Douglas Trumbull
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
Space is a cold and lonely place, pitiless and indifferent, as Bruce Dern's character grimly realized in Douglas Trumbull's classic " Silent Running ."
The mining operation comes from Outland; the sole man in a space station is like Bruce Dern in Silent Running, talking madly to his plants.
There’s something of a more human 2001 (1968) here and a bit of Silent Running (1972), but comparisons don’t quite do Moon justice, because it’s its own film—and in no small part due to the amazingly nuanced performance of Sam Rockwell.
In a director's statement, he's acknowledged his debt to such cerebral sci-fi classics as Silent Running (1971), Solaris (1972), Outland (1981), and BladeRunner (1982).
While 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972) are obvious touchstones, Jones seems more directly inspired by smaller films of the era such as Dark Star (1974) and Silent Running (1972).
This is not sci-fi action like "Terminator Salvation" or the upcoming "Transformers 2." Instead it's a more contemplative genre piece like the 1972 film "Silent Running."
At the outset, Hanks has Goodyear to keep him company along with a squat, WALL-E-esque robotic companion named Dewey, whose name may be a nod to one of the three greenhouse-tending robots in Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 sci-fi eco-missive, Silent Running .
As the titular Finch, he’s holed up in a research facility in a desert-ified St. Louis with only a dog (Seamus) and a robot named Dewey (a telling nod to sci-fi eco landmark Silent Running), waiting for his end from the cancer from the UV rays that have left no blade of grass on Earth.
In this narrowly focused, post-apocalyptic tale, Tom Hanks plays Finch, a lonely man who lives with his dog and his machines in a heavily armored facility (think “Silent Running” set on Earth).
So I get it — a pre-pandemic one-hander with a little “Silent Running” here, some “Wall-E” there and the fear that it could go all “Omega Man” at any minute.
Finch fits in with those films that show the nicer, kinder side of robots – Bicentennial Man , Short Circuit , Silent Running , A.I. , Wall-E , Interstellar ) – though the droid featured here, named Jeff, is more anthropomorphized than most – so much so we see his chest heave, as though he can breathe.
There’s a little bit of Wall-E in there, a little bit of The Iron Giant, and definitely some Silent Running, too.
…they draw influence from one of the most underrated sci-fi films of the ’70s for their latest work, Douglas Trumbull’s “Silent Running.”
Project Hail Mary doubles and triples down on the communication problems that have been genre staples from 2001 to Silent Running to Contact, Interstellar and Arrival.
Of course older or better viewed filmgoers will recognise Project Hail Mary‘s greater similarities to Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 film Silent Running, in which a plucky isolated man faces a deep space crisis of his own.
Throw in some 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, Silent Running, a bit of Ad Astra, the heart of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, the language of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the isolation of Gravity to mention a few predecessors.
I was reminded of Bruce Dern talking to his cute service robots in Silent Running (1972), but we can now do justice to the reality of speaking to an alien being.
Some readers may be concerned about the pace of “Gravity” because its timeless science-fiction influences clearly owe a debt to Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the smaller Douglas Trumbull triumph “Silent Running.”
For all its A-list production values, this retains the crowd-pleasing essence of a rip-roaring B-picture, closer in tone to the sublime sentimentality of Silent Running or the grand pop philosophy of David Bowie's Space Oddity (Duncan Jones's Moon lurks in the background too) than the stern straight-facedness of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And an adventure film, a quest flick, a cautionary tale (showing the perils of waste, a reliance on automation, and a sedentary lifestyle) and more than a bit of homage to its sci-fi predecessors (most notably "2001" but also "Silent Running," etc.), old Hollywood musicals (of all things, "Hello, Dolly!), and comedic lead characters from the era of silent films.
This is not Pixar’s version of Robots, or a cutesy combination of silent comedy and Silent Running.
Taking visual cues from some of the most memorable science fiction films of our time (2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Silent Running, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Star Wars, to name a few), WALL*E is without question a visual feast worthy of awards and accolades.
The basic premise of "Strange Days" rips off the 1983 sci-fi thriller "Brainstorm."
The sleek, science-friendly elegance of Arthur Max’s production design recalls “Silent Running” (another sci-fi parable with a botanist hero), while its running series of logistical challenges echoes Arthur C. Clarke sequel “2010.”
Lifting underlying riffs from Doug Trumbull’s Silent Running and third-act visuals from Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity , with coincidental hints of Interstellar (Damon is once again stranded on a distant planet, a world away from Jessica Chastain – what are the chances?)…
Jack’s primary concern is the maintenance of a fleet of drones, (a far cry from the cuddly dustbins in Doug Trumbull’s Silent Running – an obvious reference point), which protect the power stations in the oceans.
Much like the blue-collar protagonists of Silent Running and WALL-E before him, Jack's initial objective is simply doing his job: harvesting Earth's remaining water for an off-planet colony.
"Oblivion" is a big sci-fi movie which takes all the ideas in "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Silent Running," "WALL-E" and "Moon" and mixes them up.
The film reaches back into sci-fi cinema's past, zipping through 2001 , Silent Running , Star Wars and Blade Runner before crashing bang up-to-date with WALL-E and Duncan Jones's Moon .
Oblivion looks like an expensive movie right from its first frame, but in much the same way as Duncan Jones' excellent 2009 effort Moon, its minimalist mood stirs memories of those low-key sci-fi works from the early 1970s, pre-Star Wars whispers like Silent Running and Slaughterhouse-Five. Cruise's Jack Harper is an appealing human version of WALL-E with a dash of Mad Max Rockatansky simmering beneath the surface, and the movie seems poised to employ battlefield Earth in exciting ways.
The story is a little bit similar to that of "Brainstorm," a 1983 film which also had great special effects (designed for wide screens and 70 millimeter projectors).
Slipping into a rubber body suit hooked up to all sorts of sensors, Catherine can tap into the thoughts and memories of another person, a la Christopher Walken in "Brainstorm" or Lori Singer in the short-lived TV series "VR.5."
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Directed by J.J. Abrams
influenced by Silent Running (1972)
Themes
When the first trilogy began back in the late 70s, I was old enough to be wedded to the darker, moodier sci-fi of Solaris , Silent Running and Soylent Green , and young enough to believe that gave me the right to dismiss this latterday Buck Rogers nonsense out of hand.
In its mind-boggling sci-fi beauty, it's closer to the heavenly apparitions of Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm than it is to Tarkovsky's source material.
There must also be a farewell scene somewhere, and in this film, it is much like that in the Natalie Wood/Christopher Walken/Ellen Burstyn film, Brainstorm.
However, the final product is actually far more in the vein of the contemplative sci-fi flicks of the 1970s like Solaris or Silent Running .
Think Bruce Dern as the lone environmentalist in Silent Running or maybe even Eddie Izzard’s Death Star Canteen sketch.
But the scale of Interstellar’s execution sits ill with the banality of so much of it, and made me think of other science-fiction films that once made me marvel and filled me with a melancholy sense of the universe as a place of deep, haunting solitude: 2001 most ineffably, but also what you might call the econo-sci-fi likes of Silent Running, Dark Star, and most recently Duncan Jones’s Moon, all pragmatically executed, pared down and yet mustering a massively deep, sad resonance.
Although composer Hans Zimmer doubles down on the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” hum any time Nolan needs an extra shot of awe, Interstellar has less in common with 2001: A Space Odyssey than with its hippie-dippy knockoff Silent Running (it has even more in common with the 1997 film Contact, which also featured McConaughey).
What follows is a dizzying mash-up of The Haunting , Slaughterhouse-Five , Silent Running , Event Horizon and the director’s cut of Aliens , with the inverted time shifts of Inception (an hour on a distant planet equals lost years back on Earth) thrown in for extra emotional heft.
A pair of cool robots are meant as comic relief, I think, in a Silent Running sort of way, but serve mainly to prove that Nolan isn't even rudimentarily funny; and a cameo by Casey Affleck confirms that he's a tremendous actor of real range, if incapable of transcending a distracting call-out to his role as the coward Robert Ford in naming his movie baby "Jesse."
That sense of cosmic isolation reverberates throughout a range of space movies, from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris to Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running (dubbed “the loneliest adventure of all”) and, more recently, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity .
Trumbull worked on 2001 and directed Silent Running, featuring Bruce Dern and a cast of robots, but was specifically not hired by Lucas, who wanted total control of his designs and effects.
In order not to devalue it for you, I don't think I'll tell you what it's about, except that there's a struggle between an oppressive intergalactic empire and heroic rebels, and there's a captive princess, and wonderful comedy-relief robots (derived from Trumbull's Huey, Dewey and Louie in Silent Running), sensational battle with ray guns, battle cruisers, dogfights in outer space, and a young protagonist who bears in his genes the mysterious Force of a dead race of warriors.
The special effects crucially involved John Stears (“Thunderball” and other Bond films) and John Dykstra, who worked on “Silent Running.”
With its inventive special effects, sleekly creepy sets (designed by Guy Hendrix Dyas) and a shivery undercurrent of existentialism, “Passengers” occasionally threatens to become a new science-fiction classic, something along the lines of “Silent Running.”
The film devolves into "Gravity" crossed with "Silent Running," it's wrap is too pat by half, leaving the viewer with more questions than answers.
Getting us to care about whether humanity can survive all this comes down to Elordi, whose wounded-emo performance mixes Bruce Dern’s astronaut botanist in Silent Running with Charlton Heston’s heroic military scientist in The Omega Man.
There may be intentional inspirations from The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and maybe even a bit of Brainstorm in the mix…