Continuing the month of #Johnuary, we now take a look at Starman.
This is one of the few John Carpenter films that I did remember watching back in the day. I’ve probably seen the whole thing once through, although I couldn’t remember too much about the full plot, but there were some key scenes that I’ve seen again since and could remember quite well.
- One thing I noticed in the title sequence was that Michael Douglas was an Executive Producer. I had to stop and look this up on IMDB to see if it was the same Michael Douglas the actor, and it was. He produced quite a lot of films over the years actually. I guess having a father in the industry helped give him a wider knowledge of how to do various roles
- In the first 5 mins there were similarities to Contact and WarGames, with the Rolling Stones music coming out of the Voyager probe in space and also the NORAD operations room, although WarGames obviously spent a heck of a lot more budget on their NORAD room. This was released a year after WarGames actually so I wonder if they managed to salvage a few of the props from that film
- Great to see the guy from the Untouchables in this film. Charles Martin Smith
- Jeff Bridges obviously chose to go down a certain route in terms of his speech and body movements as the alien. I know some people don’t like it. But I think it’s endearing and memorable. It certainly makes him stand out as being different, and you very much do see his journey in his short time on earth as he learns about human behaviour. I did find the requests such as “Define, ‘love’” slightly repetitive at one point though.
- When Jeff Bridges does the flip with the gun it’s pretty cool
- What can I say about Karen Allen. She is amazing and is great for this role. The only thing I would say is that I would perhaps expect slightly more fear and shock about how she is talking to someone who looks exactly like her dead husband
- And then of course having sex with her dead husband alien is a little bit creepy
- Vegas as a location is certainly the perfect place for an alien. You would never stand out as being strange there
- It’s an interesting last shot that just holds on Karen Allen as the spaceship flies away. I guess it’s showing her saying goodbye to her husband, so it makes the movie more about her grief and closure than just about the alien
- It actually spawned a short lived TV series which I must check out
- One reason I was excited about seeing this film again was because of the meteor crater at the end of the film. I always had a strong memory of that crater and I knew that it was a real location somewhere in America. When my wife and I drove Route 66 for our honeymoon I was very pleased to see that the crater is pretty much smack bang on Route 66 just passed Winslow. It’s sometimes known as the Winslow Crater and sometimes as the Barringer Crater. We went to visit it and it was very cool knowing that they had filmed Starman there.
- There have been plenty alien fish out of water films that have been made over the years but this must have been one of the first.
Starman
Images from Blu-Ray.com
This film is very unlike Carpenter’s films in some ways. It feels like a more mainstream movie in terms of the overall plot. But there are still Carpenter’s fingerprints all over the place. The slow pace where we get to know the characters rather than getting sidetracked by lots of actions. The impressive vistas and great landscape cinematography. The great synth score. And the sheer number of helicopters!
I very much enjoyed this film and it’s definitely one I will revisit.