'Contact' is on Netflix right now.

[byronius]

Interesting to watch it again after all this time. A flawed work of art, but a work of art nonetheless, and the concepts and issues are still relevant and even somewhat prescient.

It's not going to happen that way, I think. But I still love the story. And Jodie Foster -- she's just -- so good. Damn. That woman has contributed greatly to the craft.

If you haven't seen it in awhile, watch it again. I believe Carl Sagan would have approved.

"Just step back and think about the big picture for a moment."

[longship]

1. I cannot think that Sagan would endorse the overt religious overtones.

Although both he and Ann Druyan helped with the script. However, the Matthew McConaughey character, especially knowing now that he really is a Jesus freak, is more than a bit grating.

Sorry Matthew, Carl had no vision of Jesus when he wrote that book and I really don't think Jesus had anything to do with your Oscar. I would have denied it to you on that basis alone.

But there is a lot to like about this film, and unfortunately, a lot to despise. The book is much better. However, Jodie Foster is a helluva actor. And I really like William Fitchner who turns in a really good character role here. And David Morse is always great.

Nevertheless, it is a very flawed film. Why then, do I watch it again and again? However, Zemeckis has no clue here.

R&K

[Depaysement]

2. You watch it again and again

Because you like the subject matter and some of it is true.

[longship]

4. Well, it's SciFi.

I like Star Trek, too. Please, not the JJ Abrams reboot! Which destroys it all. However, Axanar looks good, if it ever gets off the ground.

Prelude to Axanar:

They've been sued. Too bad.

And as to Contact, Sagan made it clear. It's fiction.

[Orrex]

12. If that's the one I'm thinking of

Then it lost me permanently and completely about three minutes into the interminable sequences of after the fact reflections by "the people who'd been there." Utterly horrible, on par with the very worst moments I've ever seen in the Trek universe--including every single second of the Abrams films.

If that format was any indication of the intended final product, then Paramount did them (and us) a huge favor by suing them.

[longship]

15. It's the narrative.

But let's start with Red Matter as an absolutely horrible McGuffin.

To say nothing of a teenaged Chekov, and what the hell is that Scotty friend, played by Deep Roy. Disney could not have made a better product placement. Too bad Mattell did not sieze the marketing advantage.

Then there's the horrible Uhura/Spock love affair, counter to the entirety of the whole Star Trek narrative, with a simpering love-lorn Spock.

JJ Abrams utterly destroyed Star Trek.

The only thing he did that was good was to cast Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy. Sadly, he just gave him limp dialog, just like the rest of the cast. What a waste!

I have an idea! Let's turn Star Trek into Star Wars! Lots of action and absolutely no thought whatsoever. Yup! That's a good idea. And let's throw all the Star Trek fans out as well. We don't need them, those who have brought this franchise from the late 60's to the 21st century. Fuck them.

Sorry, JJ. Fuck you!

[Orrex]

18. I still prefer it to Axanar

Before Abrams, Trek was circling the drain with no improvement in sight. Love it or hate it, his reboot breathed life into a moribund property, lens-flare and L'il Chekov notwithstanding. Abrams' Star Trek brought the franchise back into public awareness, raking in more than any eight of the preceding 10 films.

As always, The Onion said it best:
Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

But Axanar is a distillation of all that is stilted, drab and ponderous about the Trek universe. Long speeches about sleepy space battles between stagnant fictional races of no interest to anyone not already in love with that canon. It's Trek fan fiction for fans of Trek fan fiction, and no one else.

I hate to piss on a fan effort, especially one embraced by actual cast members, but there's no value in elevating this project above its actual merit.

[trueblue2007]

39. i thought Axanar was boring.

[Hortensis]

16. Lol. I'm going to have to watch it again because

I don't remember most of the things mentioned, including the interviews.

In my case, I wanted the awed grandeur of Close Encounters and all I remember is being intensely irritated that someone (Foster) in the middle of this enormous happening could be so interminably focused on getting credit, so small. Feminism was not about being more interested in self advancement than the welfare of all humanity and...others.

So now I'm at least intrigued, if only that there was a religious theme, etc., I was too irritated then to remember now.

[longship]

17. BTW, Garth of Izar is a character in the original Star Trek series.

So Axanar connects to the original story line, unlike the simpering Spock/Uhura love affair of JJ "let's make Star Trek like Star Wars and throw out its entire narrative" Abrams.

Fuck JJ.

[Orrex]

19. Yes, I know. Still boring.

[longship]

20. Oh dear! What can one say?

Now Star Trek is boring.

Maybe you should go back to watching "The Monkees" or "My Mother the Car"

I worry about such sentiments.

[Orrex]

22. That's weak.

Now Star Trek is boring.

Star Trek fan fiction is boring, yes. And to judge by the first ten films' diminishing returns and increasingly ignored tv efforts, the public thought that the franchise was boring, too.

This sentiment was well articulated by Adhar Ru'afo, of all people: "The Federation is old."

[longship]

24. Huh?

Speak English.

The best actors in the original TV series were -- in order -- Leonard Nimoy, deForrest Kelly, James Doohan, and William Shatner. The latter was always a bit of a hack. Thankfully he had a rather great supporting cast which included many others, including Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. I might add Majel Barrett, who was part of the Star Trek universe until her death. She was Nurse Chapel, but was in many episodes and eventually married Gene Roddenberry. Her voice was prominent in the Star Trek films as the computer.

Don't diss Star Trek. Just don't. (Except for the JJ Abrams reboot, which horribly throws it all away.)

My favorite was always deForrest Kelley. He certainly had the longest acting career of the cast. He never slipped out of character, even in the films. A consummate professional.

But the value was always in the ensemble, like a Mozart opera. And although there were some weak plots, there were many that weren't. Hint: it was TV!

[Orrex]

28. All of which has nothing to do with Axanar

Tell me with a straight face that Star Trek: Insurrection or Star Trek: Nemesis were great films. Tell me that Star Trek: Enterprise was the pinnacle of Star Trek television. Don't get me wrong: I've been a fan for about 40 years, I've seen every episode of every series, and I saw 9 of the first 10 films in the theater. But I'm not a fanboi, and I see no value in pretending that the franchise was stronger at the end that it actually was prior to Abrams' arrival.

And before you gripe any further about Abrams, let's talk about the cultishly over-praised creator himself for a moment. For easy reference, you can read some useful info about him HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE, just to name a few.

Since I'm confident that you won't actually read any of those, I'll quote some of Roddenberry's vision here:

Roddenberry's vision for TNG was so insane that his early plan to not use a spaceship -- for a show set in space, remember -- is actually one of his least-ridiculous ideas. His most ridiculous? That would be his brain fart of a design for Commander Troi, which, according to Joel Engel's tell-all book Gene Roddenberry: The Myth And The Man Behind Star Trek, included four breasts and two sets of privates:

Also included in the bible, which was shorter on ideas than on inconsistencies, were some typically Roddenberrian touches, such as the charater of Lieutenant Commander Troy, "a four-breasted, oversexed hermaphrodite," and a Yodaish midget named Wesley Crusher. Roddenberry knew that his conception of the series was far from complete, and with Paramount pressuring him to devise the first draft of a bible so that everyone could see where at least $25 million was going, he turned to his team.

Oh, that crazy Gene!

If there's one person in the universe who doesn't "get" what Star Wars is about, then it's almost certainly George Lucas. Equally, if there's one person who doesn't "get" Star Trek, then Gene Roddenberry was that person, who famously took a shit on canon whenever it suited him, and who was specifically responsible for inflicting Wesley Crusher upon audiences. Let's not be so blinded by fanboi love that we overlook some real and catastrophic shortcomings.

Don't diss Star Trek. Just don't. (Except for the JJ Abrams reboot, which horribly throws it all away.)

I think the most important thing right now is for you to get over yourself.

Yes, the original core cast was terrific, and the franchise would have died in 1969 without them. But that has nothing to do with the unwatchable (and mercifully prevented) Axanar.

[longship]

29. Well, then there's the JJ Abrams Star Trek.

Last edited Sun Apr 17, 2016, 12:24 PM - Edit history (2)

Where a cadet gets to be a captain of a starship, promoted above all above him!

And Spock, instead of being a logical science officer, is a simpering, whimpering sot, in love with an officer below him, which in any rational hierarchy would have him drummed out of the service for unethical behavior. And this is fucking Spock! Instead of being a hyper-rational alien, he is a teen-aged juvenile who cannot seem to keep his Vulcan dick in his pants.

I cannot state how much I despise JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek. It is, by any definition, and any metric, anti-Star Trek.

And what the fuck is it with Roy Deep? I really love Scotty, but Deep seems to be a mere toy placement. What purpose does this character serve other than marketing.

JJ Abrams has no fucking idea of what Gene Roddenberry was about, or what Star Trek was about.

Fan movies are trying to extend the genre. They are not perfect. But JJ has done great and grievous damage to the enterprise, so to speak.

[Orrex]

30. All of which has nothing to do with Axanar

Fan movies are trying to extend the genre. They are not perfect. But JJ has done great and grievous damage to the enterprise, so to speak.

Nonsense. After the disastrous run of Enterprise, Paramount sure as hell didn't greenlight another tv series simply because a fan film got made. Regardless of a letter-writing campaign four decades ago, the franchise survives today because it has deliberately broadened its appeal.

To be sure, there are elements that don't appeal to the hardcore fan, but so what? The hardcore fans weren't enough to keep the studio's interest in the franchise, so there's no reason for the studio to continue to produce material specifically for those fans.

And the fact that the insomnia-curing Axanar appeals to fanbois is proof that their vision shouldn't guide the franchise going forward.

[longship]

32. And JJ does?

JJ is horrible Star Trek. The best there is about it is Karl Urban and maybe Simon Pegg, just like deForrest Kelley was the best of ST:TOS. Unfortunately JJ's scripts and story lines are absolute rubbish. Red matter? FUCKING RED MATTER!!!! And who in the fuck thought that more lens flash was a good thing? And explain Deepak Roy! The Jar-Jar Binks of Star Trek!

My god! You youngsters have no idea what Roddenberry was trying to do!

[Orrex]

33. All of which has nothing to do with Axanar

My god! You youngsters have no idea what Roddenberry was trying to do!

Roddenberry was trying to give us an over-sexed four-breasted hermaphrodite with two sets of genitals, among a lot of other crazy bullshit. Why should his fucked up vision be sacrosanct?

"Youngsters." Heh.

I could give you a long list of things that I find wrong with the Abrams' Star Trek films, but the fact remains that he resurrected a dead franchise.

[zalinda]

34. In defense of teen age Spock

In his history, as told on the original series (I never read any of the books), he had serious problems with being half human when he was younger. It was when he was much older that he got in control of his Vulcan side, but every once in a while his human side did come out, even in the original series.

Z

[longship]

35. But in a hazardous interstellar mission...

such behavior by a senior officer with a junior officer would be grounds for court martial. At best it would be grounds for a severe reprimand, and likely sanctions that would certainly result in severe consequences.

He's not a teen-ager. He is a fucking senior officer!!!

But JJ Abrams just makes shit up. And Gene Roddenberry rolls in his grave.

That's why Trekkies despise these new movies. They throw out everything. And that's a lot of narrative to dispose of.

[Orrex]

36. Yes indeed.

One need look no further than Where No One Has Gone Before to see Spock as the brash, hair-triggered youth prone to shouting outbursts. I'm sure that the more passionate fanbois have some sort of "canonical" retcon to explain this, but the fact remains that he was clearly less controlled in some of the early episodes.

[Depaysement]

27. Well, not entirely clear

Read what he said closely.

Contact is almost all fiction. Almost. But not entirely.

[ewagner]

25. The book is much better....

The movie did not have my favorite scene from the book in it...the Foucault Pendulum scene...

In it the skeptical scientist left room for doubt when she flinched...like all good scientists..the proof had to be there..I think Sagan understood that

[longship]

26. It's been a while, but yes!

There's a Foucault's pendulum in the lobby of the United Nations General Assembly. I remember seeing it in my youth on a visit with my family.
(Somehow it did not make it into Hitchcock's North by Northwest.)

[ewagner]

31. My Alma Mater

is University of Central Florida but when I graduated in the Charter Class in 1970 it was Florida Technological University...founded 25 miles from Cape Kennedy and supposed to provide all the engineers, scientist and administrators for the space program and teachers skilled in math and science education to assure a pipeline for those folk...

and they have a Foucault Pendulum in the engineering building...near and dear to my heart.

side note: just barely escaped being named "Disney University"

[Warren DeMontague]

3. I'll second that I liked ot despite the grating flaws as longship mentioned

The big one, obviously, being that in 97 or whenever Hollywood couldnt put out such a powerful work expressed from a POV of Atheistic skepticism, as voiced by the Ellie Arroway character, without tempering it with a lot of down home folksy Jesus-osity via matthew mcconaughey.

Still, it made some good points and was enjoyable. The book was better, though. I think the book - even though Sagan and Druyan were/are Atheists- did allow for the possibility at the end for the characters to have discovered some sort of embedded intelligence in the Universe- hidden in the fabric of mathematics itself, IIRC.

Obviously the kind of thing that would fly waaaaaaay over the heads of your studio execs at the time, so they probably figured "lets get the easy on the eyes guy in there and he can toss off some 12 step aphorisms about higher powers --- to keep the values voters happy"

[longship]

5. Yup! That would be my thinking, too.

You summarized my thoughts better than I could. You are a better person in that respect than me.

My best to you.

[NeoGreen]

8. I remember what they did in reaction to The Golden Compass...

...(His Dark Materials) in ~2007, and would be surprised that the same response would not have happened to Contact if it followed the book more closely.

Given that, I am happy with the film as it is.
The theophiles come across fairly negatively in the interview scene and with the fanatics.

This thread reminds me that I should replace my worn out VHS with a DVD copy.

Neat thing is, I just sent a copy of NDT's Cosmos to my 10-yo niece.
Should arrive on Tuesday.

Carl's vision should endure.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Yeah, I read those books too.

They had to tone down Pullman's anti-religion message bigtime for Golden Compass, as it was. But those books were a bit more, I dunno, overt or strident with the message.

Hell, I was looking something up the other day and got reminded that there were MASSIVE "churchy" protests against Life of Brian, too, when it came out. Can you imagine? That film is a classic.

[livetohike]

6. Best opening shot of a movie ever! I love this movie.

Have you read the book?

[sakabatou]

10. I have!

[Firebrand Gary]

7. "How did you do it?"

"How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?" - Best film scene of all time! imo

[skepticscott]

11. Watched it again recently

for the first time in a long time. Did not find myself enjoying it as much as I used to. There really isn't a single likable character in the whole movie. Even Ellie Arroway I found grating...whiny and naive were her most prominent traits. Palmer Joss is just a smug, smarmy prick who deserved to be an intellectual piñata. The cliche of the blind guy with the super-sensitive ears I found a lot more offensive than I used to as well. And the whole thing is so generally full of logical and intellectual flaws that I found it very difficult to watch. Thinking on SETI and how it is handled has evolved considerably since the movie was made, of course, but it makes a lot of it seem like a disorganized muddle.

In general, I don't think the movie has aged well.

[Orrex]

13. One of many in a long series of dreadfully boring McConaughey performances

Lots of good stuff happening, with John Hurt's role being especially delightful, but McConaughey was so unwatchable that I have to wonder if someone cast him on a bet.

And the mawkish exchange, presumably meant as an emotional linchpin for the film, when he asks Ellie to "prove" that she loved her father, is unforgivable. I haven't read the book in 20+ years, so I don't know if that sequence is original to the text, but it's insultingly simplistic and utterly unworthy of Sagan, not least because Ellie the atheist would already have faced that stupid question many times and would certainly know how to answer it in a way that would shut McConaughey's stupid, simpering mouth.

Jodie Foster was great, but she's Jodie Foster after all. Angela Bassett was terrific as always. James Woods was perfectly cast as another true-to-life asshole. Rob Lowe was entertaining in his role. Even former Nostromo captain Tom Skerritt was solid, along with Busey Jr.

But leave McConaughey out of it.

[nxylas]

14. Haven't seen it in long time

But wasn't "God" really the Jodie Foster character's father? Sounds perfectly in line with the atheist idea that God is just an idealised.father figure invented by humans. Of course it's possible that I misremembered and/or that knowing that Carl Sagan was an atheist coloured my interpretation of the film (I've never read the book).

[SheilaT]

21. I saw it when it first came out, and

aside from the fact that they really filmed at the Very Large Array of radiotelescopes in New Mexico, it's a crappy movie. For one thing, scientists looking for extraterrestrial life don't sit listening with headphones on. That's beyond dumb.

I've forgotten most of the details, but I do recall the religiosity being extremely grating and completely unbelievable. The book, if I recall, was only marginally better.

I don't think I want to spend the time re-watching something I thought was that bad.

[Liberal Veteran]

37. In the book, the listening to headphones thing was just a thing Ellie did.

"She sat down before one of the consoles and plugged in the earphones. It was futile, she knew, a conceit, to think that she, listening on one or two channels, would detect a pattern when the vast computer system monitoring a billion channels had not. But it gave her a modest illusion of utility."

"She heard, as always, a kind of static, a continuous echoing random noise. Once, when listening to a part of the sky that included the star AC + 79 3888 in Cassiopeia, she felt she heard a kind of singing, fading tantalizingly in and out, lying just beyond her ability to convince herself that there was something really there. This was the star toward which the Voyager 1 spacecraft, now in the vicinity of the obit of Neptune, would ultimately travel. The spacecraft carried a golden phonograph record on which were impressed greetings, pictures, and songs from Earth. Could they be sending us their music at the speed of light, while we are sending ours to them only one ten-thousandth as fast? At other times, like now, when the static was clearly patternless, she would remind herself of Shannon's famous dictum in information theory, that the most efficiently coded message was indistinguishable from noise, unless you had the key to the encoding beforehand. Rapidly she pressed a few keys on the console before her and played two of the narrow-band frequencies against each other, on in each earphone. Nothing. She listened to the two planes of polarization of the radio waves, and then to the contrast between linear and circular polarization. There were a billion channels to choose from. You could spend your life trying to outguess the computer, listening with pathetically limited human ears and brains, seeking a pattern."

The movie used that for more dramatic effect, but the idea was that Ellie just liked listening to the white noise of the universe, knowing that it was beyond unlikely that she would ever actually hear an alien signal randomly.

[SheilaT]

41. You described what she did very well, and thank you for that.

But the way the movie shows it -- she's sitting out in front of the radio telescopes (see note below) and listening, apparently expecting to hear some sort of alien broadcast, gives people and incredibly misleading view of what scientists really do.

Note: I have been to the VLA several times and it is one of the coolest places ever. I would encourage everyone to go there if they can. Regardless of the reality of what Ellie did, those telescopes are amazing. They are especially cool when they are in the close in formation, and then the start moving in unison to another part of the sky. I LOVE astronomy and anything connected to it, and I've also done the adult astronomy camp through the University of Arizona. I'd recommend that to anyone interested.

Anyway, thanks again.

[colsohlibgal]

23. Have It On DVD

The thought that there is not abundant life elsewhere makes no sense to me and is to me pretty self absorbed.

The scene where she picks up the signal, and she and the guys she works with find out it is for real is awesome. Then when they get the underlying audio/video and it shows Hitler speaking...it's priceless.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

38. I always enjoyed this movie

I always felt that it was a pretty realistic depiction of what *might* happen and how the human race would react if we ever did get contacted by an alien race. I too also want to believe that there is intelligent life out there somewhere.

[robertgodardfromnj]

40. That was a great movie

One of my favorite Zemeckis films, after Forrest Gump.

[Heeeeers Johnny]

42. The SETI folks, Arroway deciphered the message wrong...

[img][/img]