With the recent hubbub over NASA’s Curiosity roving and zapping the landscape of Mars, I thought it was high time to give a shout-out to the red planet’s neglected outer neighbor, Jupiter.
Frankly, Mars is a bit of an attention whore, having received more than its fair share of focus in movie history.
From cult and oft-cheesy favorites such as the original War of the Worlds, Total Recall, The Martian Chronicles, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians to lesser, blander, decidedly non-classics such as Red Planet, Mission to Mars, Mars Needs Women, Mars Needs Moms, Mars Attacks!, John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, two versions of Invaders from Mars, and John Carter, the red planet has repeatedly been the topic of many an author’s and filmmaker’s imagination.
Poor Jupiter, on the other hand, hasn’t been shown nearly as much love on the silver screen.
The memorable films that venture to the gas giant can be counted on precisely three fingers: Stanley Kubrick’s ethereal, contemplative 2001: A Space Odyssey; its streamlined, audience-friendly sequel, 2010; and Outland, a sci-fi take on the seminal western High Noon that is just now getting its first proper home video release on Blu-ray.
Both Outland (1981) and 2010 (1984) were directed by Peter Hyams, and coming on the heels of Hyams’ 1978 hit Capricorn One (a conspiracy thriller about a faked moon landing), he was understandably perceived as a sci-fi filmmaker during the early ’80s.
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Together, Outland and 2010 offer a unique double-take of the mysterious super-sized planet, even if it serves as little more than mere background scenery (it’s a bitch being made entirely of gas, a physical trait that prohibits any sort of actual, you know, LANDING).
Outland benefits from the mammoth star power of Sean Connery, portraying a lawman pitted against a corrupt company man (Peter Boyle) who runs a mining colony on Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io.
The villains here are human, not extraterrestrial, and the central MacGuffin—designer drugs that heighten worker productivity but result in increasingly horrific episodes of psychosis—is wholly plausible.
The movie was made on the cheap and shows its age, yet despite its obvious B-movie limitations the picture boasts spacious sets and some truly impressive practical and visual effects for its day. Several characters meet their gruesome demise via zero-pressure atmosphere decompression, and the film earns its “R” rating with its realistic depiction of the associated viscera. Alas, for every squishy exploding-head/splattered- entrails bit, there’s a shoddy matte painting or some sloppy roto-scoping effect.
Even so, the film holds up rather well as a relic of the early ‘80s.
The movie marks the first use of IntraVision, a compositing process combining rear-projection elements and foreground miniatures with the actors layered in the space between. Several exterior shots of Connery scaling the top of a greenhouse equal anything digital artists can create with mere keystrokes in this day of pre-fabbed CGI software.
The newly issued Blu-ray offers a rich widescreen transfer of the film that finally does justice to the grain and shadow director Hyams typically paints his pictures with (onscreen Director of Photography credit is given to Stephen Goldblatt, but Hyams typically serves as his own DP). Sonically the movie rumbles with exaggerated bass during the exteriors, highlighted by Jerry Goldsmith’s exciting orchestral score.
As a bonus, the disc includes the theatrical trailer and a feature-length audio commentary by the director.
Outland pales in comparison to the scope and artistry of, say, Ridley Scott’s Alien, but it remains a solid and well-crafted piece of B-movie popcorn entertainment.
2010, often subtitled The Year We Make Contact, was mounted on a considerably larger budget and every penny shows.
The movie inevitably demystifies Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 by explaining too much of what was originally left to interpretation, blending its awesome tale of human endeavor with a Russkies-versus-Americans cold-war scenario that has the world teetering on the brink of World War III. The film details a joint U.S./Soviet mission to Jupiter to learn the fate of the U.S.S. Discovery and its dormant malfunctioned computer, HAL. All clues point towards Jupiter’s moon Europa, which may contain intelligent life. 2010 is more plot-driven and action-oriented than its predecessor, but its lofty themes of spirituality versus science intertwine nicely with the ticking-clock threat of nuclear Armageddon, culminating in a stirring if somewhat ambiguous conclusion.
2010 is breathtaking in its scope, with magnificent, eye-popping visual effects supervised by Richard Edlund (Return of the Jedi), finally done superb justice on home video with a richly detailed widescreen Blu-ray transfer. Other than the ghost of an occasional “garbage matte,” the old-school model-based analog effects of 2010 rival anything George Lucas would eventually concoct for his digital Star Wars prequels. Likewise, the soundtrack rumbles with thunderous bass and eerie ambient effects, and remains one of my favorite demonstration discs. (Fun fact: I’ve blown two subwoofers while showing this movie to friends.)
Casting for both Outland and 2010 is a big part of both films’ appeal. Joining Connery and Boyle on Io are Hyams regular James B. Sikking, future James Bond villain Steven Berkoff and Frances Sternhagen (she would eventually join TV’s “ER” and have a recurring role as Bunny MacDougal on “Sex and the City”). Look sharp for a pre-“Cheers,” pre-Pixar John Ratzenberger as the poor chap who loses his head in the shocking opening sequence. Headlining 2010 are Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren and Bob Balaban, with an extended cameo by Keir Dullea as 2001’s sole/soul survivor, and featuring the voices of Douglas Rain and Candice Bergin as computers HAL-9000 and SAL-9000, respectively.
Seen together, both movies offer a terrific one-two Jupiter punch, and a sampling of Hyams’ visually rich work.
