Ahhh, the sweet, sweet smell of Science Fiction B-Movies.
It almost feels like we forgot how to make this kind of pulpy science fiction film, with an absurd, time-twisting plot; a strange romance at its center, sprawling across a lifetime within the course of a day; and with a serious, mainstream science fiction writer on board providing the story.
But at the same time, Millennium carries with it the seriousness of the Air Disaster movie best typified by the Airport series.
And don’t forget to throw in a solid cast headlined by Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd and Daniel J. Travanti.
It’s a wonderful, pulpy mix, a last gasp of the Eighties science fiction movie with some beautiful analog effects and an unusual background.
Kris plays Bill Smith, a weary NTSB crash investigator called in to investigate a tragic but apparently routine accident in which two jet liners crashed into each other. There are a few strange details but he doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
However, he spends the night with a ticket agent named Louise only to discover, to his shock, that she does not work for the airline.
And, when he takes a last minute look around the wreckage he discovers some sort of device which clearly does not belong on the plane. However, Bill accidentally stuns himself when he tries to examine it — and moments later a set of mysterious women appear to retrieve it.
One of them is Louise.
Except that she doesn’t recognize him…
It has been a very long time since I last saw Millennium: I know I saw it on TV, and some time after it actually came out, but that still puts it back some thirty years ago. At the time I liked it, but thought it was just okay — although a few scenes have stuck with me over the years.
The biggest of these was the portrayal of the investigation, where all the pieces of the shattered plane have been collected and laid out in a big hanger. We get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of this huge machine of an investigation, with a snarl of different agencies and companies — and even one of the labor unions — all cooperating with each other.
This realism serves as the strong backbone of the film, the structure on which the fantastic part of the story hangs.
I would be the first to acknowledge that their approach to time travel is a bit wonky (although, now that I think of it, not that different from that in Back to the Future) but the film is at least consistent in how it handles these elements.
Well, except perhaps at the very end. But then, they never went forward in the rest of the film.
Millennium was directed by Michael Anderson, one of those talented directors who made quite a few respected films — like The Dam Busters and Around the World in Eighty Days — before ending up primarily working on TV. However, along the way he did film several genre films worth noting, including Logan’s Run, Orca, and the TV miniseries version of The Martian Chronicles.
Oh, and that movie version of Doc Savage.
But the less said about that one the better.
Not only did Anderson give us a strikingly realistic behind the scenes view of an airport and the investigation, but he also creates a stunning vision of the future, particularly our glimpses of the badly damaged members of the council ruling this world.
Science fiction writer John Varley adapted his own short story “Air Raid” for the screen, although he wasn’t entirely happy with the results as it had been rewritten six times as the story got handed from one director or producer to another. He felt it had lost something along the way, although the final result was one of the most memorable science fiction films of the late Eighties.
Certainly, it turned out way better than his first story to make it to the screen, the PBS television version of his novelette, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (which had far too many ideas and not enough money).
Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but Millennium really caught me off guard this time around: not the stunning look of the film, the dazzling effects, and its grounded setting, but its wild and pulpy, old fashioned spec fiction story with its complex time mechanics.
You can argue all day about whether any of it makes sense, but that doesn’t matter, because Millennium is a lot of fun whether it makes sense or not. It is wild-eyed adventure, a detective story and even a star-crossed (or at least, “time crossed”) romance.
All rolled up into one.
rivets on the poster 