Pandorum: A Movie Review

By John David Ebert

Christian Alvart’s Pandorum aspires to the great science fiction tradition in cinema that began with 2001: A Space Odyssey and continues down through Alien and Sunshine. In the latter film, there is evident not only an increasing pessimism regarding technology and space exploration in general, but there is also a decline of artistic quality, coherence and clarity of vision.

Pandorum takes a dim view of space exploration and colonization. Its plot concerns an exodus from earth of thousands of human beings aboard a space ark that is sent to colonize a newly discovered world named Tanis, which has a climate and environment exactly like that of earth’s. The entire crew is put into hypersleep for the many years that the voyage takes, and as the film opens, two crew members have awakened to find themselves in a dire situation. It is gradually revealed that other humans aboard the ship have awoken from their slumbers and gradually, over time, have devolved into a race of strange mutants reminiscent of the creatures in the movie I am Legend.

The problem with the film, though, is that it is composed of a mosaic of cliched scenes stolen from every science fiction film that has been made since Alien: it is a sort of cross between that film and the zombie genre, which has become increasingly and drearily more and more popular as time has transpired. The film lacks originality and it is completely uninspired.

Pandorum reminds me of all the low grade sci-fi movies of the 1970s, the epoch of the great drive in space operas: remember “gems” like Saturn 3 with Farrah Fawcett or Damnation Alley or Battle Beyond the Stars? Atrocious films, all, but fun to watch nevertheless. Pandorum exists on the level of these films, with slightly better special effects, but it lacks the charm and naivety of that wonderful epoch.

Science fiction films, it seems, are on the wane. They are thoughtlessly made and based largely on rehashes of films from the 70s and 80s. They dazzle with all their hi-tech artifice, but they are churned out by anonymous directors and screenwriters with no real love for, or understanding of, the genre.

I look forward to James Cameron’s Avatar, but it remains to be seen whether the genre can be rescued or is becoming as moribund as the Western was in the late 1970s.