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
Bri...what VIRGIN birth? I'm missing something with this?
sw
What movie was that from? The Goonies? The Arrival? Screamers?
It reminded me of several scenes from the classic sci-fi "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". (Donald Sutherland 1978). People would point their fingers and start screaming things like "GET THEM"!!
sw
the more things change, the more they are the same.
Thanks VC for Freepmailin me with the explanation of the virgin birth.
I got it now, bert.
Here we go, I'll TRY to stay alert and awake, unless I'm taken again tonight...LOL!
sw
And remember the hostage in the room (talking about Mary)..."look at her eyes, they are Alien eyes".
I think Mary is a bad hybrid, and Allie knows it.
sw
It's like one of those movies that lasts 3 hours, and the first 2 could have been eliminated.
I still think Mary isn't all human. But IF I'm wrong, Spieberg missed a great opportunity.
The writing on the piece of metal? Hummmm? Remember WAY back if you ever saw one of the best Twilight Zone features..called "To Serve Man"?
The Aliens gave Earth a book, written in their own language. By the time it was interpreted, it was too late, as most of the population on Earth had taken a trip to their Planet and the translation of the book was that it was a "cookbook". Aliens were cannibals.
So what did the writing say on the metal?
sw
sw
I'm pretty sure he hates scientists also. Recall the frog scene in E.T. Now we have Max Headroom playing a mad scientist who enjoys putting hamsters in a microwave.
It's common knowledge throughout the galaxy that Earth Girls Are Easy.
Not sure what you mean...
The question involves the term hybrid. I thought a hybrid was sterile and incapable of reproducung. A hybrid results from the union of two individuals of the same genus but not of the same species.
Allie's mother and grand mother were fertile and bore offspring. Therefore, the breeding was done with males of the same species.
Allie is special and has strong powers even though her pure alien genes from her grand father compose 1/8 of her genes. Her father was taken as was his grand father. If I have it straight, Allie's paternal side is pure earth human with no alien genetic material. The apparent reinforcement of power from the paternal side must therefore result from genetic enhancement/mutation during abduction.
Now then to the question of Mary. If Allie recognizes Mary as Alien, and that is tru0e, then my conclusion is that there is some mutation/enhancement of the human genome during an abductiion.
Further, aliens are Homo sapiens but of a different race than any commonly known on earth.
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