O Enigma de Andrômeda

This starts off well, and if you're hoping for Crichton's complex/tense gem of a novel you'll soon be disappointed. They throw every sci fi cliché into this one. The evil govt. conspiracy (to get the master weapon); the plucky reporter; a nuke; a master monster; plenty of sci fi babble; and in the end a 10-9-8 countdown-will our hero be able to save himself and his team-followed by a "it's not over yet" fade out. Just when you think they've run out of clichés they pull another one out and throw it at you.

Ridley Scott you should be ashamed of yourself!This blots your copy book big time! LUDICROUS!!!! For teens only; they'll think it's cool!

When the capsule of the Scoop Mission returns to Earth and lands in the small town of Piedmont, Utah, it brings a mutant living being and all the population, except a crying baby and an old man with ulcer, dies with clotted blood. A team of five scientists - the leader Dr. Jeremy Stone (Benjamin Bratt), Dr. Angela Noyce (Christa Miller), Dr. Tsi Chou (Daniel Dae Kim), Dr. Charlene Barton (Viola Davis) and Major Bill Keane MD (Ricky Schroder) - are summoned and gathered together in the top secret Wildfire facility. Fighting against time, they try to understand the reason why the old man and the baby survived and research an antidote to Andromeda, the ultimate biological weapon.

I wrote the above summary – with the exceptions of the names of Dr. Stone's scientist's team – in my review of the original sci-fi classic of 1971. The great pacifist story is basically the same, only longer due to updates in special effects and useless subplots with government conspiracies. I usually hate remakes, but sometimes I find reasonable surprises; but I do not know the objective of this tiresome and totally unnecessary remake. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Enigma de Andrômeda" ("The Enigma of Andromeda")

There is a certain type of movie. It's usually a made-for-TV movie, and it's usually an "updated" remake of an older movie.

The cast and story elements are painfully politically correct.

The writers appear to labor under the mistaken assumption that the viewer really doesn't need to be told a coherent story as long as there are a few visual elements from the original and some handsome-looking people emoting at each other. And things blowing up.

If there was a punchline to the original, the film will either ignore, misinterpret, or completely blow it.

The remake of Lathe of Heaven (2002)was such a film.

The remake of The Andromeda Strain (2008) is also such a film. It takes the tight script and edge-of-seat stress and paranoia of the original and substitutes digital effects, things blowing up, and absolutely nonsensical plot. When the time comes for the big reveal (which I won't reveal here), instead of the insightful political message of the original, we get a sophomoric, pasted-on ending that doesn't relate to what's gone before and basically contains no message whatsoever, but does allow one last digital effect.

It's not even bad enough to be good in a campy way. It's just dreary and indecipherable. See the original instead.

During the late sixties, Michael Crichton wrote a novel about contamination with an alien microorganism. At that time, science was hailed as the pinnacle of human achievement and it was thought that anything is possible. Therefore it is normal for the book and the subsequent film from 1971 to focus on the science, on the formalism, on the way people think their way out of a situation.

Fast forward to 2008. People are dumber, science is a joke, people need to look good and the design must be perfect. Some horrible deaths and some fear of government conspiracy or terrorism is the only way tension can be achieved.

The problem is that I have anticipated this. My own theory says that if you expect it to happen, there won't be a negative response, yet I am terribly angry at this mini series BECAUSE it was exactly what I expected. Things have been added to the original story that make no sense and make no sense to add: government black ops, wormholes, message from the future, ecological controversy over ocean vent mining, etc, etc. As expected the effects were really good, the people looked good, the computer interface design was flawless. And it all fell completely empty.

If you are familiar to The Andromeda Strain book or 1971 movie, you might find it interesting to see how it can go horribly wrong. Otherwise, just watch the 1971 version. It is slow paced, faithful to the book and a lot more interesting.

I have learned, over the years, that whenever a movie or TV show has a an overwhelming amount of background music then it is usually trying to disguise something that isn't working. That is the first tip-off that this version of Andromeda Strain is of poor quality. Thank goodness for Close-Captions, since much of the dialogue was covered by music. As a science-fiction thriller, Andromeda Strain could have benefited from the advances in our knowledge over the last 37 years since the original movie. This retelling does, indeed, offer a version that has some good updates and that is the only reason I am rating it as high as a 4. I found it a tremendous struggle to stay with this production which, ultimately, is bloated and mediocre.