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
So did I ... it sucked.
I really do long for the days of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone series. He did several with "alien" themes that lasted only a half hour. 30 minutes for each program, which still entertain us today. About time for that "Santa Claus" episode again!
Rod Serling was the Master of Fantasy, may he RIP.
sw
Spielber's one and only acceptable villian is the Nazi. If you look at all his movies -- even Empire of the Sun -- the only completely evil people are Nazis.
I've tried to watch it, but fell asleep every time. The only episode that I was able to stay awake for was #3. Not just "ho-hum," but "HO-HUM!"
If you can find it in your area, watch "First Wave." An "alien-flick" that's light-years ahead of this dull stuff, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, on top of it. As a non-TV watcher, I found myself dropping what I was doing at 2:00 PM central time to go spend an hour in front of the boobtube for my date with "First Wave."
Funny you should mention "Outer Limits." It used to follow "First Wave." New stories and format, of course, but quirky and fun, most times.
No, you're not. It appears that there are three or four of us who like it. *GRIN*
This is definitely not a series for the casual viewer - there are myriad subtleties in each episode which one will miss if one does not pay attention, sometimes merely one line of dialog buried in a whole paragraph, or a fleeting glimpse of something or other. Without catching these, it CAN become a mundane, boring program.
ATTEMPTED HUMOR ALERT:
Years ago, I took my then teen-aged daughter to see the movie "Pelican Brief" - she said she didn't like it because she had to pay attention too hard to follow the story (she's now a college graduate, so she has partially vindicated herself - *GRIN*). Perhaps like my then teen-aged daughter, y'all who don't like it just aren't paying attention?
END ATTEMPTED HUMOR.
All seriousness aside, I'm watching with interest, probably because it DOES track with the general nature of the mainstream stories about abduction, UFO's, etc., told by those supposedly involved. In my mind, there is simply too much smoke for there not to be a fire SOMEwhere out there....
yep. I agree. "V" was a good series. Watching it now is still enjoyable. The costumes and sets are a little dated, and the special effects are laughable by today's standards, but for it's time, it was a GOOD series.
Sorta like giving up anchovy-wrapped garlic cloves for Lent. It's painful, but good for your soul.
;^)
You mean the Mythology episodes? Dang, and I missed it. That would have been cool.
72 posted on 12/04/2002 11:46 PM CST by Chancellor Palpatine
Keep telling yourself that, your Darkness....
Sci-fi is like that. Really hit-or-miss. For newbies, the genre is almost as daunting as classical music. People that don't know it have no idea how huge and diverse and important to understanding what it means to be human sci-fi literature is. They see the movies and that's all they know. I'm still a newbie, dipping my toes in the ocean. Just read Heinlein's "Starship Troopers"...Very good, especially from a philosphical point-of-view.
Funny you should say that. Spielberg started making movies as a kid with an 8mm camera. His subject matter? Army movies with siblings & kids in the neighborhood. (Granted, I don't like his adult politics). And didn't he do "Saving Private Ryan"? which could be construed to be anti-war, but it didn't strike me as anti-military.
As for "Taken", I agree there is an anti-military bent to it, in regards to the black ops and anything goes mentality of the Groom Lake UFO guys.
I would piss me off to see our military totatly disregard their duty to protect the people of the USA and engae in the kind of activities portrayed in this movie. Whether real or not, it is following the basic story line as told by the so-called abuctees including the actions of some government types.
Only to finish out the already filmed shows and probably conclude it.
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