Fiction, yes; Science? Hmmm...

Rating: Null/10 (14 June 2000)

This film has some of the elements of a Good Science Fiction Film. Well, at least it's fiction and it's a film. Unfortunately, it's not good and it's not science.
After the first few minutes you know exactly who will live and who will die. Thrillers should reserve a few surprises for the viewer! The convict is not a saint, but he will survive and show some basic human feelings at the end. The cop is so arrogant and so sure of himself that he will surely be killed, the only element of surprise being: will it be the convict or the aliens? And, of course, most of the supporting cast will die, with just one exception of two. How often have you seen such a film?

So, this is not really a thriller, too predictable for that. Well, how is the science? From time to time, not very often, there comes a truly good science fiction film. The best I remember were "Soylent Green", "Gattacca", and "The Thirteenth Floor". But just placing the script in an alien world doesn't turn a story into science.
For instance, Astronomers today know a few dozen extra-solar planets. The only feature they know of most such planets is their orbit, almost nothing else is known about them. Yet in this film a crew of planetary scientists had been in the planet, not knowing that there would be an eclipse there! And when they found out that, did they use a computer? An electronic calculator, perhaps? No, they found out using a mechanical contraption built with bicycle chains, and other pieces of junk. Just to put things into perspective, recently NASA lost a probe they sent to Mars because they made an error of about one part per million in the orbit calculation. Yes, engineers and scientists do make mistakes, but can you really believe that a group made of a murderous cyborg and a few religious fanatics could survive where a crew of trained scientists died? Perhaps this is the message that Hollywood tries to send: an ordinary bum who routinely flunked math is really more intelligent than a planetary scientist. Too bad. Don't waste your time with this film.