From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Millennium released in 1989.
Starring:
Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, and Daniel J. Travanti
Directed by:
Michael Anderson
Genre:
Drama, Science Fiction, Thriller
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
PG-13
Budget:
Unknown
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
5.7
The Synopsis is:
Air Raiders from the year 2989 travel into the past rescuing passengers from doomed airplanes to re-populate their sterile world.
Millennium is based on the 1977 short story "Air Raid" written by American science fiction writer John Varley. John thought that his idea would make a good movie, so he started to work on a screenplay of the story in 1979 for Hollywood and expanded the story into a novel in 1983 also titled, Millennium.
MGM was interested in it with Douglas Trumbull as one of the early directors looking to cast Paul Newman and Jane Fonda. He was also making Brainstorm 1983 at the time however, after the shocking death of Natalie Wood, who starred in the film, Douglas decided to drop out.
John Varley said of his experience beginning in 1979, “I ended up writing it six times. There were four different directors, and each time a new director came in I went over the whole thing with him and rewrote it. Each new director had his own ideas, and sometimes you'd gain something from that, but each time something's always lost in the process, so that by the time it went in front of the cameras, a lot of the vision was lost.”
And you can definitely see this effect on the story. It’s one of the flaws, but it makes up for it in other ways, I’ll explain.
At the tail end of the 1980’s Oscar-winning director Michael Anderson became attached to the project. Why should we get excited about this? Michael is responsible for such amazing films like. The Martian Chronicles TV Mini Series in 1980, Logan's Run in 1976, and Around the World in 80 Days in 1956. If anyone could elevate this movie, it was Michael Anderson.
Before I talk about the story, I want to warn you that it might give you the creeps if you are a person who has a severe phobia of flying. It could be a little triggering.
As well, please forgive me if it seems I am telling the story from the beginning to the end. There are just so many nerdy details that I want to get into about this film and calling the story complicated is an understatement.
The film starts out in 1989 where one plane is struck by another plane and it goes down, but before they crash, one of the pilots reports that all of the passengers are all burned and dead. Whooh! That’s spooky. I am mentioning this now, because this comes into play later.
The opening sequence was a little janky when it comes to some of the chroma key work, which is a product of 1989. I don’t think anybody ever did this right at the time. The technology wasn't quite there yet. However, the practical explosions and destruction inside the plane, gave the audience a POV of what it would be like inside a real plane crash. It was both riveting and the stuff of nightmares.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Bill Smith was played by Kris Kristofferson most famous to modern audiences for playing Abraham Whistler in Blade 1998 and subsequent sequels. He was also famous for starring in the romantic drama A Star Is Born (1976) with Barbra Streisand. Bill Smith is the central character that is investigating the very high profile and baffling case of two plane crashes. One plane was the DC 10 carrying 276 people which went down 10 miles away from the TU-835 747 plane crash carrying 364 people. The 747 crash site is where we are focused on for most of the film. By the way, this crash site scene was impressive, so much so that real life pilots landing nearby were radioing in what they thought was a recent airplane crash. We see this kind of thing throughout the film, where we have some surprisingly amazing set pieces for what seems to be a very low budget film and you guys know how much I just love that.
These crashes seem to be an obvious problem with the computers that the air traffic control was using. It’s a pretty open and shut case with a few odd details. One of them was the black box or the flight data recording of the spooky last words of the pilot as I mentioned and all of the digital watches are counting backward. These are all clues to something strange being involved for Bill to uncover and I love the detective story here.
Bill isn’t the most exciting character or even slightly charismatic and I understand why. He takes his job seriously. In this case 640 people in total died in these crashes. It’s horrible. He is dealing with the massive loss of life on a daily basis, so it’s often that he barely gets any sleep to go over every minute detail.
He’s a hollow resemblance of a human being until he meets Louise Baltimore.
Who is Louise you may ask? At first she appears as a sexy flight attendant that Bill has a one night stand with. Louise, you naughty girl!
Louise is actually a time-traveling Air Raider with an awesome eighties hairdo who rescues doomed plane crash passengers. They replace the passengers with organic lookalikes so that the crashes have visible casualties and not empty planes. It also reminds us that in the beginning of the film when the pilot says he saw the passengers all burned, he was looking at these duplicates. It’s a creepy sequence that I really enjoyed seeing because it shows the advancement in their technology and the limitations too. They are able to create these unique biological forms, but they do not have consciousness.
The future is a dystopian world or something of a nightmare-scape where most of the humans live in a dome called Coventry. Coventry is another pretty impressive set piece that is the star of the film. It almost looks like the same plane hanger in which the investigation of the 747 takes place. I might be wrong but it looks possible. The production designer, Gene Rudolf deserves a round of applause for his work on Coventry and how it gives us dystopian vibes with a healthy dose of dark green.
The time travel special effects are a little rudimentary to us now, but for 1989 it was not bad. I originally thought that it was achieved with animation, but cinematographer Rene Ohashi filmed spinning metal wheels covered in Mylar. They also used miniature models and full-size mock-ups planes combined with optical effects to make the planes look as if they were entering and exiting Coventry through the time travel gate.
I can see how creative this production was trying to get with this picture.
The future world has been stricken by pollution to the point they are all sterile and cannot populate. Many of them are part robotic and sometimes just barely living body parts. The council that runs this world is composed of future humans that resemble scary Frankenstein experiments that are being kept alive in glass tubes. There are very few “normal” humans in the future and these people are assigned the job of air raiders who are able to pass for humans of the past the best. They are still damaged by pollution to the point they have to smoke to breathe and they too can not reproduce.
Louise and her team of two other women are not just saving these people to be kind. They are trying to reboot humanity by taking them to a future time even further than their own polluted one.
Since Louise is the captain of her own team, she has her own personal robotic advisor by the name of Sherman. We can assume that Sherman is a robot, but he displays many human attributes including emotions. He is even able to shed tears. So my assumption is that he may be a cyborg, composed of mostly robotic parts keeping him alive.
Louise is being played by Cheryl Ladd most famously known as the fourth Charlie’s Angel who joined in 1977 after Farrah Fawcett left the show. I was a big fan of Cheryl and so that was the main reason I went to see this film in the theater and she didn’t disappoint. She’s mainly known for being a TV actress but also ended up doing a couple of mainstream movies like Lisa 1989 and Poison Ivy 1992.
I enjoyed her portrayal of Louise, conflicted by what she has to do. I was however a little disappointed that the production decided to use soft lenses on her to smooth out her wrinkles which was a common practice. She was 38 at the time and she was still gorgeous. It’s a little bit annoying as you are trying to see some clarity in the scene and it’s impaired by the blur.
But back to the story, in 1989 Bill encounters a character that he pretty much discards and the film doesn’t spend much time on him either. However, later on he proves to be extremely important. This is theoretical physicist and ecology professor Dr. Arnold Mayer who displays a disturbing curiosity about the crash in question and many other crashes. He has closely followed Bill’s career, even reading many of his crash reports. He is a Nobel prize winner, so perhaps this is the reason he has clearance to visit plane crash sites and perform his own investigations. That is not fully explained. However, Dr. Mayer’s theories involve the unhinged idea of time travelers. As we already know, he’s not wrong.
Dr. Mayer is being played wonderfully by Daniel J. Travanti who at that time was well known for playing Captain Frank Furillo on Hill Street Blues from 1981 to 1987. That was one amazing show I grew up on and I can’t believe it never got a remake.
Daniel brings a creepy edge to the story that makes every scene he’s in way more exciting than it has any right to be. He lends the character a dash of intellectual acumen and whimsy as if he knows something that no one else does and it’s true, the character does know something that the other characters don’t know. He knows about time travel!
One of the movie plot points that I dislike with a passion is time travel because it is so messy. Some of my favorite movies are about time travel though. But I suppose it is the way that it is used to tell a story. My favorite movie is The Terminator so it’s interesting that when it is used properly it can be an amazing concept and the latest sequels in the franchise are examples of what happens when it is misused.
What is so marvelous about this movie is that we get this amazing commentary about the ethics of time travel delivered by Dr. Mayer in his lecture. He says, “What would be the result of people traveling in time? For one thing, paradoxes become possible. Say you build a time machine and murder father when he was ten years old. It means you were never born and if you weren’t, how did you build the time machine? It’s the possibility of paradoxes that make most people rule out time travel by human beings. Still why not. If you were careful you could do it. You would not go back to kill Adolf Hitler, much as you might like to because it would change history. A time traveler would have to be careful but he could do a surprising number of things.” He mentioned things like taking a cup of water from the ocean or a rock from the ground and that is true. Have you ever lost anything? What if time travelers take small things in our world to help themselves in their own world. Think of all those missing socks from the dryer. Gather enough of them, you could make a sweater. It’s stuff like this that endears me to these kinds of movies.
This was the first time I ever learned about paradoxes, from watching this film and I think the subject matter is fascinating.
The film portrays paradoxes as something that resembles earthquakes and the movie even calls them time quakes. It’s not explained, but I suppose, their reality is experiencing small changes in their timeline, which is creating this physical result. I almost wished at some point it actually revealed some visuals like color, size and shapes of things changing. Character changes would be cool too. It’s a bit confusing and this also highlights one of the terrible problems with time travel as a concept because it is clear that what you do in the past will change the future. Even if someone just sees you, you have now changed the future world you came from. So it's a cool concept and also always a big problem.
So I have told you the main conflict of the story. The secondary conflict in the story is the misplacement of two apparatuses from the future in the past.The air raiders create potential paradoxes on two missions. While on them, the air raiders need to use stunners to put the passengers to sleep while they transfer them off the planes. They lose a stunner at the beginning of the film in 1989, the “present day” the film is taking place and they lose one in 1963, which is a plane crash that Bill Smith is in and is a young boy. He survives the crash and inspires him to become a crash investigator.
These stunners are interesting. They have two parts that need to work with one another; a base and the handle. The handle is called the initiator. They lost the base in 1963 and the handle in 1989. The other detail is that the stunners can also be lethal, that is the wildcard in all of this because Dr. Mayer discovered the base of the stunner in 1963 but he doesn’t have the initiator. Because Bill finds the handle in 1989 (laugh) and meets up with Dr. Mayer, he is able to put together the stunner and it instantly kills the doctor.
Dr. Mayer was supposed to stay alive for another six years to continue his scientific work. This creates a massive catastrophic PARADOX!
I’ve always been a little upset at this point because Dr. Mayer of all people knew how precious it was not to mess with time. He gave a whole speech on it and yet he chose not to ask a time traveler that is standing right in front of him, who says, “I’ll answer all of your questions,” and he chose to mess with an object he didn’t know how to use from the future. It is a big flaw in the film, concerning the nature of the character, but Dr. Mayer's death creating the paradox makes sense. It just does. However, I would have preferred that he put the stunner together before Louise arrived to try to explain things.
The story and time literally falls apart as Bill and Louise go to the future to find it in chaos.
In the beginning the time quakes were a minor inconvenience, but at the end the entire structure of Coventry is exploding and falling apart. It is a spectacular scene bathed in an orgy of fire and a barrage of glorious practical explosions. We have these big set pieces and pretty good practical work that looks cinematic. It’s a true spectacle and again another amazing sequence with lots of practical pyrotechnics considering the small budget they had.
Another reason that the paradox took hold so intensely was also due to Bill’s disappearance in his timeline. According to John Varley's original manuscript, Bill was critical to the National Transportation Safety Board’s future, eventually becoming the director, saving a lot of lives. A quick explanation of that would have been a nice little tip off to the audience. But that was something I found while researching the film.
Bill leaving his world to be with Louise after one night together is a bit of a stretch for his character. I am not sure if that is realistic, but we did establish earlier that his life is miserable. Nevertheless, I thought he had lost his integrity by walking away from his work.
One major complaint of the film by reviewers is that the film is told from Bill’s point of view and then at about the 34 minute mark it shifts to Louise’s point of view which is not the complaint, but at the 54 minute mark, we get about 20 minutes of the first 30 minutes of the film we just experienced from Bill’s point of view, now from Louise’s point of view.
Many reviewers disliked it for good reason because it broke up the pacing. Arguably, there is a lot of purpose for this part of the film, showing us a fish out of water side to Louise and explaining her side of their interaction. Unfortunately, this part is when the film feels like a made for TV movie and loses a lot of its cinematic impact.
The filmmakers wanted to give us several levels of surprise when we see the future world, but we see all of this in the trailer and the poster. I think starting the film at the hangar the night Bill found the stunner and telling all of the events from Louise’s point of view would have been more concise and powerful. There are still plenty of surprises in the story if it were played out that way. As well, it would have shaved off about 15 minutes, kept the pacing and continuity. Easy fix.
A lot of reviewers also had a problem with the love scene or the chemistry between the two actors. I totally understand, but I also felt as if there was a lot about Louise that is revealed in their interaction. Louise was going through a change. She didn’t even know how to kiss, so all of this was new to her. At one point she had an apple in her hand that she dropped, sort of suggesting she was losing her virginity or her innocence.
One thing they reveal is that Louise is pregnant, which is not explained how. There was a small hint to the fact that her body was changing by spending time in the past and she was smoking less cigarettes.
Louise’s pregnancy leads me to talk about the end scene where she takes Bill to the future to face the Paradox. During the crashes the passengers are stored in Coventry, but since the timeline is unraveling, all of the passengers, Bill and Louise, are sent into the far future beyond their time. This is a time in the future where the earth has been healed from its damage referred to as New Eden in John Varley’ novel.
It’s interesting that we don’t see the new Eden, but we see the sunrise over the clouds as Sherman’s voice can be heard quoting Winston Churchill: "This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning." So the film is driving home that mankind is getting a second start some time in the distant future.
So it’s kinda nice to imagine that somewhere in the future Louise and Bill are together and having children in a new Eden, which takes us back to that apple Louise eats at the hotel. Louise is the new Eve.
As proof that New Eden was their intention, there was a second ending, which was only released to international audiences. In that version, Louise and Bill materialize in a Garden of Eden in the far future.
With all of this talk of pollution, there is also a mega huge commentary here about climate change. Again, Dr. Mayer says, “We are destroying the planet we live on by complacency. He (future humans) will have to live with our legacy of pollution and acid rain. Our negligence today is producing a world in which our children’s children will be barren and the human race heading towards extinction.”
Need I say more.
I just adore this film for all of the interesting concepts of the future and time travel. My review is a little all over the place, because there were moments when the film nailed the visuals and on the other hand some of the editing, the color grading, and the written structure feels like a decent television production. As well when looking into the budget for the movie, there is no indication on record. That usually means that the budget was probably not substantial and there may have been a lot of borrowed assets from other productions. There was virtually no promotion for the film either. It’s the sure sign of a low budget movie. And so knowing that I give this movie so much credit for delivering as much as it did.
Although it’s flawed, oh so flawed, there are so many amazing little nuggets in this film that I simply love including my fandom for Kris Kristophersen, Cheryl Ladd and Daniel J. Travanti.
This is a very, very guilty pleasure of mine!
My Rating:
8.1
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it.
This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care, movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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