Rudolph Maté
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Unfortunately, Proyas and his battalion of screenwriters had to come up with answers and once they do, it’s all downhill (toward the apocalypse) from there with plot elements borrowed from George Pal’s 1951 science-fiction film, When Worlds Collide, Stephen Spielberg’s 1977 science fiction classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact (a.k.a. the Other Asteroid Movie).
A crotch-first fusion of Rudolph Maté's D.O.A. and "Grand Theft Auto", it defines that genre of video game-inspired non-sequitur mayhem indicated by epileptic edits, CGI-aided wire-fu, and John Woo gunplay by offering a high concept (hero is dying of a rare Chinese toxin that can be held in abeyance only with a steady infusion of adrenaline) as its narrative/excuse to exist.
Interstellar (2014)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by When Worlds Collide (1951)
Plot Themes
Yet, stripped to its essence, "Interstellar" works like an update to the 1951 sci-fi classic "When Worlds Collide," about relocating humans to a nearby hospitable planet before the Earth ceases to exist.
Harking back to Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie’s 1933 novel When Worlds Collide (a Depression-era text brought to the screen by producer George Pal in the 1950s), Nasa builds a “space ark” – a giant ship that will take mankind to a new home in the stars, provided the “problem of gravity” can be solved by avuncular Professor Brand (Michael Caine).
At 169 minutes, “Interstellar” is an interminable cautionary fable along the lines of the ’50s disaster film “When Worlds Collide.”
There's the giant wall of water from The Poseidon Adventure, the apocalyptic ark from Evan Almighty, the panoramas of devastation and dad-and-son bonding from Spielberg's War of the Worlds and the notion of prominent people getting a ticket out of the disaster from both Dr. Strangelove and the 1951 film When Worlds Collide.
Titanic and When Worlds Collide are similarly strip-mined.
The destruction, admittedly, is all state-of-the-art — half a century and many technical generations removed from the original “When Worlds Collide.”
And while the script, by "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelhof and Jon Spaihts, abounds in classic sci-fi references -- everything from " When Worlds Collide " to " The Thing From Another World " gets a nod -- and purposeful narrative intricacies, there are, I must admit, times when it alternates between a certain evident slackness and overkill.
The menacing globes in “Melancholia,” Lars von Trier’s half-baked, existential version of “When Worlds Collide” (1951), aren’t in outer space.
The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
Directed by Breck Eisner
influenced by The Black Shield of Falworth (1954)
Characters
Not since Tony Curtis in "The Black Shield of Falworth" has a New Yorker been so misplaced - and Curtis at least was allowed to retain his own hairdo.
So Rachel now has seven days to solve her own murder, and I couldn't help thinking of Edmond O'Brien getting quite a bit less than that to figure out who poisoned him in the great 1950 film D.O.A.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Directed by George Lucas
influenced by The Black Shield of Falworth (1954)
Dialogue
It would also help if Christensen and Portman were more expressive actors and if the dialogue they were forced to utter didn't sound like it was stolen from "The Black Shield of Falworth," starring Tony Curtis, in 1954, but he's not that kind of director either.
In an essay from 1965, “The Imagination of Disaster,” Susan Sontag noted that many of the apocalyptic films of the fifties and sixties (like “When Worlds Collide” and “The Mysterians”) were made in the U.S. and Japan.
The idea of the fabled 1% literally living among the stars while the other 99% suffer in the environmental and social wreckage wrought by their greed is strikingly literalized here, and Blomkamp daringly associates class and race by making virtually all of Elysium’s residents white while virtually everyone back on Earth is some shade of brown (it’s a self-conscious reworking of the unconscious racist elements of earlier sci-fi movies, such as When Worlds Collide, in which a small number of people, every single one of whom is white, escape Earth just before a rogue planet crashes into it).
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)
Directed by Lorene Scafaria
influenced by When Worlds Collide (1951)
Themes
From “When Worlds Collide” to “Armageddon” and “Melancholia,” the “end of the world” story is a science fiction staple.
Basically this is The Dirty Dozen meets When Worlds Collide: a grubby team of oil drillers headed by Willis is dispatched to save the planet by nuking the asteroid from within.
With a flawed hero struggling to keep “afloat” while straining to recall a boozy night, the story riffs on films like D.O.A., DETOUR, and AFTER HOURS…