They've done a 4 hr. remake of "The Andromeda Stain" which will air on the A&E channel May 26th and 27th. I wonder if it will be as good as the original. I really enjoyed the original movie (never read the novel, though, which may be why. I'm always disappointed in the film if I've read the book. ) and I'm hoping this one will be good as well.

-Richard

It has been a very long time, but IIRC I liked the book too. Why don't they just show the original movie, it was excellent?

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The first movie was fine. I see no need for a remake.

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i liked the original movie and the book--the movie followed the book very well. Back in those days, a high percentage of movies followed the books well. Nowadays, it seems almost mandatory for screenwriters to make it their own.

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

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I was never able to understand what the fuss over the book was all about. It's a workmanlike effort and I enjoyed it as an afternoon once-read, but the science was mostly psuedoscience and the plot was old and hackneyed at the time, right down to the big QUESTION MARK? epilogue. I mean, an organism able to interconvert matter and energy? That's 30's scientifiction.

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Not to mention the deus ex machina resolution of the big problem. "It mutated into a mostly benign form." "Oh good, lucky for us then." All of it mutated?

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
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The end "resolution" was a problem, but I agree completely with Swift,
Jason, and tdvance. I think I saw the movie the first day it came out.
If so, that may be the only movie I saw the first day. It was great.
I read the book shortly afterward and it was equally good. They made
some improvements for the movie over the book, but of course the
movie contains all kinds of things a book can't, whereas this particular
book didn't contain much that couldn't be filmed, and the story was
compact enough that everything important could go into the movie.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

For those who have already seen it Ugh, this did nothing to disuade the evil gubment ideas. Perpetuating the idea that the military is staffed with nothing but mindless drones who kill on command. And a veritible rainbow of a cast. Of course most of the white guys were evil. yada yada the original was better and easier to follow. Plus the resolution seemed to have been contrived on the last day of filming. Two thumbs down. This remake should have never happened.


But hey, don't let me influence you.

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I didn't mind it so much. In fact, I rather enjoyed all the additional plot complications. The thing that went over the top for me was the endless time-loop ending. More than I can swallow at a single sitting.

The book was what, 150 pages long? how are they turning it into a four hour mini?

Personally I don't think Crichton has written anything remotely good except Jurassic Park. And most of the stuff he did before then seems a bit silly now, given his po-faced conviction of where science would take us in the future. I remember reading in The Terminal Man Chrichton's authoritative claim that humans would be jacked into giant vat-grown axillary brains by 1986, vastly increasing their intelligence.

I used to give the guy the benefit of the doubt; even after Rising Sun, which displayed attitudes about Japan and free trade that were out of date in 1974. Then, after he allowed himself to become the poster boy for the "global warming hoax" movement, I gave up.

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It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

The book and the original movie were FAR better.

Typical Hollywood 're-imagining'.

If they wanted to make a techno-thriller, they should have just written a new one rather than wipe their feet on a perfectly good property.

*******SPOILERS**********
(Highlight below to see)


I was kind of half-paying attention by the end as the whole time travel thing was too convoluted for my taste, but did they intentionally use MIR as a "gotcha" or were they just borrowing the 3d model from a library and hoped no one would notice and would just assume it to be a "future space station"? I didn't see anything spelling it out for the layman observer so I really wasn't 100% sure how to take the ending.

I just read the synopsis on Wikipedia. Boy oh boy, am I glad I didn't waste any magnetic oxide on that thing.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Uhg.
The acting was stiff. Nothing left but the ghost of a good story tarted up for the present day.

I didn't think it was that bad. The notion of a 'thinking' virus was wacky, IMO. But I could live with the 'reimagining' of the story overall.

On a sidenote...the FX were decent. The gunshots looked pretty convincing. CGI arterial spray looks better than squibs.

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Hmmm. Guess I'll stick to the original movie, thankyouverymuch.

Now I've got two questions echoing in my head:

1. Could a pathogen (space-borne or otherwise) ever behave in such a manner as Andromeda?

2. If a person or group of persons gets stuck in a time-loop like that, how do you get out? Human sacrifice to Dialga? Could something like that harm the space-time continuum if it continues long enough?

- Maha Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

Agreed.

But, then again, maybe my best memories are from 30 years ago.

The original was filmed with a brighter background color instead of a darker spookier background. The actors showed more emotion and the plot was much easier to follow. The lab seemed so much more real in the original, maybe because older movies left more to the imagination.

Hopefully, they won't remake the classic movie THX 1176 (I think it was called) with Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasance. Now there are classic actors!

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No.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Care to explain yourself a lot further, sir? IMO simply answering a question in a science forum with "no" isn't enough; you have to explain why you gave that "no".

- Maha Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

To be fair to Mike, the original question wasn't specific.
To "behave in such a manner" in a movie where it's doing so many strange things is hard to answer.
When I watched, I just remember saying "no way...no way...no way...no way..."
But; if I were to chose one that I remember, I would probably point out the part about communicating biological adaptations.
How can an organism be told "here's how you should evolve" without the recipient being able to react with that environment?

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Well, bacteria do "communicate biological adaptations" (antibiotic resistance, digesting novel sugars, and, yes, pathogenicity) after a fashion using plasmids and phages. However, since this is supposedly a virus we're talking about, I don't see how it could do the same thing.

- Maha "straining the bound of reality" Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx