Look, there are two distinct ways to watch this movie. If you don’t suspend your disbelief you’ll be mightily pissed at all of the things that don’t make sense. I mean — where to start? A multi-gazillion dollar facility with backup system beyond backup system, yet one of the dudes on the team (for our sake) doesn’t know squat?
But — fuck all that — look at those stills!
Now, maybe I’m telling a little bit about myself, and maybe you won’t be too surprised, but I am willing to forgive a movie that makes absolutely no sense — even one with a horrible cop-out ending like “The Andromeda Strain” — if it delivers on the goods. And this movie delivers on the goods like few others. Look at those stills!
And the fonts! This movie has some of the greatest typography, color-coded hallways, recorded computer-voiced announcements, waveform monitor displays, use of robotic arms, electron microscopes, partical accelerators, telexes up the ying-yang (a whole plotpoint centers on telex machines!), gamma processors, jet propulsive godknowswhats and and and and — let me put it to you this way. Did you know that in “The Andromeda Strain” there is, like, a thirty minute sequence that is lump-in-your-throat awesome that consists, effectively, of four scientists taking an elevator down five flights??!???!!! I’m not shitting you. After a breathtaking sequence of watching four scientists get to the secure Area 51-esque outpost. . .they then take the most intense 16-hour (diagetic time) descent into a clean room. Just when you think the sequence couldn’t go on any longer, there’s another radiation bath (and another color-coded jumpsuit.) God-fucking-damn I get chills just thinking about how awesome it is.
And did I mention the opening title sequence? Sigh, gurgle, drool. . . . I have to buy this on DVD immediately!
Does watching the movie explain how Michael Creighton went flat out batshit insane?