Conceived as Planetfall, Dark
Star (1974) is the first film of director John Carpenter and writer Dan
O’Bannon. The film began as a student
project at U.S.C. in 1970, with principal photography occurring early in 1971.
The film underwent re-shoots in 1972 to extend the fifty-minute production to
eighty-minutes, and to make it viable for a theatrical release. The film was then purchased by Jack H. Harris
(The Blob [1958]), who demanded
additional reshoots. The film finally
premiered in 1975, and met with positive reviews, but relatively little
audience appreciation.
Regardless of its origin as a
student film, Dark Star is today considered a cult-classic. Its low-budget nature does not take away significantly
from the film’s success in part because it is clear the filmmakers had both a
creative strategy, and an example to follow.
In short, Dark Star is the anti-2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). As a work of (caustic) 1970s art, it knowingly
draws all the opposite conclusions about space travel, mankind, and man’s place
or role in the universe. In so cleverly over-turning the 2001 apple cart, Dark
Star not only lives up to its title, it remains one of the funniest
science fiction films made in the 1970s.
“Don’t
give me any of that intelligent life crap. Just give me something I can blow
up.”
Eighteen
parsecs from Earth in Sector EB-90, the spaceship Dark Star continues its apparently
un-ending mission: to destroy unstable planets in order to pave the way for
human colonization.
Unfortunately,
the ship has grappled with some severe damage recently, and the newly promoted
captain, Doolittle (Narelle) is ill-prepared when one of the ship’s
thermonuclear bombs prepares to detonate while still attached to the underbelly
of the ship. Dark Star’s computer
suggests teaching the bomb the study of Phenomenology.
While
Doolittle grapples with this existential crisis, Sergeant Pinback (Dan O’Bannon)
battles a mischievous alien pet that has escaped from captivity and Lt. Talby
(Dre Pahich) dreams of seeing the mysterious Phoenix Asteroids with his own
eyes…
“Are
you willing to entertain a few concepts?”
Dark
Star is an
outer space comedy that succeeds brilliantly on the basis of a very good,
well-told joke. Visually, thematically, and in terms of philosophy, the film cleverly
operates as the antithesis of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968).
Being
the “Anti-2001” may sound like a relatively simple or juvenile thing, but
actually the opposite is true considering how consistently Carpenter and O’Bannon’s
film develops its world-view. By
creating a world so clearly and deliberately the inverse of Kubrick’s vision, Dark
Star’s creators have fashioned an intelligent and challenging response
to that beloved science fiction film, one that meaningfully re-evaluates
mankind’s nature and his place in the universe.
In
brief, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a majestic,
stately picture that establishes the mysteries of the universe in the form of
the monolith, but which also suggests that man’s progress over time possesses a
shape and a purpose; moving from ape-like primitive to evolved star child.
By
contrast, Dark Star suggests the absolute absurdity and pointlessness of
the human existence, and therefore of the universe itself. Right down the line, element-to-element Dark
Star mirrors and parodies 2001’s sense of “cosmic purpose”
with its own sense of man’s irrelevance in the scheme of things, as well as his
general pettiness.
In
Kubrick’s 2001, the space age is beautiful, stately, wondrous and because
of man’s intended destiny, even ordered. The spaceship and space station interiors are
depicted as roomy and minimalistic, and the incredible visuals of space vessels
in flight -- docking and landing --
are sometimes accompanied by instances of classical music such as the Blue Danube
Waltz, a composition that suggests the formal, dance-like nature of objects in
space, and in motion.
2001’s “theme song” as it might even be
considered is “Thus Spake Zarathustra,”
a formal composition by Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949) which again, primarily denotes
order. As Kenneth Von Gunden and Stuart H. Stock wrote
in in Twenty All-Time Great Science
Fiction Films (Crown; 1982, page
190), the composition:
“…opens with an ascending phrase of three
notes…which represent Nietzcshe’s view of the evolutionary rise of man…These three
notes serve note that the number three is essential to the film: from the
perfect alignment of the three spheres of Earth, Moon, and sun at the beginning
to the appearance of things in threes.”
Dark
Star’s first
anti-2001
conceit is to adopt country music
-- the vernacular of personal stories and human emotions -- as its theme
song. The country music genre is not
generally symbolic in nature, but literal in its storytelling of failed love
affairs or a relationship now lost. So
where Kubrick utilizes his music to suggest the transcendent and ordered nature
of space travel, Dark Star’s theme, “Benson,
Arizona” by Bill Taylor evokes nothing of grandeur or cosmic importance.
The
lyrics of “Benson, Arizona” explicitly involve the long separation between an
astronaut and his Earthbound love, a love that connects that astronaut not to the
future (and evolution), but the traditional past.
This
connection is like a tether, dragging
him back to earthbound concerns and therefore precluding the chance for growth
or transcendence. Dan O’Bannon noted
this context when he said in an interview that the astronauts’ days aboard Dark
Star were sad and ridiculous.
The
specific comparison between 2001 and Dark Star involves the
nature of life on a ship traveling in space.
In A Space Odyssey, the crewmen fly the roomy Discovery towards a
rendezvous with destiny near Jupiter. In
Dark
Star, the unkempt astronauts fly their ship, the Dark Star on an
endless quest across the galaxy to destroy unstable planets. One
journey is, in keeping with the name of the ship, about “discovery.” The other is about death and destruction…about
“blowing things up.”
In
the course of these journeys, both men are contacted by home, and again, Dark
Star makes a point of inverting the themes featured in Kubrick’s
film. In 2001, a news anchor for
BBC-12’s “The World Tonight” interviews astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea)
and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) about life on ship. There is a time lag of approximately seven
minutes because Discovery is 80 million miles away. But meaningful conversation about life in
space is still possible…just delayed.
Dark
Star opens
with a message from McMurdo Base on Earth as a military officer contacts the
crew and notes that there is a ten year time
lag in conversation because Dark Star is 18 parsecs distant from Earth, a gap
that makes any meaningful conversation impossible. In 2001, the “entire world” joins the BBC interviewer in wishing Dave and
Frank a “safe and successful journey”
to the stars. Dark Star’s communique to
Earth, by contrasts gets play in “prime
time” and “good reviews in the trade,”
but the actual content of the message
from home is negative. Earth will
not be sending replacement radiation shields to the damaged ship, because of
budget cuts and the vast distance separating the ship and the home world.
Both
2001:
A Space Odyssey and Dark Star also comment on “intelligent”
devices and their relationship with mankind.
In the former film, the mellifluous-voiced HAL 9000 becomes murderous on
the journey to Jupiter, and must be de-activated. Under Dave’s auspices, man re-asserts his
rightful control over the machine (thus symbolically conquering technology; the
latest in the line of tools since the ape-man through that bone into the sky in
the film’s prologue…) and then heads off to evolve via the stargate/monolith “trip.”
Once
more, Dark Star inverts that very premise.
Here,
the crewmen of the Dark Star must interact with a talking bomb, one who is
convinced that it must detonate (following an accident aboard ship which
activates it) and thus kill everyone.
The ship’s acting captain, the appropriately-named Doolittle (Narrelle),
-- who all-things considered would rather be surfing – must teach the bomb Phenomenology
in order to prevent it from self-actuating and detonating. After the bomb learns Phenomenology -- the study of consciousness, essentially --
it becomes an ego-maniac, convinced that it is the only sentient being in the
universe. The bomb decides that it is
God and before detonating declares “Let There
Be Light.”
In
other words, in Dark Star, man does not conquer his technology. Instead, he is eclipsed and destroyed by it.
Technology supersedes man, and man does not evolve…he is destroyed. Dark Star even re-parses the transcendental
stargate sequence of 2001 to its own ends. It is notable too that the bomb
adopts the self-image of man: as destroyer.
The ship’s mission was to blow up planets, and now the bomb will blow up
man, a variation of that mission.
In
Kubrick’s film, Bowman endures a “cosmic
trip,” and the aging process, and then is re-born as the evolved “star
child. There’s a cosmic trip” in Dark
Star too, but it is not transcendental in nature. A crewman named Talby (Pahich) joins the
glowing, colorful “Phoenix Asteroids” and becomes indistinguishable from
them. The message is hence that man is
not unique and special -- he is not a
delicate snow-flake -- but rather part and parcel of a vast, meaningless
universe, and in some ways just another grain of sand inhabiting it.
Doolittle,
meanwhile also meets his distinctly not
transcendental end. He surfs into the atmosphere of a planet…and burns up. His
point of greatest self-actuation is reliving his favorite form of leisure…a
hobby.
Up
and down, Dark Star functions so colorfully and so amusingly because it
undercuts and reverses the premises of the grand Kubrick film again and again. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Discovery
is a perfectly-ordered technological paradise featuring very few signs of human
character or individuality. The Dark
Star’s living quarters, by contrast, look like a messy dorm room. The Discovery is so spacious that Frank Poole
can jog alone through a vast circular track.
The Dark Star, by contrast, is so small that its crew literally possesses
no elbow room on the bridge.
The
men of Dark Star are also not the brave, resourceful astronauts we have come to
expect from efforts like 2001 or Star Trek. Talby sits alone on the observation deck, isolated
from the crew. Pinback can’t be bothered
to feed his alien pet. Doolittle would
rather dream about surfing in Malibu than handle the ship’s problems. Even the
injured captain, Powell -- who is kept stored barely alive in some kind of
cryogenic freeze unit -- is more interested in his hobby (baseball in general,
and the Dodgers specifically) than in helping the ship survive a crisis. The evolution of man does not seem like much
of a possibility with these characters as the spearhead for the future age,
does it?
Even
visually, Dark Star plays knowingly as a mirror reflection of 2001:
A Space Odyssey. In Stanley
Kubrick’s film, the Discovery first passes on the screen from left to right, a
visual short-hand for a journey outward. In John Carpenter’s Dark Star, the ship passes from right to left,
thus implying a journey back rather
than forward. Since the film concerns
man’s inability to transcend petty concerns and specific incidents (reflected
in the use of country music as well as the crew’s petty demeanor), the idea
transmitted is that mankind is forever journeying, but not really heading
anywhere of import.
There’s an old truism about movie-making that goes: the best way to criticize a film is to make another
film yourself. In some crucial and
cerebral fashion, Dark Star epitomizes that notion, and note-for-note, it overturns
the premises and ideas of the grand 2001: A Space Odyssey. If the 1970s is truly the wake-up from the
hippie dream, as my friend and mentor, Johnny Byrne used to insist, then Dark
Star is pointedly the wake-up from the 2001 dream; an
acknowledgment of the absurd and pointless nature of man’s existence…even in
the Space Age.
Lovely review as always. It's a remarkable film considering it's student origins. O'Bannon and Carpenter create an incredibly compelling vision of the future as the characters live and work in the same, cramped environment for years. You can see what effects this has on their sanity.
ReplyDeleteThe control room set is a favorite of mine, not because of the gadgetry but because the engineers of the spaceship obviously put little thought into ergonomics and personal space. These guys are almost literally on top of each other for the entire time they are in that cramped space.
I wanted to point out one typo because I know your reviews live on forever on this website. You state that "The film underwent re-shoots in 1972 to extend the fifty-minute production to eight-minutes". I think you mean "eighty", not "eight".
Hi Pierre,
DeleteThank you for the typo notification. I fixed it, and appreciate your eagle eyes.
I also love that control room/bridge set. You're right: the officers are literally on top of each other, and can't even stretch or move. They can't even enter the room from a conventional entrance...they climb into it from ladders below. Crazy.
I first saw Dark Star at a Science Fiction convention in 1978. I was 13 and had been absorbed in the optimistic views of Star Trek and the grandeur of 2001 for a couple years already, so Dark Star really turned my head around. I had a bit of an epiphany, realizing that Dark Star was probably more the truth of our future than all the other stuff I had been watching. Sure, Space:1999 gave one a strong sense of the loneliness of space, but there was also the idea that they were on a journey of destiny for mankind. Dark Star shredded all the high falutin' notions of space travel and man as an evolving being. My taste in science fiction shifted more to dystopic views of life after seeing that movie. It's certainly not a movie that I talk about much when discussing space movies and TV, but it was a little film that had a big impact on me.
ReplyDeleteNeal,
DeleteYou said it perfectly: Dark Star "shredded all the high falutin' notions of space travel and man as an evolving being."
That's the movie's great glory, although it is sad that this view of man is, today, more realistic, than Kubrick's grand one. When we go out to space, we'll still be the guys who need toilet paper, sleep in messy rooms, and daydream of surfing or baseball...
Best,
John
What an awesome way to start the day - a Dark Star piece!
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought about the anti-2001 angle before, but I'd say you nailed it top to bottom.
I was also pleased to see the humor mentioned, as I feel the same way, yet not everyone notices that.
I'm especially partial to the runaway pet getting Pinback stuck in the elevator shaft. That whole sequence, right down to the look in his eyes just prior to the Looney-Tunes-esque punchline was just gold. Or the bomb cheerfully quipping "This is fun!" in the middle of its Phenomenology lesson, as its timer ticks ever closer to detonation. So many fun moments.
(And now I'm going to have Benson, Arizona stuck in my head all day, but thanks for the great post all the same! :D )
Thanks Woodchuckgod!
DeleteI totally agree about the humor.
The runaway pet/elevator scene is perfectly timed in terms of its comedy, and it reminds me of a sustained silent movie set-piece; something we'd expect from Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. I love that interlude between Pinback and his pet...and how it uses Barber of Seville to heighten the comedy.
Best,
John
John interesting review of Dark Star. I have always considered 2001(1968), Silent Running(1972) and Dark Star(1974)as a special sci-fi trio of films of that era late '60s/early '70s.
ReplyDeleteSGB
Grunge Science Fiction is born!
ReplyDelete