How similar to High Noon?
Just wondering how similar folks think this one is to High Noon.
shareIt is the same basic plot except in space.
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MovieChat Forums > Outland (1981) Discussion > How similar to High Noon?
I thought it was a retelling of the same story just in space with space transports replacing trains. Coal minors for astroid minors. ETC
sharePretty much a remake, but with
Sean Connery, the actor for whom it says in the script “[insert high-testosterone male here]” before the character’s first line.
Pretty much what it says in all of Liam Neeson’s scripts.
Just wondering how similar folks think this one is to High Noon.Outland (1981) shares one or two plot points with High Noon, but that's all. It simply isn't true that O is any kind of outer-space remake of HN.
Spoilers for both O and HN ahead.
Start with the biggest difference: In HN the 'clock is ticking" implicitly from the opening credits and explicitly from about 8 mins in. In O, however, the clock doesn't start ticking (the bad men with guns start coming to kill the Marshall) even implicitly until 65 mins into a 110 min film. The whole first half of O then has no counterpart in O: it's all about how a *new* Marshall (Connery) learns the ropes on Io and uncovers and solves a mystery about workers having psychotic episodes. It's his solving that mystery that triggers the bad men with guns coming to get him. In HN, Gary Cooper is the *old* Marshall just at the point of simultaneously retiring, marrying, and leaving town with his young pacifist wife (Grace Kelly) when someone he put away years ago has been mysteriously pardoned and released and is now coming back to kill him (with 3 other thugs' help). Cooper first rides off with his new wife (as he had every right to) before deciding for various reasons to go back put his badge back on etc.. This horrifies his Quaker/pacifist wife. Famously she'll end up having to choose between her religious values and doing something to help her husband. None of *this* stuff from HN has any counterparts in O, just as none of the mystery etc. has any counterpart in HN. They're just hugely different films/stories.
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Agreed.
shareContinued:
The bad men with guns arrive (so the clock stops ticking) in O at 85 mins, so the clock only ticks for 20 minutes of screentime, i.e., for less than 20% of the film's run-time, and the ticking down isn't in anything like real time (the 20 minutes compresses more than 60 hours). In HN the clock ticks for 73 of its 84 minute run-time, i.e. for more than 85% of the film. HN is *all* about Cooper's stress as he looks frantically for help across the town as the clock ticks down in pretty close to real time. We're right there with him as all the towns-people fail him repeatedly - some of the controversy over HN at the time was the very negative picture it paints of the townspeople who are "us". In O, we *never* believe the 'townspeople' are ever more than a pack of degenerates, they're not "us", so the film has none of controversial, moral force of HN. And since the 'ticking clock'/trying to get help part of the film takes so little time we're never really placed in O'Neill's (Connery's) stressful shoes either. In HN, the Marshall (Cooper) is essentially on his own until his wife breaks with her religious values. In O, the Marshall ends up getting lots of crucial help from one of the townsfolk, Doctor Lazarus. Again, then, the differences at basic story level between O and HN are enormous.
I'm old enough to remember O's release in 1981 and I remember the critical takes at the time that it was 'HN in space'. Having finally got to see O now, I can confirm that original takes on O were incredibly lazy and superficial. Common wisdom about the film became that O was a near remake of HN. That's unfortunate and absurd.