapes into the canyon wall and blows up. Marc, needless to say, gets thrown into the brig. I'd feel more for his character if he were better developed, but I guess we're supposed to feel bad for him. Sgt. Sykes has to discipline his officers. He first yells at the pilots: "One more act of revenge, and I send every damn one of you back to prison!"Did I miss something? Aren't the pilots the victims of a revenge attack? In all fairness, he does yell a bit at the navigators. Terry steps in and wants to talk to the men, and yells feebly once more at Sykes. She tells the pilots that they should regard what happened as an unfortunate accident. After all, I'm sure a navigator has to let out some steam every once in a while by murdering his pilot. The pilots are, of course, outraged. O'Neal, their de facto leader, insists that Scooter was killed by Marc. Tyler says the pilots started it with the shower incident, and a fight breaks out. Terry regrets the incident, and does insist that this defense program is safe, despite the wreckages in the canyons that everyone saw. In the end, the pilots must make a choice: a)Keep piloting;The choice for them is obvious. They opt to stay. We cut to space. A large ship flies by the camera. On the side is the logo for Pyrite. The bad guys (not Lee) are coming. We then see the pilots throwing Tyler into some lockers and being rough with him. O'Neal threatens to kill Tyler. Stone steps in to protect his navigator and a crucial part of his investigation. O'Neal then predictably threatens Stone. We get some clichéd talk, like this: O'Neal: "If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead."Ooooooh! Next, we see Sgt. Sykes on his way to the brig to deliver food to Marc. Buzzing around him is Tyler, who repeatedly requests to see Marc to also deliver his music. Apparently, Marc listens to opera and he really likes it. Sykes relents, and Tyler goes into the brig first. Here's my big buildup for the following 'surprise': drumroll......... Tyler finds Marc hanging from the ceiling, dead. By now, I was collecting bets on what would happen next in this movie. Tyler seems shaken and starts to cry, while Sykes rushes off to get a doctor. Again, I totally didn't care. As a character, I knew little of Marc and so felt little sympathy for him. We cut to the control room. It's empty and quiet, spare Tyler, who's slouched back in his chair listening to Marc's opera music. Then we see the cafeteria. Everyone in there is quiet and the atmosphere is solemn. Tyler sits with the other navigators. He plans to avenge Marc's death by slipping some of Cookie's drugs into one pilot's drink. He gets up to do it, but Cookie does it instead. It's a large amount of a potent drug. The pilot is nobody in particular, a man referred to as 'Moose'. As far as I know, this pilot did nothing special to deserve this revenge attack. Never mind. Moose drinks his drink. Later, in his bunk, Moose is having severe breathing problems, and starts foaming at the mouth. The other cons struggle to keep him breathing. Nearby, Cookie is at his locker, watching and snickering. The cons catch him and start beating him. Tyler and the other navigators show up and band together against the pilots. Tyler is their leader: "We control the food, the air, everything that runs this place. And you hurt [Cookie], or any of these guys, what happened to Moose is gonna happen to you, only it'll be worse. A lot worse."O'Neal and the pilots have no choice. They need the navigators to fly, and therefore to stay out of prison. After Tyler and O'Neal stare at each other for 7.44 seconds, the pilots let Cookie go. Later, presumably at night, we see Cookie snooping around. He finds Moose and sits down on his bunk, next to him. Moose is either asleep or comatose. Cookie confesses to what he did. He says he's really not a bad guy. He says he was lonely in school and was bullied. He started selling homemade drugs to be popular, and said that being popular is a nice feeling. I have to admit, that scene was nice. I don't usually see drug dealers portrayed like that in movies. Unfortunately, the scene ends a bit abruptly. The next day, Stone is in the cafeteria. He watches Sgt. Sykes get up and leave quickly. Stone follows him all the way to Shuttle Control. Shuttle 117 is preparing to lift off and head to Earth. Sykes dicks around with the computer using Lee's shuttle key, changing the shuttle's destination. Here, I found a blooper. The computer monitor says that the shuttle will arrive on Earth at 02:14, but the computer's voice says that the shuttle will arrive on Earth at 02:00. WTF? Anyway, the shuttle now has a new destination. Sykes gets the key out of the computer, but Stone confronts him. Sykes pulls a gun. Stone wrestles the gun from Sykes, and a chase ensues. Sykes loses Stone and takes an axe from the wall. He waits for Stone with the axe. We see Stone walking backwards through the hallway for a great distance (a bit dangerous, right?) Once in position, Sykes swings at Stone but misses and ruptures some cables that spew white smoke into the air. Again, I had a flashback to Alien, with the set designs and the flashing lights. At some point, Stone falls and Sykes stands over him with the axe. He speaks this baffling passage: "Come here Stone! [swings axe] Things were going just fine until you showed up! [swings] You think I like it here? I'm just a goddamned pawn! [swings] I don't kill people, I train them! And I'm not gonna take the fall alone!"Again I say WTF? Is he blaming Stone for his lowly position as sergeant? Is he going to take the fall for O'Neal firing live ammunition, Scooter's death, Marc's suicide, or any combination thereof? And if so, how could he bring Stone down with him? I was confused. Stone is cornered. We get a slow motion shot of the axe coming down. Then someone shoots Sykes, and he falls with the axe. Stone is saved. Lee was the shooter, and he demands to know what is happening. Stone explains that he is an Internal Affairs agent, and that he found out that Sykes was the hijacker. Lee retrieves the key from Sykes, but Stone asks for it because it is evidence. Lee refuses, saying that it's the only thing to stop the shuttles from their automated liftoff sequence in the event of attack. Stone doesn't seem to care too much about this new company policy he was unaware of. Stone lets Lee keep the key. Stone's job is done as far as he is concerned. He gets packed and ready to head back to Earth. He rejoins the other pilots, who by now have realized that he is a cop. We see a parting scene between O'Neal and Stone that show they are on good terms. O'Neal even read one of Stone's books. We are supposed to like O'Neal now. Tyler catches up to Stone as he leaves, and again asks Stone to put in the good word for him. Stone agrees, and leaves. Tyler is brooding in the control room by himself, when he sees Commander Lee enter. Lee thinks he's alone, and walks to a control panel. Lee receives a warning from the computer that an enemy ship is approaching Moon 44. We get a brief shot of said ship. Lee proceeds to disable the station's alarm system. Tyler watches him do it, and follows him out, but loses him. Then someone taps Tyler on the shoulder, startling him. It's Stone. He actually hasn't left. Lee walks to Shuttle Control, and orders all the shuttles to leave to their new destination. Stone and Tyler fix the alarm system and warn the others. The Pyrite ship is close, and smaller attack ships disengage rather unconvincingly from the larger ship a la Battlestar Galactica. The pilots and navigators assemble in the control room, but Stone is the only one fighting. The enemies are robotic drones, like the ones we saw in the beginning. I think it defeats the purpose of having a defense system if only one guy is fighting, but never mind. Meanwhile, the mining shuttles are shutting down their mining equipment and preparing to lift off, thus stranding them there. Terry heads off to deal with them. We get flight scenes. Some explosions as the drones fire on the mining equipment and on the station. Some of the drone ships are destroyed. However, it appears in the process that Stone died. He does not respond over the radio. O'Neal looks sad. One pilot says 'so what', and a fight nearly breaks out between Tyler and this pilot, but O'Neal breaks it up. Apparently, he's reformed. More drones leave the mothership and head to the surface. Stone is alive (of course), and calls in. Everyone cheers. Stone sees one mining shuttle left that isn't taking off for some unknown, unexplained reason. He's on his way in so they can all leave. Cookie points out that there's no time to do that. In the time between leaving the station and boarding the mining shuttle, they have to take a smaller carrier craft from the station to the shuttle, and the new wave of drones would attack them. O'Neal volunteers to stay behind and fight the drones off while everyone else gets to the mining shuttle. Cookie realizes that, being O'Neal's navigator, he too must stay. Everybody wishes him luck. Down in Shuttle Control, Lee retrieves his key. He then affixes a bomb to the wall (presumably to destroy the shuttle controls), but gets caught by a bewildered Terry. There is a brief struggle, and Terry finds herself with a gun pointed at her head by Lee. Stone arrives in the base as O'Neal leaves. They share a 'nice knowing you' glance, and Stone wishes O'Neal luck. Evacuation proceeds, and everybody boards the carrier craft. Tyler hops into the pilot seat. Stone, meanwhile, finds Lee's bomb, and catches Lee dragging Terry into an elevator. Stone grabs the bomb and jumps into the elevator with it. Lee stares at it with horror. The bomb only has seconds left. By now, Stone must realize Lee is the bad guy. Why would he take the bomb and enter the elevator with it? Is he expecting Lee to defuse it? The new drones arrive. O'Neal takes off. Drones fire at the station. The elevator reaches its destination, and Stone grabs the shuttle key from Lee, who has a gun but seems intent on not using it. Stone somehow manages to get him and Terry out of the elevator, leaving Lee and the bomb inside. It blows up, and Lee dies. Stone and Terry run through the station to the carrier. Explosions are all around them and there's a siren going off. Again, it was like when Ripley was escaping the doomed Nostromo. Stone and Terry reach the shuttle, and it starts up. O'Neal begs Cookie to leave him behind, but Cookie won't go. There are unconvincing shots of explosions. The control room itself is attacked, and a large spike that comes off the wall in an explosion impales Cookie. He survives and looks down in horror. O'Neal is doomed. He is severely outnumbered, but still fighting. Cookie jokes as he dies. I would think being impaled by a huge steel spike would hurt, but I forget that this is a movie, and not a very good one at that. O'Neal blows up a few drones. Carrier shuttle takes off amid fire. O'Neal continues to fight. Cookie dies at his post, after surviving for 1 minute and 34 seconds. Stone pilots the shuttle away. Here, I noticed that distances for all these ships were measured in feet and yards. I found that interesting, given that the film was made in a metric country. It was obviously meant solely for an American audience. Personally, I don't think the Imperial measuring system will have a future in space. It's too hard to remember and difficult to convert: 1 mile = 5280 feet = 1760 yards;Whereas in metric, 1 kilometer = 1000 meters;Come on, even a five year old can remember that, and conversions can be done mentally. I can't remember that 5280 feet are in a mile, and I like to think that I have a head for numbers. But I digress. O'Neal dies in combat. Drones attack the carrier. Meanwhile, the mining shuttle prepares to take off. Stone maneuvers the carrier over the mining shuttle, but they're being attacked, so there's no time to properly dock with it. In a blindingly stupid move, Stone drops the crew container a short distance onto the mining shuttle, hoping the airlocks line up. Of course they do, and everybody piles into the mining shuttle. The carrier explodes shortly thereafter. The mining shuttle rises up and flies away. That was the exciting climax. Let's take a deep breath. The movie is almost over. Back in the boardroom, everybody is bemoaning the loss of Moon 44 to Pyrite. However, Pyrite apparently suffered heavy losses in capturing the moon. There were no survivors. The mining shuttles vanished like the others, and the one that did have passengers lost contact with Earth shortly after takeoff. They won't plan a search party. The CEO is depressed that his little scheme didn't work. Stone walks right into the boardroom. Is there no security there? Everybody is surprised to see him, and the CEO seems delighted. Stone explains that Lee "sold out" to Pyrite. The CEO asks for the shuttles, and Stone shows them the key. He says that every shuttle is waiting in space for Pyrite to pick them up. The CEO thanks Stone for saving the company, but Stone believes that the crew of the station deserves the thanks, the people that the company deemed expendable. Then Stone points a gun at the CEO's head. Everybody gasps, worried that the CEO might get shot. I was getting pretty tired of seeing this character's over-the-top attitude. Stone wonders why the board members suddenly seem so concerned with human life, whereas before they were willing to sacrifice those who worked on Moon 44, reinforcing the moral that corporations are bad. He lowers the gun, and throws the key on the table. He leaves the boardroom. Then the movie very abruptly ends. Yup, we're left hanging. What happened to Tyler and Terry and the others? We'll never know.
THE END!!!
Ahh, this is one of those obscure and often awful sci-fi films of the eighties/early nineties, before computers became widely used for effects. It was made in West Germany as a direct-to-video film, and reportedly had a rather large budget of $15 million. Emmerich had $15 million, and the best he could get was Michael Paré? Yeeeesh! I do admit, this is not such a bad movie. It is certainly better than the putrid 80's film The Brain and the nonsensical film Moontrap. The action scenes are engaging (if typical), and the special effects, though limited in scope, were done well. I was almost impressed with the cityscape at the beginning. I was expecting less. In fact, if this movie was reworked and rewritten, it could even be respectable. All that said, this film does have major drawbacks. The idea of convicts as pilots and kids as navigators is just plain silly. I was reminded of many Anime series that have giant fighting robots that always seem to be piloted by teenage boys or girls. The characters, especially Felix Stone, are cookie-cutter characters, one-dimensional and not pulling in my interest. Take Marc's suicide. I felt totally disconnected when they found him hanging. I asked myself, 'So what?' Call me callous, but I didn't particularly care. If they took more time to flesh out his character like they did with Cookie, then I would have cared. I admit I almost felt something when Cookie died. Also, that ending left all sorts of loose ends that irritated me. Not that the threads were all that interesting to begin with. Now, on to Cookie. Cookie was played by Stephen Geoffreys, who you may know was a B-actor (or simply a 'Bacter', as my brother says) from the 80's. He was in Fright Night as Evil Ed, the weird kid who gets 'vampirised' in the alley. He was also in 976-EVIL as Hoax, a guy who turns into a demon and exacts vengeance on bullies. Moon 44 was his second-to-last legitimate film. If you don't already know about the sorts of films he currently does, check out his resume at IMDb.com. I suppose that if that's his thing, then more power to him. I liked him in Fright Night. April 20, 2004 Back to main site? |
