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-S1E2

-S1E1

Save yourself a few tedious hours, skip this crap and see the 1971 original. This is another example of a movie that has nothing going for it but the good feelings a viewer might have about the original. (How appropriate that I first saw a commercial for it while waiting for the lousy "Indiana Jones 4" to begin.) So, so, so much padding! (And even so, A&E managed to stuff in almost 80 minutes of commercials in the two night run.) Ridiculous plot lines that go nowhere (the Geraldo-style reporter, "vent-mining"), unnecessary time-waster shots of animals eating each other (all just to establish the infection vector of a rat dropped onto a group of National Guardsmen) family squabbles that go nowhere... all of these had the unmistakable feel of an effort to reach a predetermined running time. The problem is, when length is more important a goal than quality, nothing can be left on the cutting-room floor. Trimmed to two hours, this just might have been a watchable movie. Even if decently edited to tighten up the pacing, there's then the problem of reeediculous plot devices that were added to this adaptation. For example: Telepathic germs (you gotta be freaking kidding) Messages from the future (I wish I was freaking kidding) --- Note to you guys in the future: instead of the cryptic "739528", maybe "hey, look on the space station!" would get your point across a little better Orbiting wormholes (still not kidding) Blackbird attacks that kill soldiers in helmets and full combat gear (shades of Alfred Hitchcock) Endless blather about "vent mining", and even a terrorist attack on a vent mining platform. ----- (Oops! did we forget to explain what that had to do with the story?) "Pass the thumb" Andromeda racing across the countryside turning everything yellow. Dime-store CGI (we're talking "Sci-Fi Channel Original" quality) used even in scenes where the real thing would have been easier and more effective: flame throwers, dried blood sifting from a cut, the inexplicable falling debris in the core. Is the action dragging? Time for some Guardsmen to buy the farm! Hollywood leftist paranoia: the evil team of General Mancheck and Colonel Farris, military hit men, NSA stashing a final vial of the pathogen, and (my personal favorite) the company Enburton (Enron + Halliburton?) running the vent mining operation. Michael Crichton wrote the original novel of "The Andromeda Strain", and the 1971 movie remembered so fondly by many was a quite faithful adaptation. You've heard of Michael Crichton because he has written lots of exciting and interesting science fiction, much of which has been turned into movies (of varying quality.) This adaptation was written by Robert Schenkkan. You likely haven't heard of him, because he's been asked to write almost nothing else for the screen. Judging from this production, there would seem to be a reason for that. He has written a number of well-received plays, but apparently that talent does not translate well to television; what I recall of his 2004 "Spartacus" miniseries was on the level of "Andromeda". (Trekkie alert: as a C-list actor, Schenkkan is best remembered for eating an alien cockroach and then getting his head blown up, when he played Commander Remmick in the ST:TNG first-season episode "Conspiracy".) If this is the best A&E can do, I hope that in the future they'll just stay out of the science fiction genre. At the very least they should produce original stories, instead of mucking up remakes of perfectly good predecessors. I'll never get those four hours back, but you still have a chance to miss this movie. Consider yourself warned.

Standard Hollywood product, and very poor. I especially dislike the casting. Instead of age-appropriates medical doctors (40s-50s I'd say), the cast has been chosen for their appeal to the kids : all young (20s-40s) and racially diverse. The additional of the plot point of the strain being an alien invader sent through a wormhole to destroy us, or the suggestion that the strain have to do with a message from the Earthmen of the future, are just silly and far-fetched. If the producers/writer wanted to explore this theme further, it should have been better developed. And that the two villains of the show get their just desserts in the end is also typical of Hollywood: the bad guys must be punished the program must have a happy ending. The show's ending was there, but not as plausible and subtle as 1971's. Readers who remember the original will be disappointed; I don't recommend its purchase.

I can not believe this cast of good actors actually made this poorly written and directed movie. It started off good, however it quickly deteriorated into nothing more than a way for many of the actors to take shots at the current Bush Administration, and the ending was much in need of the Viagra which was advertised every 5 minutes throughout the course of the 4 hours showing on A & E. I can't imagine why Crichton was okay with this. For anyone who never saw the original movie or read the book, please do so and you will find the real story very interesting and captivating. It was Cricton's first best seller written in 1969.

...with bad dreams of this pathetic remake of the classic original by Robert Wise. I kept watching, stabbing at the mute so I could avoid watching the same inane, and frequent commercials. It got worse the closer we got to the climax. It's not that the acting was so bad, it's just that the new plot twists were ridiculous and the special effects budget must have been a couple of hundred bucks. When the thumb throw sequence happened, that was it, just way too silly. Or maybe it was the rat bite on the pooping butt? Or was it the cheesy orange wave of Andromeda over the landscapes and in the rivers? Or the red magic marker lines on the faces on the infected? You get the idea.

Credibility was given the first version for the usual reasons. Is there really anyone who hasn't seen the first one? One of those was that their were gray-hairs in charge of the project and working in the lab. I find it hard to see where the survival of the entire planet would be given to a handful of young scientists. It's more like "The Andromeda Strain for kids". I understand that everyone who does a remake feels compelled to "update" by adding more time and effort to the sub-plots, but really! The original version was tight and tense for it's time. The story was compressed into a normal time slot of approximately two hours. Dragging this story out with unnecessary sub-plots and editing out pertinent data derived from the book is a good example of how to take a good story and ruin it by forcing and expanding sub-plots where they were never needed. Would be a good example for film school on what not to do in a remake.

...but the birds all looked like they'd transform into Dracula at any time. In other words, the effects were absolutely unbelievably horrendous and, what is worse, never really *needed* if someone on the crew had actually read the book. The 1971 version had a few unfortunate futurisms but managed to pull off the real horror of the story, namely the claustrophobia and panic of being doomed on account of a technical glitch. This new version is not only completely superfluous, it is so full of plot holes and logical errors, not to mention character mistakes that are so blatant that no one can possibly believe it. Supposedly the research team is in a hurry (to put it mildly), yet none of them seem to do any work; ever. No, Bela Lugosi was truly missing from this film. Either that, or someone should make an upgrade of the 1971 movie and leave the story alone. Or... we should all simply just watch the original or, better yet, read the darn book.

The Andromeda Clichés. Holy moly, just check them off: Govt conspiracy, heroic "journalist", evil military, arrogant humanity, do-gooder environmentalism, blah, blah, blah. This was such a piece of crap it's hard to believe Ridley Scott had anything to do with it. It's such a mishmash of half-assed developed stories, you'd think that it was written in 10 parts, with none of the writers knowing what the others wrote. They must have had some pretty compromising photos of Crichton doing a dead donkey to get him to agree to this abomination. Save your time and dime and just rent the original. It is a straight up presentation of what might actually occur in a "Wildfire" situation, not the sappy, crappy Lifetime special that A&E slapped together.