Posted on 12/02/2002 11:04:08 PM PST by vikingchick
If you were assigned to make a fantastical 20-hour, 10-part series about alien encounters, you'd think you'd concoct the freakiest, funkiest extraterrestrials ever conceived.
Not so.
Not if you're making "Taken," the alien-abduction saga that premieres at 9 tonight on cable's Sci Fi Channel.
"Steven said we had to respect the lore," says Jim Lima, the project's visual-effects supervisor. "We had to be faithful to what was said the most by people who had encounters."
Steven is Steven Spielberg. He is not only one of the most powerful people in entertainment, but also the man who gave the world "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." The man who can green-light so many projects gave birth to this one four years ago. It's on cable because no network could commit such a massive chunk of its prime-time schedule.
Because of Spielberg's decree, the aliens in "Taken" are rather standard issue: gray, about 4 feet tall, long fingers, skinny bodies, oversized heads with huge black, almond-shaped eyes. Spielberg scored with the acclaimed World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers" on HBO, and now he's out to see if an audience will stay with 10 two-hour, movielike episodes over two weeks.
The series follows three American families - the Clarkes, Keys and Crawfords - over four generations, from 1945 to the present day and slightly beyond.
It pays homage to major alien encounters reported in America's postwar history, including the most pivotal event: the supposed crash of a spaceship near Roswell, N.M., in July 1947.
"It's the coolest thing that I've ever seen," says Tobe Hooper of the series. Hooper directed the pivotal first episode (each episode has its own director). Hooper knows about "cool," not to mention strange, having directed "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Poltergeist" (co-written by Spielberg).
Although it was up to Hooper to integrate "the grays" into the story, it was the Earth-bound humans who received most of his attention. The director said he was hooked because the story was so character-driven.
"I liked that it wasn't sci-fi-y," he says on the phone from his home in Southern California. "It was like the real thing."
The real thing begins in the skies over Germany during World War II. Capt. Russell Keys (Steve Burton) is leading an Allied bombing mission. His bomber gets hit and is headed down in flames but is saved by some mysterious blasts of blue light. He and his crew are mysteriously healed and wake up in a field in France. But who really saved them and what was done to them after they were "taken"?
Keys returns home to a sepia-toned America to reunite with his parents and his best girl, something out of "The Best Years of Our Lives."
"I tried to give the characters that subtext, to give it that Norman Rockwell feel," says Hooper.
Hooper said no expense was spared.
"We had 60 locations and more than 60 actors. I had every lens, every cinematic toy," he says. And he had Lima.
The visual-effects guru, who had worked previously with Spielberg in television on "SeaQuest DSV" and "The Others," also had created outer dimensions for films such as "Space Jam" (he also designed the Green Goblin for "Spider-Man.")
"It was like doing 10 movies," says Lima on the phone from his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. "We had 16 months of production. In my earliest discussions with Steven, he explained that science fiction is 'Minority Report.' Science mythology is UFO sightings, close encounters of the first kind." (Close encounters of the second kind are defined as physical evidence; close encounters of the third kind are alien sightings.)
Lima used a cavalcade of computer-generated digital tricks; there are no puppets or animatronics. But there is a human element. He took a digital photograph of his wife's eye, enlarged it, stretched it out, colored it and used that for the aliens' eyes.
"The iris is still in there," says Lima. "I wanted to show thought, to have these digital characters show emotion."
The grays also can take human form and read minds.
If "Taken" is groundbreaking for its length and visual effects, it also must set some sort of record for script-writing. Les Bohem wrote the entire 20 hours. A former member of the band Sparks, Bohem ("Dante's Peak") emphasizes the human relationships and family interplay.
The ensemble cast includes Catherine Dent, Joel Gretsch, Eric Close, Ryan Hurst, Matt Frewer and Michael Moriarty as the stern colonel who covers up the initial Roswell crash in tonight's episode. Some characters span several nights. Eight-year-old Dakota Fanning (the daughter in "I Am Sam") narrates all 10 episodes and appears in the final four.
Her voice is at once innocent and filled with wisdom.
"It's very much 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' " says Hooper. "It has that sensitivity, that kind of elegance."
As for the phenomenon itself - the long lists of people who claim to have been abducted, poked and prodded by aliens and returned to Earth - Hooper says he has studied it more than half his life. He finds it valid.
"I'm definitely a believer," says Hooper. "There's something out there."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
coconnor@plaind.com, 216-999-4456
Best Regards,
Don't get me wrong...if I ever ran into Speilberg at a cocktail party, I'd make it a point to grate on his nerves, I can't stand his politics but...movies are fantasy, they're entertainment. If only actors and movie producers would stick to the scripts and making movies and not try to meddle in politics, I could be completely content.
Best Regards,
Yes, I too wondered if maybe his "good son" (Sam) survived the fire. But Speilburg isn't throwing any surprises in there. Remember John Steinbeck's Novel "East of Eden"? Two brothers, one good, one bad? Raised by a father, much like Crawford? It's all very much cut and dry, so far. Each time I see a scene where Alien clues or moments of physical "contact" occur, my mind goes to memories of other movies.
On closed caption, the little girl who narrates the show is named "Allie" for some reason.
The characters have all changed and grown up and no one seems to look the same to me, so it's difficult to focus most of the time. I'm going to stick it out.
I have to be a glutton for punishment!
sw
I vaguely remember Val Kilmer's character saying 'without you I dwell in darkness' to Sortia (was that her name?)...and didn't he fall in love with her when he was drugged by the fairies?...Did I get it right?
Best Regards,
The story covers four generations of the three families, so the narrator hasn't been born yet. The guy who was on drugs (Jessie?) is the narrator's grandfather.
It seems like everything goes back to those original stories...the good brother, the bad brother, the fallen angel, the fallen man, the fallen Airforce Colonel...Pride caused a great angel to fall and pride caused a great Airforce colonel to fall just the same.
And it's kind of weird how the aliens possess so much knowledge...their eyes are the reflection of man's soul...all our memories, all our fears, at once...kind of like the Tree of Knowledge and the forbidden fruit. It definately has a biblical thread.
I think Taken is much more sophisticated than we want to give it credit for.
Best Regards,
IT'S A MOVIE!
And yes, I'm a "Patriotic American" and I enjoy the military stuff in this movie.
Besides, Crawford has one redeaming value...He says he's concerned for the safety of America. He thinks the aliens are out to get us. He even called Kennedy a "Pretty Boy" and said "He won't be in office forever". I'll bet that made you cream your jeans...
So what you are saying, is that we need to look for "biblical" meanings in the storyline?
Now, we must ask ourselves if Spielburg is blending another plot, from "Signs", into this series? We looked for spirituality in that movie also. Interesting concept.
sw
I guess the thought was more intended towards desertcry since he/she was under the impression that making Crawford, an Airforce Colonel, a sinister character, was an effort to bash the military. I haven't gotten the impression that it is so much a bash of the military as it is trying to show how an honored or idealized man can fall.
Also, too, I guess I was just contemplating how people who tuned into this movie on monday night, expected to be swept away in excitement and adventure and then found disappointment. It's not a dynamic movie but it's definately not lazy, it sort of has an interactive plot, in that it has got me thinking about how one incident has the potential to affect three families, through the course of time and chance.
Look at all of us. If it wasn't for the bane of our existence, Bill Clinton, JimRob might have never been motivated to create this FreeRepublic.
Does this all fit a biblical blueprint? Is it all spiritual? Is it all an accident? Who knows? I do know that this sort of deep thinking is giving me a headache! LOL. Life, like movies, are strange.
Best Regards,
You will also note that Crawford (i.e.The Military) is allied with a German scientist (An unrepentent NAZI). Also in order to save the boy from being killed by the military, he is spirited off to Canada.(Shades of Viet Nam). Speilberg also reaches back to his early years when he has the truck chasing that kid on the bicycle. Remember Denis Weaver being chased by that truck across the desert in that old Speilberg TV movie.
All in all I think the show is childish, but it gives Speilberg some catharsis by allowing two women to be brutally murdered whiiich pprobably gives him some subliminal revenge against his ex-wife.
As for Crawford, you might note that everybody in and out of the military hates him. It's just barely possible that he is a self-centered psychopath who genuinely believes he has the country's best interests in mind. These are not mutually exclusive.
I'm not a big fan of Close Encounters, even less so of ET. I never got hooked on X-Files. I'm mainly watching this because it promises to have a conclusion. I never liked series that look like extended trailers for a show that never comes to town.
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