Review of this movie by Sarah Warn
Imagine a utopian society in which women dominate the population, hold high rank in all arenas (politics, science, enforcement, etc.), and war (or senseless violence) is no longer a calculated factor in mending ethnic/religious/national relations. But the construction of this ideal social balance comes with one small strategic sacrifice: the genocide of man.
This is the premise for the 1999 UPN television movie Last Man on Planet Earth, which is set in a futuristic time period when women (most of whom are stereotypical man-hating lesbians) rule the world, after releasing a "Y" bomb to rid themselves of the barbaric men who have no other motive or purpose in life but to create conflict and inflict pain on others.
The Last Man on Planet Earth
This movie is clearly written by a man—Kenneth Biller, whose writing/directing credits include North Shore, Smallville, and Dark Angel—because it exploits almost every negative sexist stereotype of men and women. Particularly lesbian women, playing off the fear of power loss/struggle between the genders in a storytelling game of “what ifs.”
The convoluted plot is centered on a defiant young female genetic scientist, Hope Chayse (played by Julie Bowen, formerly on NBC’s cancelled series Ed), one of the few straight women among the cultish-like society of lesbians. Chayse genetically engineers the perfect test-tube man (to prove man and woman can coexist without the dooming threat to civilization) and names him Adam (young Adam is played by Chad Gordon, formerly “Troy” in the daytime soap The Young and The Restless).
Adam goes from birth to strapping plastic “Ken-size” within two camera flashes while Hope remains the ageless blonde-haired blue-eyed non-dyke “Barbie.” He is depicted as a sensitive man, incapable of any form of violence because his creator has purposely removed the male “violence gene” from his DNA sequence. Adam is kept out of the public eye and within the bosom control of Hope until one day he wanders too far beyond the fenced playground and is sighted by lesbians who hysterically scurry in fear of the (sub-human) male.
Word of the "last man" gets out and the official bounty chase is on, led by Agent Kara Hasting (played by Tamlyn Tomita, from the movie The Joy Luck Club). Agent Hasting is portrayed as a stern, career-driven lesbian who is married to her job and spares no time for any romantic relations with other women. (In fact, there are no positive romantic relationships shown between any of the women throughout the entire movie. The token lesbian couple is two mommies raising their daughter who was mass-produced by the government to support the new lesbian atomic family.)
Agent Hasting is directed to hunt down Adam (dead or alive) by the agency director, Elizabeth Riggs (played by Veronica Cartwright), a power-driven woman who is supposedly a lesbian, as well. Director Riggs is the epitome of the stereotypical angry lesbian out for male blood. There is not one redeemable aspect to her character, reinforcing the stereotype that women in power are hateful, manipulative bitches.
The storyline pushes the limits of the audience's suspension of disbelief even further when Adam falls victim to a male prostitution house where the few surviving men, immune to the "Y" bomb, are kept and sold at the highest price to “closeted” straight women to satisfy their sexual appetite. Director Elizabeth Riggs is unmasked as a “john,” promoting again the misconception that all women, straight or lesbian, ultimately desire and need a man.
Another laughable arc unfolds as we follow Adam’s escape from the male brothel to a small society of men, lead by John Doe (played by Cliff DeYoung). The men congregate in secret at an abandoned football stadium to plot a male revolution. What is their ingenious plan? Kidnap women and impregnate enough of them to reach sizable numbers to form a male army to combat and overturn the lesbians in power. All the men, except Adam, are depicted as violent unshaven Neanderthals with beer in one hand and a caveman club in the other. This stereotype not only presents men as low-IQ brutes but also insults the women who desire such men for sexual completeness.
After more nauseating plot loops, the predictable end finally draws near as a deal is struck between John Doe and Agent Hasting to offer up Adam in exchange for a handful of women prisoners. During the exchange, the deal turns sour as the female prisoners turn out to be undercover agents who end up bombing the football stadium, killing off the remaining men except John Doe and Adam. Agent Hasting is left out of the loop and her sympathy for men starts to show. Adam is brought back to the agency where he is infected with the "Y" virus under the command of Director Riggs in hope of boosting her public rating in the upcoming election. Agent Hasting learns of this and decides to jeopardize her job to help Hope to save Adam.
Adam is brought back to Hope’s cabin in the woods where Hope and her professor, Ester, (played by L. Scott Caldwell) try to save Adam with a serum. Adam and Hope proceed to make love, and then Adam is allowed one more breath for the anticlimatic showdown where Adam must choose to act violently (without the male-violent gene, mind you) against John Doe to save Hope. When Adam pulls the trigger and kills John Doe, we are meant to understand that violence is a choice, not genetically fated as believed by the lesbians.
After the last two men on Planet Earth die, Hope learns that she is pregnant from her night of true passion with Adam, leaving hope for “man”-kind despite the lesbian attempt to wipe them from existence.
Generally, such an over-the-top, sensationalistic movie like this one does not even warrant a formal review, since its ridiculousness speaks for itself. But the decision to finger-point lesbians as the "evildoers" who propagate this twisted plot merits some attention.
Movies like this that propagate these two ideas—that lesbians secretly desire a man-less world, at the same time that they secretly desire men—simply don't represent how 99 percent of lesbians feel (not to mention that they contradict each other). Promoting these ideas, however, feeds into the fear and/or wishful thinking of some heterosexuals, which ultimately fuels the continued discrimination against us by the heterosexual majority.
If this film had been made and shown on television twenty or even ten years ago, I might have chalked it up simply to outdated stereotypes. But this movie premiered in 1999—the same year there were lesbian characters on Buffy, Popular, and Beverly Hills 90210—on a TV network that should have known better. Perhaps this movie and UPN's decision to air it is really a sort-of manifestation of heterosexual panic around the late increase in positive, realistic lesbian characters on TV in the late 90s. Or perhaps it was just about ratings ("Next on UPN: Killer Lesbians!").
Either way, let's hope The Last Man on Planet Earth is the last movie like this.