Marooned

I found this movie while I was searching through all the new movies on OnDemand. I usually look through the new movies about once a week, searching for some hidden gem I've never heard of. I'm not always successful, but this time I was.

I'm a pretty big sci-fi fan and especially love "speculative fiction;" meaning content about the near future that isn't necessarily out-of-this-world sci-fi. Authors like Philip K Dick and Jonathan Lethem excel in this genre, and I like Marooned fits in it very nicely.

Released in 1969, it obviously takes place at a not-much-later date - the inclusion of SKYLAB, launched in 1973, proves this. The rescue vehicle used also looks like a very crude version of the space shuttle - a futuristic test vehicle that looks grounded in reality enough to escape being campy. A few lines of dialogue also hint that a Mars expedition is something that is considered to be right around the corner.

Most complaints in the comments section refer to the pacing. All i can say is: go read a book. If 90-minute action fests are your barometer for the worth of a film, go elsewhere. There are no exploding fireballs or meteors ripping through space stations with stereotypical crazy Russians here. Instead, you get a fully realized and believable view into what might happen if some of our astronauts became stranded in space.

Personally, I was invested fully into the film and felt sad when the movie ended, the same way I feel when I finish a good book. The pacing here, if you are interested in the subject matter, is fine. For fans of science fiction, this movie is a must-see. For those of us who actually can sit through a book and enjoy it (and I don't mean "page-turners"), this movie is a great way to spend an afternoon. For everyone else, please avoid. You will only drag this movie's rating further into the mud.

OK, the film is plodding and the over caution and dourness of Gregory Peck's Dr. Keith gets irritating, but James Franciscus, stalwart of many a tv movie and dodgy international co-production, puts in a career best performance as the scientist-astronaut struggling to keep a grip on not only his faculties, but those of his fellow astronauts. Because he can work out scientifically what's going to happen, Clayton Stone (Franciscus) has the added burden. The scenes where he's trying to convince his wife back on Earth that they're going to make it, when the evidence is telling him in his mind of the opposite, the way he struggles with trying to convey how he feels when he's more a cerebral person and the end when its down to him to rescue himself and Buzz Lloyd (Hackman) are all excellently portrayed. It's a shame that he was seldom given another role that would have as much depth.

...Marooned is a good movie.

If you're inclined to consider when it was made, or you're old enough to remember when the idea of manned space exploration was actually exciting, you might even think it's great. The worst thing I can say is that it's certainly not fast-paced: if you're looking for a sci-fi action spectacular, this probably isn't going to be your cup of tea.

The specifics are covered very well in previous users' comments (and in Roger Ebert's ***/**** review), so I won't repeat them here.

There is one thing I'd like to clarify, though, if I may:

Anyone looking at the user ratings and user comments should take into consideration that a (very) abbreviated version of this movie was shown on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 as "Space Travelers." I'm a pretty hardcore MST fan myself, and I agree that it was a funny episode. However, there's a certain type of MSTie that finds it entertaining to visit the IMDb and "vote" (negatively, of course) for the movies featured in their favourite episodes, with a view to knocking them down into the IMDb's "Bottom 100" list. Sometimes this is reasonably well-deserved: honestly, some of the worst (best) movies featured on MST3K would be indefensible in any form. Other times, particularly when the original is cut to pieces (this one lost approximately 1:15 of its 2:15 running time, while "gaining" some lousy incidental music and a shabby new title sequence*), I don't think it's right at all.

If you want to watch an interesting, thought-provoking sci-fi drama, "Marooned" is a good bet. If you want to watch a funny episode of MST3K, "Space Travelers" (#0401) is an equally good bet. You can even watch and enjoy both, as I have. Don't let the strange mix of votes and comments here dissuade you from watching it entirely, though, because that would be a mistake.

(A minor mistake, admittedly, but still -- a mistake.)

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* Credit where it's due: most of this hack job was courtesy of re-distributor Film Ventures International, and not the folks at MST3K. If you come across a non-MST'd version of this movie that runs about 1:30, don't waste your time: I guarantee it'll be neither interesting _or_ funny.

I just rented this on VHS recently. After watching it, I remember that I had seen it many years ago. It was so long ago that I didn't remember details.

I actually liked it. The movie is rather dry, but I actually found it a refreshing change from movies that will throw in all sorts of irrelevant extras to make it an "excitement fest".

Apollo 13 did do a much better job of showing how Mission control worked in a crisis, but Marooned was made before the Apollo 13 mission took place.

Astronauts Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman, and James Franciscus are on a several month mission in outer space. It's scheduled for seven months, but NASA Director Gregory Peck decides to bring them home early as they are showing signs of fatigue.

But something goes terribly wrong with the reentry rockets and the guys are stranded up there in space with about a 42 hour supply of oxygen. It's looking pretty grim because we're not sure that a rescue mission is feasible. Chief astronaut David Janssen and Gregory Peck lock horns on this issue at a staff meeting. Add to that a hurricane is developing in Caribbean that will be passing over Florida and Cape Kennedy.

But they try and Marooned is about that attempt. As a film it doesn't get too much into character development except during a sequence when the astronaut wives, Lee Grant, Nancy Kovack, and Mariette Hartley are brought in to boost morale all around. It does concentrate on the rescue mission and the special effects for which Marooned got an Academy Award in 1969.

I'm not a science buff by any means, but Marooned was projected several years into the future, the long missions that Crenna, Hackman, and Franciscus were on were years away. But Marooned seemed to get the future right.

It's a dated film now, but still exciting and suspenseful.