Review of Pandorum (2009) by N N — 29 Oct 2010

Pandorum is a modern masterpiece of science fiction cinema.

All the negative comments seem to me as coming from so many jaded film reviewers who see nothing but versions of previous works. Truly, there are a number of common themes which show up repeatedly (e.g. the 'transformation' meme: Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, Trading Places, etc.; the 'passage' meme as in The Aeneid; and so forth). It's my view that this is a natural consequence of broad, shared human experiences. What matters is the execution of each retelling of such an archetypal story. In this regard Pandorum engrosses and fascinates. Negative reviewers appear to have gotten overly caught up in modern movie contrivances such as action sequences, shocking scene transitions and exposition-heavy 'explanation' moments. I rather focus on story, theme, messages. It might be more appropriate to say I can forgive attempts to keep the audience interested and on edge via filmmaking techniques to which they are accustomed vs the sole merits of the script itself (as long as the acting and production values are appropriate to the piece!). In light of that, it could be a fun conversation to envision this story if it was rescripted as say a slow burn, or a straight-forward action piece with no horror element or even a drama.

Getting back to the point (SPOILERS HEREIN): Pandorum is an outstanding exploration of what happens in an event of contained, accelerated but mis-directed evolution. At the end of the film we are gratified with a resolution to the most immediate problems created by this event, but the viewer is left to ponder what will happen to the survivors: Will their descendents suffer a similar fate? Is it a possibly a natural consequence that humans could readily evolve into what we see on the ship? If you knew that your distant descendents would be Morlocks or Eloi would it affect what you do in the present day?

Pandorum is a hard sci fi masterpiece with high production values (great FX), excellent acting and a good script. As noted, I say that after forgiving the film's employment of some typical, contrived elements that are found in many action-horror films.

If anything, the one fault I find with the film is that the 'pandorum' condition is blamed partly on the fictional cryogenic sleep process. I prefer to think that the behavior of the antagonist is something of which all people are capable: the chaotic shadow self emerging after some confluence of major stressors that break a person. And that is really the heart of sci fi to me (respect to Gene Roddenberry): exploring the human condition in scenarios that stem plausibly from moments in our history. Would you be the same person if you were a starship captain, if you were a Medieval serf, if you came upon a pocket-sized time machine or invented a source of near-infinite energy?

For those of you who have stuck with me, we are left to wonder what the heroine will do in the immediate aftermath? She spent her life developing and assembling the biological ark, then to protecting it (and herself) in the dystopia of the ship. Might she try to recover the samples from the flooded, sunken ship? Will she resume her career so to speak by exploring and cataloging the biosphere of this new world? Rather will she shrug her shoulders and start popping out babies with the hero? It might have been nice to have the additionally gratifying element at the end to know what might happen to the ark. I'm not going to use that as a basis to ding my rating of the film, though, because I feel the need to balance out all the short-sighted, uselessly negative ratings of other reviewers and viewers.

10/10 Awesome film. Not light watching and not good for parties; but excellent when you want to be rapt in a story, see some thought-provoking sci fi and grow your brain.