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Outland -Warner Brothers (1981)
Summary A cowboy tale......IN SPACE! Shawn Connery is a new sheriff in a mining colony on one of Jupiter's moons. He stirs up the system and kicks some ass. My Thoughts I first picked this DVD up at Wal*Mart in the bargain bin for about 5 bucks. I remembered seeing parts of it as a kid with my Mom on TV, so I thought it would be worth it. I didn't know exactly what to expect when I got around to watching it since kid’s can be pretty stupid as Yu-gi-oh shows us, so I didn’t know what to expect. By the time the credits rolled, I was surprised how good this movie is. Outland isn't a normal sci-fi shoot-um-up or monster fest. It’s a remake of a western, so the problems are human ones, but in a future seting. It takes place in that era in the future that's going to look like the 1980's. This is the same time frame that the film Alien takes place in. Trucker's caps and beards make a big comeback in human history according to both of these films among other antiquated fashion styles and technology. (Editor’s Note: This was written before truckers caps actually made a comeback, go figure.) Also according to this film, in the future computers will appear vastly different. In a blow to companies like Microsoft, the Commodore 64 and non-windowed operating systems become the norm. Computer generated images will also appear in super low resolutions. Keyboards will also gain back their super loud clackity keys.It's amazing to see how closely the films resemble each other in both terms of set pieces and character wardrobe. Both are dark films, but where Alien has a bigger epic horror bent, Outland goes for a suspenseful story of man against society. The plot is great and the pacing really moves to build up the suspense of the final showdown between Marshall Sean and a group of hired assassins. The head badass in the colony is played from an interesting angle by Peter Boyle. Mr. Boyle plays the corrupt mining colony head administrator very well, he's not a Darth Vader, but he instead is a cool controller that figures everyone should bow to the system eventually. Outland does a pretty good job at depicting a realistic future. There are only a few things with which I can pick apart. One of these is the stylistic choice that the only guns used by anyone are sawed-off shotguns. Granted they are Space Shotguns, which I'm sure are infinitely better than normal shotguns, but why not have a sidearm like a .45? It becomes even more confusing when Marshall Sean places his shotgun down on a computer consol like its dead weight. Why don’t they have any sort of holster on their uniform to carry it in? I can see the choice for this type of weapon, since there wouldn’t be that much long distance fighting in a small, tightly spaced space station. But, what I couldn’t understand was the fact that the hired assassins bring their own weapons and have night-vision scopes on their shotguns…what?? How can you get any distance with a sawed off shot gun? I’m not a gun expert, but from what I know about spread patterns is that even if they used a slug…this doesn’t make any sense. Then again, these are Space Shotguns. One thing I'm really looking forward to is the bars of the future. The bar in the mining colony seems much like bars of today, except for the people having sex on stage in various parts of the room. Wow, what a great society to live in. On another note, sci-fi movies can either have okay, or completely retarded music. The “Future Music” holds up surprisingly well, which is always great when you don't grind your teeth when watching a film, or much worse, begin laughing at it. Overall, this is a great film that’s still an entertaining watch despite a disappointing video transfer. Extras There are only a couple of extras on this disc, and they are all text and nothing very special. “The Galaxy” is by far the most extensive part of the extras. It consists of filmographies (ugh), and bios of the stars, composer, and writer/director. “The Making of Outland” has a good amount of information about the making of the film, but again it’ just a couple of pages of text. “A Perfect Model of the Future” features information about the models used in the film such as the mining colony and space ship. By far the worst part of the extras is a close tie between “Designs for the Future” and “Introvision.” “Designs” is just a little bit of information about the space suits used and “Intro” is even less information about a technical aspect of a process that was used for the first time in film history. Score Film: 8.5 Extras: 2.0 Edition: 6.0 -Paul |
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