MovieChat Forums > The Andromeda Strain (1971) Discussion > This film is better than a lot of today...

This film is better than a lot of today's Blockbusters


I don't understand the hate or the jokes about it being dated. I think it holds up. The cast is given great lines. I'm actually shocked at the choice for the only female on the team. Back then it was common to add a young, pretty voluptuous actress known more for her looks than talent. Thinking of Raquel Welch in 'Fantastic Voyage'.


Just for the record, I'm not a Dude, I'm a Dudette!

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In the book there was no female on the team. When the movie was made the screenwriter suggested one of the team should be a woman.Director Robert Wise was against it remembering the same character you mention in your post. The one played by Raquel Welch. But Wise spoke with actual scientists who thought it was a great idea. Robert Wise later said Dr. Ruth Leavitt turned out to be the most interesting character in the film.
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most of 70's movies are better than most of the movies today. LOL

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Movies today need a never ending stream of stimulus. Can't go 10 minutes in an action movie without some kind of fight, car chase or bullets flying. Hard to believe back then, just a little bit of suspense carried an entire movie. When Andromeda first twitched under the microscope, it made my skin crawl when I was a kid.

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Must agree, its just good storytelling. Not loads of effects or load music, just story. It felt real, and the questioning held. It's the smaller things that make a film. Love that era, had the whole E.T. feeling to it.

Was scare when I thought she was infected.

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Love that era, had the whole E.T. feeling to it.

I would say that the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial era (1982) and the Andromeda Strain era (1971) were different in many ways. What a difference eleven years makes.

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Was scare when I thought she was infected.


If you didn't know she was having an epileptic attack, you must have been eating or talking or something during the movie up to then, instead of paying attention.

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It has a great rhythm, in agreement to how real research is done. It's distributed, it takes time, and mistakes are made.

Unlike current blockbusters, that show science as immediate, concentrated on the main character, and faultless.

As a researcher, this is the one movie that rings true.

---
Space For Sale.

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I agree, just saw it on Netflix and loved the movie, definitely one of the best sci-fi films I've seen. The effects are still great even to this day because they actually made everything in the movie! The machines, the town, the corpses, the freaking awesome lab, the decontamination procedures, the government protocol for acquiring the scientists, the creepy animal deaths! This movie was just awesome. The only obvious thing are the computers but I don't hear anyone complaining about 2001 a Space Oddysey.

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[deleted]

I agree! This is a very intelligent movie. Well written, casted, everything. They were able to create a reality and immediacy .....it didn't feel like you were watching a movie, but rather the real thing. Lot's of tension. When you have such a great story, script, acting and direction you don't need a bunch of loud, flashy special effects. It was like reading a really good novel that you just can't put down. I love that they used a bunch of solid journeyman actors instead of the usual movie stars of the time. And cool that they used a woman scientist who wasn't some pretty starlet, but a solid mature actress who was real, funny and irreverent too. Just a classic film; highly recommended!

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Yes and no. IMHO the viewers need a certain love for physics, biology and scifi.
Some scenes looked more like a scientific documentary.

But on the other side - in today Hollywood there would be one or two hot sexy female scientists in the team or some hot female lab technician, maybe formerly in love with one of the male top-scietists.

Jealousy, love interests and surprising relationships, fights, clobbering between men and/or woman would happen.

The Andromeda strain would infect one or more people, changing them into mutants, zombies, werewolves, vampires or alien zombies, Hulk-style thanks to the gamma rays when they drop the a-bomb.

There would be at least one coward/traitor who brings the team/facility into big danger when he sabotages the machines/data for personal profit, etc.

And lots of cool guns, portable laser- and rail-guns, machine guns, grenade launchers...

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But on the other side - in today Hollywood there would be one or two hot sexy female scientists in the team or some hot female lab technician, maybe formerly in love with one of the male top-scietists. . . . - Bavarian

Excellent points. You touch on a number of the problems with current sci-fi.

I think it stems from the effects. Today's special effects are tremendous, and in sci-fi they can make real and believable so many literally fantastic images.

The problem is that they cost a lot of money to make. In order to recoup the expense of creating the special effects, filmmakers and studio have to make the stories conventional, the characters flat (in content--the "hot sexy female scientists" you mention would be anything but flat), and the tropes ("mutants, zombies," etc., and the "coward/traitor") recognizable to as wide as possible an audience so a sufficient number of them will see the film and thus pay for the effects.

When you mentioned the "hot sexy female scientists," the first thing I thought of was . . . Denise Richards in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, in which she plays a nuclear physicist. Granted, it is not sci-fi, but the conceit that they thought they could pass her off as a scientist must have emboldened subsequent filmmakers, particularly those who make films for the SyFy Channel.
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"We hear very little, and we understand even less." - Refugee in Casablanca

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[deleted]

You know they did a TV miniseries remake of this several years back? Utter crap, crazy violent for TV, and some music like 28 Days Later would play right before people went nuts and started slaughtering. And the means of defeat/classification of Andromeda.....oh dear Jesus what a ridiculous plot element, and that's all I'll say.

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Yes and no. IMHO the viewers need a certain love for physics, biology and scifi.
Some scenes looked more like a scientific documentary.

But on the other side - in today Hollywood there would be one or two hot sexy female scientists in the team or some hot female lab technician, maybe formerly in love with one of the male top-scietists.

Jealousy, love interests and surprising relationships, fights, clobbering between men and/or woman would happen.

The Andromeda strain would infect one or more people, changing them into mutants, zombies, werewolves, vampires or alien zombies, Hulk-style thanks to the gamma rays when they drop the a-bomb.

There would be at least one coward/traitor who brings the team/facility into big danger when he sabotages the machines/data for personal profit, etc.

And lots of cool guns, portable laser- and rail-guns, machine guns, grenade launchers...


That sounds like almost a script for the 2008 "remake." 😎

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- sorry double posting -

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I too liked the refreshing simplicity and focus.

I too find modern blockbusters too conventional and... frenetic best described as ADHD.

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It's AWFUL.

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