Evolution (2001)

Sometimes, you have to wonder how a movie got made.  I think Evolution is one of those movies that looked good on paper.  It may have even seemed funny at the time.  However, it’s not one of those movies that holds up to repeated viewings.

It starts with a meteor innocently hitting the ground somewhere in Arizona.  In fact, it lands on Wayne Grey’s car.  When college professor Harry Block hears about it, he heads out, taking fellow professor Ira Kane with him.  At first, it’s innocent enough.  A purple goo oozes out of it, but wouldn’t seem to be anything significant.  Life forms evolve from the goo. Within a few days, multicellular organisms appear.  Within weeks, there’s a rainforest. 

And, of course, the military gets involved.  They even bring along the clumsy Dr. Allison Reed from the CDC.  The military takes Harry and Ira’s research and seal off the site.  Eventually, the Army decides to use napalm on the site to prevent the life forms from taking over North America.  Because that’s what the Army does.  When Harry tosses a match on a sample, he realizes that the napalm would be a horrible idea.  The napalm is used, which creates a giant organism that Harry, Ira, Allison and Wayne have to take care of.

The movie isn’t really big on science.  I’m not sure any of the writers even really cared enough to look something up.  The reaction to fire is said to be survival of the fittest, but that’s not how it works.  Survival isn’t a reactionary process.  Throwing a match at a Petri dish won’t force an evolutionary process any more than any other process.

Ira also deduces that selenium might be harmful to the creatures just because of its position on the periodic table relative to arsenic.  That’s bad for several reasons.  First, there are carbon-based life forms that can live on arsenic.  Second, the problems with arsenic tend to be long-term.  Third, why would it be arsenic just because of its position?  That’s an awfully big risk to take, considering that all life on Earth would seem to depend on it.  For that matter, how is life based on nitrogen in the first place?

My biggest problem is that the nitrogen-based life looks like the carbon-based stuff you’d find here.  There’s no reason to this.  Darwinian evolution proposes that life evolves in response to its environment.  Those that are best suited survive.  Those that aren’t suited don’t make it.  There’s no reason to think that the nitrogen-based creatures would evolve into anything that looked familiar.

I tend to see this as a lack of imagination.  Yes, I know that the creatures are there to pose a threat.  There’s no reason to think that they would spread quickly, either.  It’s just another way to put humans at risk.

I think the movie missed a really big opportunity.  As unrealistic as it is that live would evolver so quickly, what would have happened had the life been allowed to evolve at that rate?  Within a month, we had something looking like a primate.  That’s something that took billions of years on Earth.  The meteor gave us life that did it in weeks.  What would that life have looked like in another month?  The real threat would have come from a life form that would have greatly surpassed our own, both physically and mentally.

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Wild Wild West (1999)

When I was in middle school, we got a new principal.  I think the first interaction I had with her was her coming up and hugging me.  It was is if she were treating us like third graders.  It didn’t make much sense until we found out that she had been teaching at an elementary school the year before.  It took her some time to overcome force of habit.

I thought of that when I saw Wild Wild West.  It’s as if the writers were used to writing movies for small children and this was their first attempt at writing for adults.  Many of the scenarios seem intended for more for adult audiences, but the overall sense of the movie seems to be geared towards a less-sophisticated audience.  (I wouldn’t say it’s geared towards teenagers, but it’s close.)

The movie starts out with James West and Artemus Gordon both looking for one General McGrath.  He’s wanted for murder.  Gordon is inside a brothel dressed as a woman.  West arrives later, having chased a carriage filled with nitroglycerin.  (West, of course, stops the nitroglycerin from going over a cliff at the last moment.)  Arresting McGrath doesn’t go so well.  He escapes and the nitroglycerin is pushed into the building, starting a fire with both West and Gordon still in the building.

The next scene has Gordon and West meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant, both apparently unscathed.  Apparently, McGrath is part of a larger plot.  All anyone knows at the moment is that several top scientists have been kidnapped.  They pursue a lead to New Orleans; Dr. Arliss Loveless is hosting a party there.  In the mansion where the party is being held, West and Gordon find Rita Escobar.  She claims her father is one of the kidnapped scientists.

It turns out that Loveless is the one behind everything.  His plan is to get President Grant to hand over all of America’s land.  He’ll give back certain territories various parties, such as giving back the former colonies to Britain.  He’ll keep the northwest area of the United States for himself to rule over.  The only catch is that Grant won’t surrender.  What follows is a sort of cat-and-mouse game, eventually resulting in Loveless‘s defeat.

I’m not sure exactly where the movie fails.  Will Smith and Kevin Kline play West and Gordon, respectively.  I can’t put it on the acting, though.  The same goes for the directing.  Barry Sonnenfeld also directed the Men in Black movies, which I liked.

I think it has more to do with the writing.   Salma Hayek is given very little to do Rita Escobar other than stand there and look pretty.  She’s not even a McGuffin.  Her character probably could have been written out with very minor changes to the plot.  There are also a few scenes where West and Loveless talk to each other.  Instead of anything useful, the two just insult each other.  West makes jokes about Loveless not having legs and Loveless makes crude remarks about West’s race.  It’s not entirely out of character, but it’s also not entirely necessary or funny.  (On that note, there’s also an Asian character, who’s last name is East, which sets up an obligatory East-meets-West joke.)

I don’t really feel guilty about giving away some of the jokes, as I’m going to have to recommend skipping this movie.  Rather than worry what would happen if you saw it anyway, I’d rather explain why it’s something you’d want to miss out on.  I kind of wish I had been given that warning, myself.  The movie is billed as a comedy, but wasn’t really funny about it.  It felt like a lot of the jokes tried too hard or missed the mark.  I kept watching the movie thinking Salma Hayek could have done better.  Then it occurred to me that this applied to everything about the movie.  There are so many better movies out there.  You shouldn’t have a problem finding one.

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