Earth II (1971)
Blu-Ray
Imagine a new country
that they call Earth II
no weapons to fight with
it isn't hard to do.
Imagine all the people
livin' life in spaaaaace
In his quaint made-for-TV thriller, a space station is granted the unique status of being its own sovereign country, which is self-sustaining more or less and weapons are prohibited. Stuff gets real though when a Chinese nuke is found floating around nearby, and China just gaslights everybody about it. So the astronauts of Earth II decide to carefully retrieve the bomb, but this only prompts the hard question about whether it should be disposed of, or kept as a means of defense.
Much like
Spaceflight One,
Earth II has a thrilling enough premise but these movies move at a snail's pace and don't show much personality.
Earth II presents itself as a rather stiff and serious drama that tackles real issues like politics and humanity and stuff. What helps
Earth II is that it appears creditable, framing the events as hard sci-fi with less focus on fantastic technology and more on the situational tension. It might look like
A Space Odyssey at first glance, but it's really more like watching the Cuban Missile Crisis happening in space. Pretty cool concept, especially coming from this era, just a few years after the historic moon landings but still knee-deep in the Cold War.
There is good merit to the story's approach, which aims for a "give peace a chance" message by way of civil discourse. Funnily enough, the final solution happens when a certain character
[Show spoiler]brashly ejects the nuke into space, expecting it to head to the sun
, which kinda goes against the democratic nature of the setting. Debates often boil down to one viewpoint or another in most movies, which keeps things black-and-white, and
Earth II probably intends to do the same. But whether it realizes it or not, the character's decision does check off half of the five possible viewpoints behind ethical decision making--yes, getting rid of the thing would support the greater good, would reflect greater virtue, and it might support moral rights I guess. But this decision might seem like a bleeding-heart liberal move precisely because it rejects the last viewpoint: the real-world pragmatism. The film puts its biggest focus on whether a place like
Earth II should carry "a big stick," and realistically, I'd argue that it'd be dumb not to. Even the film's opening scene kinda shoots the pacificist view down as it shows a boat patrol gunning down a sniper trying to take shots at the rocket launch. It's a scene that is referred to again, suggesting that this guy was working for the CCP, but in its own way the scene also shows that a good defense is necessary. But it also contradicts the film's point about unity and peace.
The plot sustains itself on the situational tension, which is interesting at times, but it quickly abandons any political tension that the scenario suggests. There is one good scene towards the beginning when politicians confront the Chinese (it is great to see a young James Hong here), but the film could have easily ratcheted up the tension if the CCP came back to pressure everybody. As it is though, they remain silent throughout the picture while
Earth II acquires their nuke, and it's a missed opportunity since there are no repercussions suffered. And this might be the film's greatest weakness: despite the visceral thrills of watching astronauts trying to move this thing in space with various obstacles and restraints, the plotline has no real conflict to speak of. It doesn't help that the characters have no arcs or depth. The first 12 minutes is a bit of a chore as it just shows a room full of guys watching a big screen, and the next scenes are just slices of life that show off space station living. The only thing keeping these scenes engaging is the novelty of the subject and effects.
Thankfully, the effects are pretty solid for this era, and probably looked amazing on a 70s CRT TV. The space station is decidedly lacking in detail, but other models look creditable and good. I even like how the shuttle has these arms that come out and carry the nuke around like a football--it's adorable. Space station scenes have a clean and slick look highly reminiscent of
A Space Odyssey, but maybe a grade cheaper. Photography in general is solid and interesting enough to look at. The film looks good enough to overcome the dry nature of the story and characters. Chances are that, like it is with Asimov, character isn't the point as it is the ideas. And Earth II could represent a noble utopian goal, and the film simply shows how age-old problems of war and division could remain a threat. Granted,
Star Trek probably does the same over and over again, but I couldn't help but to compare this film with
ISS from a couple of years ago.
ISS also presented a visceral scenario that space station inhabitants had to deal with--sadly, I found
ISS vastly uncreditable precisely because it betrayed the core value behind space exploration: the value of unity. I couldn't buy that all these astronauts would suddenly go at each other's throats because of conflicting text messages. Thankfully,
Earth II stuck with its guns and showed professionalism and unity among astronauts as NASA and God intended.
👽👽👽½
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Database
[Show spoiler]05/01: Jason X 👽👽👽
05/02: Earth II 👽👽👽½
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