Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Contact (1997) -vs- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

 

The Smackdown. If you're old enough to remember the marketing campaign for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," then you'll remember the goosebumps you got when you heard the phrase, We are not alone.  What was great about that simple sentence was that it promised a movie about aliens that was about wonder and mystery and wasn't about the same old Hollywood treatment of life in the universe, namely that if it bothered to interact with humans it was for a nefarious reason, everything from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to "War of the Worlds" to the later "Independence Day."   Twenty years after "Close Encounters" came another film that promised to make first contact a matter of humanity's growth out of the cradle and not some intergalactic cage match. Both "Close Encounters" and "Contact" were aliens for smart people brought to you first by the immense talent of Steven Spielberg and later by the immense intellect of Carl Sagan.  In my Hollywood career, I've had the good fortune to discuss UFOs and extraterrestrial life with both of these men and found them to have some very different visions of the subject.  They each have used film to express their views about life as it might exist "out there."  The question is, which version comes closest to what might be the truth about first contact, and which one is the better film?

The Challenger. "Contact" (the movie) directed by Robert Zemeckis is a faithful film adaption of Contact (the novel) written by Carl Sagan.  In both tellings, radio astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster in the film) hits the cosmic jackpot when the giant radio telescopes that are part of S.E.T.I. (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) actually turn up a non-random signal from across the universe.  Someone is talking to us or, more accurately, talking back.  You see, they've picked up the very first television transmission the Earth ever leaked outward, amped it up and sent it back to us.  It's an excellent surprise and -- without spoiling it -- let's just say that the first TV signal that went out from Earth is, well, unexpected.  After that, the story kicks into where no film has really gone before.  There's another signal buried in that TV re-transmission that is, basically, the blueprints for building a gigantic spacecraft... for one person!  Well, if there was ever a situation designed to stretch our humanity to the breaking point, it would be trying to determine who's going to be that lucky (or, in failure, unlucky) person.  Where will they go?  Will they ever return?  Will they die?  Is it some kind of trick?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) -vs- Transformers (2007)

The Smackdown. Hollywood's in love with the 1980s, and nowhere is it more apparent than with the Transformer's franchise. In 2007, the first "Transformers" was a box-office success, easily earning a sequel in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."  Now, in less then two years, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" hits theaters with the same cast and crew as the original.  Sounds like a fair fight?  So true to the spirit of the Transformer series, today's smackdown pits robot against robot in a knock-down intergalactic cinematic fight as we ask which film does robot-on-robot action better?

The Challenger. With "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," Michael Bay spares no expense ensuring audiences get more bang for their $14 movie ticket. This time, a college-bound Sam Witwicky finds himself trapped in the ever-escalating war between the Autobots and Decepticons...again. See, a prehistoric Transformer called The Fallen intends to drain our sun to obtain the Transformer's life-force, Energon. Naturally, he'll then conquer the cosmos or achieve some equally impolite end (like chewing with his mouth open). But only Sam knows the location of this Energon machine due to a series of psychic visions. Now, Sam must lead the Autobots to Egypt where they wage war against The Fallen, his Decepticons, and Megatron...yes, that's right, Megatron's back too. Still want more plot? Don't worry; I just gave you half. Clocking in well over two hours, "Transformers: RotF" has enough plot for three trilogies. It's the only type of sequel you'd expect from Michael Bay: one that's bigger, louder, and dumber.

Deja Vu (2006) -vs- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

 Time It Was 

The Smackdown. Maybe it's because the summer of 2009 has given us another Tony Scott film in "The Taking of Pelham 123" and another episode in the Terminator franchise with "Terminator Salvation," but this Smackdown from 2006 has been getting lots of traffic. 

If people from the future could travel back to the past, wouldn't they have already done it? Would it be better to see into the past or into the future? Do they both exist simultaneously, along with the present, because time is relative to where you are? If you like these kinds of questions, we have a couple of films to really put your through Olympic-sized paces in the Suspension of Disbelief event. We've put a couple of major star vechicles in our time travel machine, both of them about scooting back through the years in order to change the future, both directed by major directors with reputations for getting the action up there on the screen. "Deja Vu" is the more cerebral -- "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is the more literal -- but both of them cause your brain to short-circuit if you think too much about twists-and-turns of time travel as they would have you believe it works. But this is an entertainment site, not a physics lecture, so let's get to it.

The Challenger. The ever-likable Denzel Washington stars in the Tony Scott-directed "Deja Vu," a collaboration that must work for both men since they've done so many films together. This one starts with a terrorist bombing of a New Orleans ferry as a way to get at that time-honored sci-fi question -- if you could go back in time, could you also change the future? This film posits that with all those nifty satellites we have scanning the globe that there's a way to use them to "triangulate" and snoop on anybody we want exactly four days in the past. Okay, that's a stretch,  but it works well-enough that this flashy Jerry Bruckheimer produced, Tony Scott directed movie still works. In a heavily-plotted script by Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio, Washington's ATF investigator uses this hot-new technology to time-travel back to save the life of a woman who holds the key to the terrorist's identity. Naturally, he will fall in love her. Even more obviously, this will never pass the logic test, but even so, the action and suspense never really flags. Bruckheimer and Scott, as a team, have reputations for delivering a great evening's entertainment with lots of loud explosions, fast cuts, and crazy violence -- they don't ask for too much thought but they do provide maximum diversion. The film works.

Moon (2009) -vs- Solaris (2002)

THE SMACKDOWN.  Spending a weekend in, say, Fresno can challenge your sanity so just imagine what spending three years, alone, on the Dark Side of the Moon could do to scramble your sense of reality. "Moon" is the latest little film that could -- made for $5-million -- about a very big idea. It comes to us direct from commercial director Duncan Jones who, helpfully I'm sure, is David Bowie's son. Dad's "Space Oddity" came out in 1969, the year that Neil Armstrong did the original moonwalk, and the year after "2001: A Space Odyssey" was released and blew the minds of a generation of stoned college students.  Besides being compared to the granddaddy of science-fiction, Jones's sci-fi thriller also references such films as "Silent Running," "Alien," "Outland," and even, in one key element, "Blade Runner." We've thrown our share of space films into the Smackdown ring against Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece," but it seems a fresher and more appropriate opponent for "Moon" is Steve Soderbergh's re-make of "Solaris." Both "Moon" and "Solaris" serve up disorienting helpings of the isolation of space, the sense that things are not what they seem, romance bent by quantum physics and leading men who think that, just maybe, they are losing their minds.

THE CHALLENGER. Although there are a few other characters, "Moon" is pretty much a one-man show starring Sam Rockwell who plays an astronaut finishing a three year contract to mine Helium-3 on the moon to ship to an Earth that's using it to achieve glorious clean energy independence. There is also a robot named Gerty to keep him company, one with the same flat energy of HAL from "2001," voiced this time by Kevin Spacey. The problem is that Rockwell's Sam Bell is nearing the end of a three-year shift and he's pretty much falling apart, physically and mentally. The facility is new enough, complete with videos, ping-pong (against yourself) and other diversions, but the antennae to communicate to back home is broken and all he can do is send "message units" and dream of having a real back-and-forth conversation some day soon. Then he discovers that he's not the only thing that's a little off and the story kicks into another gear that is unexpected, odd and uniquely human.

Fire in the Sky (1993) -vs- Communion (1989)

The Smackdown.  The truth about alien visitors may actually be different than what Hollywood has traditionally told you. On the one hand we've had the space brothers who have come to help us save the planet and ourselves ("Close Encounters," "The Day the Earth Stood Still").  On the other hand, we've had the cosmic badasses who've come to create hell on Earth ("War of the Worlds," "Independence Day").  The two films in our Smackdown ring each suggest another alternative.  The aliens are here for purposes that are more mysterious and/or unknowable.  They're not cuddly scientists like "E.T." but bizarre and harsh. Both "Communion" and "Fire in the Sky" tell us that they're here taking people out of their homes and neighborhoods in the middle of the night, tagging them like deer in a Lyme disease study, probing and poking them in ways that suggest rape as much as anything else. Possibly more unsettling is that these two films were both based on books which were based on true stories.  You may scoff at the word "truth" here but, the fact is, the central characters in each -- Whitley Strieber and Travis Walton -- have both passed lie detector tests.  Show me a Hollywood agent who could do that about today's phone list and you'll begin to appreciate the accomplishment.  The questions -- as we continue our film exploration of alien contact -- are, which version comes closest to what might be the truth about alien intentions here on Earth, and which one is the better film?

The Challenger. "Fire in the Sky" tells the story of Arizona woodcutter Travis Walton who was, allegedly, abducted into a spacecraft in the mid-70s in full view of his crew. They were returning from a job, late at night, when they all saw the same thing: a physical craft, hovering in the air above them quite close, full of lights and structure. Walton went out to take a look, ended up in a beam of blue light and disappeared. His friends ran in fright. Walton was gone for five days, causing authorities to suspect his co-workers of murder. When he returned, he had a spectacular story about being inside an alien craft. And, like I said, he and his crew all passed lie detector tests. The film version stars D.B. Sweeney as Walton in a script from Tracey Torme who'd already made a name for himself in the UFO genre with the CBS miniseries "Intruders." As a personal aside, I remember, as a near-graduate in broadcasting at the time, covering this story based on the dispatches from the Zodiac News Service while doing the "news" at Eugene's hippie FM station, KZEL. The story in my mind turned out to be different that the film they made. The film is about 80% centered on the five witnesses who didn't get abducted. Instead they have to face the folksy and skeptical lawman Frank Watters played by James Garner.