The Andromeda Strain

[Guest LoveWarCoffee]

This is quite off topic; but I've been watching the premier of it. (If you haven't seen it, tune in now, it's on A&E, just started over, it's a full 4 hours long, both parts). I think it's a pretty good remake, but a few things about it bother me:

 

1) Time paradox. I don't want to spoil anything but the whole thing ends with a time paradox. I hate that.

 

2) Random "terrorist" jargon (more prevalent in the first 2 hours) sounds a little phony, as do race and homosexuality-related (sub)scenes. They come out of the blue and add nothing to movie except to feel forced and unnatural.

 

Am I alone on this?

[theacefes]

When you run out of worthy material, the next best thing is to find anything that could get people upset and throw it in. This is true for a lot of film productions.

[Miloch]

1) Time paradox. I don't want to spoil anything but the whole thing ends with a time paradox. I hate that.

 

2) Random "terrorist" jargon (more prevalent in the first 2 hours) sounds a little phony, as do race and homosexuality-related (sub)scenes. They come out of the blue and add nothing to movie except to feel forced and unnatural.

Yeah, I noticed both those things. I don't think the scenes are "upsetting" they just don't advance the plot or make sense in context. I think it started off good but got a bit sillier toward the end, and left some questions, like how the supposedly infected character is suddenly ok at the end, and what happened to her family. Maybe they were going for a third episode? I guess the 2003 movie was better (haven't seen it) and the book probably better than that (haven't read it).

[Lantier]

The book is definitely better. The 1971 version is also better.

 

The last 1/2 hour of the A&E version just didn't do it for me.

[Domi]

Well, the supposedly infected character was lucky to encounter the strain that didn't infect humans, instead it attacked plastic, ie the same strain that downed the plane.

 

I didn't notice any of the 2, but then again, I wasn't watching from the start, and wasn't watching it that closely. The ending was incredibly cheesy, and the whole plot a spin-off 2000000 of other plots just like that.

 

Funnily enough the thing I found the most unbelievable was the Chineese specialist who immigrated 10 years ago speaking without any sort of accent. I *wish* it was as easy to get rid of an accent in Real Life!

[CamDawg]

I was excited to see a remake, but it was horrible as they completely missed the point. The novel was written as a dissection of how a series of mistakes--from the mundane to the sublime--almost led to the destruction of the human race. The source of the errors, how they were ultimately resolved, and what we can learn from them is the underlying theme of the novel. The A&E version went for a boilerplate 'zomg killer virus' storyline (with a focus on Ben Bratt to promote his new A&E series, and apparently full sponsorship from the USAF) and it showed.

 

I was very disappointed.

[Miloch]

Funnily enough the thing I found the most unbelievable was the Chineese specialist who immigrated 10 years ago speaking without any sort of accent. I *wish* it was as easy to get rid of an accent in Real Life!

I think it depends on the person. I know some people who immigrated only 5 years ago and managed to lose their accents, whereas people who lived here for much longer still have them. I think a lot of it has to do with getting really good at "faking" the accent of the country you moved to, so it seems a bit disingenuous to me. Accents are cool .

 

I think the original poster was referring to the Ricky Schroder character, who has a scene that has no bearing on any previous or subsequent development. In fact there are a few scenes like this with different characters... probably could've been edited down to a normal-length movie without them.