Well, we went to see Pandorum tonight.  The theater wasn’t crowded at all.  There was absolutely nothing to detract from the movie – except for the movie itself.

Suffice to say, I was not impressed.  Spoilers follow – you have been warned.

So, Bower wakes up from some kind of hypersleep…  Finds himself locked in a room.  Eventually Payton wakes up as well.  Bower crawls out through some air ducts, makes his way into the ship proper.  Payton stays behind to yell at him over the radio.

Turns out the ship, the Elysium, is a colony ship bound for another planet.  Something went very wrong back on Earth, and the folks on board the Elysium are the last survivors of the human race.  Oh, and the ship’s reactor is dying – if it isn’t re-started everyone is going to die.

So Bower has to make his way through swarms of mutated ex-humans towards the reactor.  Payton keeps yelling at him over the radio.  Bower runs into a few other survivors.  Someone mysterious shows up in Payton’s locked room.

We’re told that “pandorum” is basically just a fancy name for space madness.  People go loony when they’re in deep space for too long.  They get paranoid, suffer hallucinations, and kill people.

We’re told that the mutants are the result of some kind of evolutionary accelerator that’s been injected into everyone on the ship.  It was supposed to help them adapt to the new planet upon arrival…  But, instead, it’s helped them adapt to the confines of the ship.

Bower re-starts the reactor.  Payton fights the mysterious stranger, who turns out to be Payton – yup, that’s right, Payton’s got space madness and he’s hallucinating.  Turns out he’s the one who screwed everything up on the ship.  He went mad after hearing what happened to Earth, killed the crew, wreaked all sorts of havoc, then crawled into a hypersleep tube.

You get a big ol’ showdown on the bridge…  Bower’s starting to go a little loony.  Payton is on a power trip.  The girl is being helpless.  The mutants are breaking in.  And it turns out that they’ve already arrived on the new planet.  The ship is sitting on the bottom of the ocean.  The window breaks, there’s lots of water, a dramatic exit…

And those who live, do so happily ever after.

Yeah.  Right.

First of all, why the hell make up a new name for space madness?  Why not just say that people go crazy after being in space too long?  Why not come up with a believable-sounding name for it – like OTSD – Orbital Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Sounds a lot more believable than pandorum.

Also, why name you movie after space madness and then make most of the conflict in the movie revolve around the mutants?  Granted, the pandorum disorder is apparently what got them all into this…  But it only actually plays a very small part in the movie.  It isn’t until the last 30 minutes or so that it really matters at all.

And the mutants…  They evolved to suit the inside of a ship by losing all their hair, becoming super strong and super fast, and losing any ability to speak or operate heavy machinery.  Yeah…  Obviously very well suited to the inside of a space ship.  So well suited that they can’t even open doors that are slammed in their faces.

It probably would have made more sense just to say that the evolutionary accelerant had straight-up malfunctioned – rather than try to explain it as them better fitting into their environment.

And Payton manifesting an alter-ego, that he eventually has to fight?  Yeah…  Fight Club did it right.  This movie did not.  It was just stupid.

Ultimately, Pandorum was at its best when people weren’t running, screaming, and dying.  It was most enjoyable when it stopped trying to be a horror movie and dipped its toes into real science fiction.

Bower slowly pieces his memory back together…  Remembers who he is, why he’s there, what happened to his wife…

Payton (sort of) remembers who he is and (sort of) comes to grips with what he did…

There’s a brief glimpse of complexity, passion, and history as Nadia explains how important it was to her to save the genetic samples from Earth…

There’s glimpses of what happened to Earth.  A brief look at what things were like before it all went to hell.  A brief look at what things were like after it all went to hell.

There’s mention of Payton’s wife…  But not what happened to her.

The guy from agriculture, who doesn’t speak a word of English, appears to have quite the history…  He’s a quick and brutal fighter.  He doesn’t seem to want to work with anyone else.  He’s covered with scars.  I’d love to know what happened to him before this…  If those scars came from fighting the mutants, or his previous life, or what.

There’s a moment towards the end of the movie where one of the mutants throws a weapon to the agricultural guy – to give him a fighting chance, like he wants an honorable battle.  There’s a sense that these two might have a history together.  Maybe they used to know each-other before one of them mutated?  Maybe the two have just been fighting each-other a while?

I think the problem is that this movie tries to do too much, and fails to accomplish anything.

I like the idea of this ship being launched out into space carrying the last hopes of humanity.  I like the idea of someone going a little insane under that kind of pressure…  Seizing command…  Becoming godlike within the domain of the ship…  Ultimately not wanting to surrender his control once their destination is reached…  Maybe pointing the ship off into deep space forever.  Maybe refusing the land the ship once it arrives.  Maybe refusing to open the doors of the ship once it has landed.  I think that could make for some very good science fiction.

It probably wouldn’t be too action-packed…  Maybe some people yelling at each-other.  Maybe a fist fight or two.  Maybe a murder or three.  But the pivotal thing would be the psychological battle.  Do you hold onto control of your own little domain – and condemn the entire human race?  Or do you destroy your own world so that humanity can live?

I also like the idea of an evolutionary accelerant going horribly awry and producing tons of mutant killing machines.  This could easily make a good action/horror film…  But you’d want to focus on the monsters.  The big goal would be to kill or contain the creatures, depending on where your movie takes place.  You wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time contemplating where you were or how you got there…  It’d just be a matter of survival.

The problem is that Pandorum tries to do both of these things.  It tries to ponder Payton’s insanity while being chased around by monsters.  There isn’t enough time to contemplate anything.

You get a lot of half-assed action scenes broken up by half-assed psychological ambiguity.

Ultimately, I just was not terribly entertained.  I really wasn’t surprised by any of the things that happened.  I saw most of the twists coming.  I wasn’t startled or scared by anything.  The monsters were not horrific.  There was very little tension of any sort.

All things considered, a very disappointing movie.

Posted on September 25 at 9:52 PM