In some ways this can be seen as the last entry in a genre that began with DESTINATION MOON in 1950. The Space Age had come and gone.
What was it all about? Surely not about a McDonalds opening on Mars!
The truth, so embarrassing to all believers in reason, is that this ambition was basically religious – with CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND the same year it turned into cargo cult. We are not alone!
Even the NASA commercial 2001 – A SPACE ODYSSET has this subtext. Actually, it doesn’t really matter, if we never made it past our lunar province, as long as there’s a chance we may listen in on some galactic ham operator.
Either way, it’s the alien (illegal or otherwise) that has our interest. There’s no obvious reason why this should be so.
After all, we didn’t go to America to meet the American Indian. In fact, he proved a damned nuisance, and we ended up having to exterminate him – which is also what we expect extraterrestrials to do to us, if they should ever return the favour.
Unless of course they are friendly gnomes that only little kids can see. The journey to the stars – and before the agriculturalist’s need for a calendar made us look up, the underworld – is older than any rocket or balloon.
Sometimes we visited the denizens of these distant regions, sometimes it was the other way around. And just like in the sci-fi flick and creature feature, these gods and monsters might be scary or a human form display.
They looked different from their Gothic relatives, but maybe they were just less upfront. CAPRICORN ONE speaks of the end of a dream, but perhaps it’s an awakening – the end of reason or the dream of reason?
By now, space exploration has become a kind of poor relative of the military-industrial complex, powerful enough to put out contracts on bothersome individuals and have the FBI cover it up. Such suggestions didn’t make the audience bat an eye in the seventies.
The premise is the faked moon-shot, transferred to Mars. The astronauts are blackmailed into playing along, and when the capsule burns up during re-entry, expendable.
Enter the intrepid scruffy journalist and his cross-eyed girl Friday, the result being an intelligent thriller with room for dialogue – and a great speech or two – as well as action and some impressive stunts. In short, it’s entertainment in the venerated Hollywood tradition, before the kiddie-shows took over.