Review of Moontrap (1989) by Paul F — 07 Sep 2006

As we all know, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first Americans to walk on the moon, their arrival noted with glee by killer robots tunnelling underground. Or so implies the opening segment of Moontrap, a mid-budgeted little science fiction tale that probably gets more attention than it deserves due to the unlikely pairing of Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell.

Koenig (in between "Star Trek" films) and Campbell (in between "Evil Dead" ones) play a pair of astronauts who stumble across an allegedly vacant alien wessel* on a routine spaceflight. The two bring find a decomposed body and a weird-looking football thing, which they take back to scientists on Earth. (They've apparently never seen a post-"Alien" sci-fi film before, or else they'd be aware of the rule that anything taken from an alien ship that resembles a pod of any kind always contains an evil alien bent on killing people rather than, say, gold or chocolate.).

The scientists discover that the body is over 14,000 years old and contains moon dust, and while they're making plans to go back to the moon, the aforementioned pod opens up on its' own and becomes a little robot critter that starts taking machine and human parts to become a big robot critter. Several corpses later, the NASA army (or whatever) takes it down and they decide that it would, in fact, be a really great idea to go back to the moon and find more of these things. You know, for science or something. So Chekov and Ash**, along with a third guy who becomes so unimportant I didn't even bother to look him up on the IMDb, head back into space and take turns walking very slowly across the moon.

For the record, the special effects in [i]Moontrap[/i] are actually pretty ambitious, and while some of the model work looks silly in this CGI age, a lot of the robot stuff is actually quite good. There's a certain attention to detail that you don't find in a lot of Sci-Fi, like the lack of sound in space or the slow movement across the moon, and it's rather refreshing... for a while. Unfortunately, this means that vast bulks of the film look like they were shot in slow motion, and space shuttles and lunar landers are cool and everything, but after about five minutes, you kind of want to look at something else.

Eventually, however, the moonwalking stops and the astronauts discover a hidden fortress with a sleeping ancient astronaut named Mera. We can tell she's an ancient astronaut because she has a slightly avant-garde hairstyle, a different color space suit, and no English skills. In fact, she doesn't seem to speak her own language at all, and has no input for the rest of the film except to show her boobs to Walter Koenig, but more on that later.

The killer robots are on their asses pretty quick, giving Bruce Campbell not only a ridiculous, Trinity-length death sequence involving more bleeding from the mouth while sputtering sage, smirking wisdom than an entire season on "Alias," but also the opportunity to come back as a GIANT ROBOT ZOMBIE. It's inspired in its' silliness, and no doubt the reason Campbell took the part. Hell, it's significantly more entertaining than anything in [i]The Man With the Screaming Brain.[/i].

The robots kidnap Chekov and Mera ("for spare parts!" Koenig helpfully discovers--just making this realization despite the fact that he'd been fighting off robots that tear off human parts for their own use for most of the film's running time) and launch them into space, where a daring escape is made. Well, not so much daring as it is stupid--Koenig is cuffed to a wall, but his cuffs are too big for his apparently microscopic wrists, and he manages to slip out. What the hell kind of lame-ass robotic alien armada is this?

See, the fact that the alien robots are kinda cool looking doesn't matter when you start to consider how stupid their plans for invasion actually are. They kidnapped a bunch of ancient astronauts 14,000 years ago, and then waited patiently for more humans to arrive because, Chekov tells the audience (he could be talking to Mera, but she doesn't understand what he's saying, so why bother?), they needed the Lunar Lander as the final piece to complete their ship. Eh? This advanced civilization that's not only capable of apce travel but [i]appears to be completely mechanical in nature[/i] couldn't come up with the resources on their own that are included in our dinky little lunar lander? And they waited 140 centuries just on the assumption that we'd come up with the technology and get our lazy asses out there eventually?

And how many "ancient astronauts" were there anyway? There must have been thousands, to keep them in spare parts for so long--especially since they obviously need spare parts as soon as Chekov and Mera are captured, as the first thing they do is to whip out the turkey carving knife.

There character of Mera is completely wasted as well. It starts out okay, with her using her ancient astronaut laser gun to shoot a big robo-thing, but pretty soon, she resorts to being amonst the most useless sci-fi love interests in film history. She doesn't point anything out, she doesn't dispense any useful information about anything, she can't defend herself (even her gun--which, logically, only she'd know how to use well--is taken away and used by Chekov) and she ends the film not teaching Earth about what this previously-unheard of civilization from 14,000 years ago that had mastered space travel was like, but rather being Chekov's dinner date and questioning him about the meanings of euphamisms like "falling stars.".

The one thing she does is console Chekov after Ash dies. He is sad, so what he obviously needs to do is to make out with a 14,000 year old woman with weird hair. She takes off her top, which is uncomfortable and gratuitous, as we've already had token nudity when the two were hanging out in a strip joint on Earth. We're spared a Chekov love scene (or, god forbid, a butt shot) but we already know too much--and the relationship between them doesn't make any sense in any way but one.

The relationship is very, well, Captain Kirk. Space babe bares all, doesn't talk, has nothing to contribute, is beautiful, falls for the captain, is rescued by him, has eternal gratitude. It's the prototypical James T. Kirk romance, and it's not all that surprising that Walter Koenig signed up for a part that finally allows him to get the girl and save the day. It's just a little disappointing that it's so generically done that it borders on parody.

[i]Moontrap[/i] isn't a terrible film--Koenig and Campbell are both good, though they have minimal chemistry as a team. The special effects are decent and the science is significantly more accurate than you'd expect. It's just that it stumbles on concepts interesting enough to explore, but then doesn't bother trying to come up with a reason for anything. It's certainly obvious that a certain care was taken to [i]Moontrap[/i]'s making, but not enough of it was focussed on the plotting itself, and that's kind of a shame.

[size=1]* -- Sorry, had to do it. Just once. I promise.[/size].

[size=1][/size].

[size=1]** -- I'm sure the characters have names. I don't care.[/size].