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
Again, compare the ability Jake had to POWDER's ability to place his hand on the sheriff's terminal wife's head, to read her thoughts. Jake used this same power to show his Mother a vision of her former lover, his father. (Tsk, tsk Spielberg).
I was watching "Taken" in the comfort of my bed, and accidentally dozed off the last half hour. I can't believe it! I'll catch the rerun.
I'm waiting for memories of The Green Mile to show up...grins.
sw
Hey there... how are you? I'm fine. Haven't signed that donor card, but just like in the B-rate sci-fi movies he'll be back
How exactly am I supposed to feel sorry for them if they don't DO something? Run, fight, kick, hide, scream, shoot.....man alive. These can't be Americans.
If I ever encounter those space goblins trying to abduct me(unless they happen to look like the bimbo-babe alien leaders in "V"), it will be a close encounter of the last kind.
Brings to mind, “Under the Planet of the Ultra-Vixens”
Soft porn at its best... HA!
However, the "Taken" series was just weak and uninteresting.
Farscape was a great series, but to be truthful, the writing at the end really really stunk. The cure was to hire better writers, not hire Spielberg.
"Taken" could certainly use some "ultra-vixens".
I guess I'll keep watching in the hopes that the nurse (the gal who is married to one of the abductees) takes it all off.
LOL! And little girls don't speak with such profound irony and angst.
I never saw Powder, but I'll take your word for it. I'm grasping at straws here, but the only explanation I can conjure up is that Spielberg hasn't watched much sci-fi in the last several years because he's too busy trying to destroy the Boy Scouts, so when his writers presented this donetodeath stuff, he thought it was all original. I mean, this is the Sci-Fi channel. The audience is well-versed in Science Fiction. You can't fool us.
There should be WAY more originality considering the resources that Spielberg has at his fingertips.
Steven Spielberg should have rested on his laurels, JMHO. I'm still trying to watch this series (blush), but when I actually fell asleep last night, I realized it must have been b-o-r-i-n-g...snore..
sw
I see the episode that lulled me to sleep is going to be rerun in a few minutes.
Oh, VC...if you ever get a chance to see "Powder" on HBO, do so. I think I am one of about 12 people who liked it. (Hold your nose..Mary Steenbergen stars in it, sorry)..sw
BTW, heard today that Speilberg recently returned from a trip to Cuba, where he had a 7-hour meeting with Castro. He says this was the most important seven hours of his life. That's it for me. No more Speilberg. What an ass.
He starts out (as they all do) recalling that his (get this) "hundreds" of abductions have always occurred while he was asleep.
No foolin' Einstein!!! One has to imagine that in a world with what 3-4 Billion people, an advanced race of "aliens" has chosen this cretin to visit and revisit endlessly.
Hmmmmmm? Must have been the sideburns. They probably thought he had dual brain stems.
Of course these idiots are always asleep. They're hallucinating!!!!!
When our friends from another world suddenly abduct the Forehead on live TV, or land in my backyard at noon to refuel and have a beer, I will believe. Until then, we will all have wallow in Spielberg's swill.
As one who once watched all 13 episodes of "I Claudius" in one day, I may be a glutton for punishment and will try to see the whole thing through. Many of the criticisms are valid. Perhaps a different presentation of the Air Force would have been more credible and more palatable.
I find the overall concept interesting. For those who missed the point at the beginning, there was a child born of an earth human by an alien. The implication is one genus and possibly one species. Time must pass to learn which, but the important fact is that they are us.
The abductions are very wide spread. there is a reason. Time will tell.
I'm already dreading some Sunday in 2005 when the whole 20 hours begins at 8:00 am and ends at mid night.
Or Jack handy. (Not sure if I got that right -- the SNL "philosopher")
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