Last night I watched a movie. It was a swiss german-speaking independent scifi-flick called “Cargo” and up until discovering this movie I hadn’t heard a single word spoken about it. I figured I’d give it a go, and for some reason I’m still pondering it.
Plus, it’s an independent production from outside the Hollywood-circus, and it needs to be mentioned. Plus, it also shows how incredibly stale Hollywood has become in much of it’s productions, only going into safe and cute territory.
Cargo follows a young woman in her 20s named Laura Portmann. In an unspecified future where Earth has been deemed incapable of sustaining life and where humanity subsides on enormous space-stations in orbit around the supposedly lifeless earth, she enrolls as medical officer aboard a freighter. She needs money in order to visit her sister on Rhea, an earth-like planet in another solar system. Rhea is heavily restricted and you need to pay your way to it. Lauras sister was lucky and won her passage in a lottery, and in video-messages sent between the two Laura long to join her sister.
On the cargo-ship most of the skeleton crew takes turns doing 8-month completely solitary watches while the others spend their time in cryosleep on the four-year journey to Station 42. Supposedly the ship carries equipment for Station 42, but when strange occurences start happening on the ship it’s revealed that things might not be as clear-cut as Laura first thought when she signed on…
Yeah, I know. My writeup here sounds like the setting for a bad space-horror type film that heavily rips off Alien. The movie in fact is nothing like it. It’s a slow-moving and thoughtful piece which borrows heavily from classics such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” as well as adding a few turns of it’s own.
Overall it was a bit strange watching a scifi-flick where everyone speaks german, but after a while you tend to forget it. Visually the film is very impressive, and even though it borrows many concepts quite openly from “2001″ it does it without ripping it off. It would seem that the movie-makers tried to ground their movie in reality rather than Star Wars-type fantasy, and mostly this seems to hold. Of course, there’s some incongruous behavior (such as the constantly firing engines of the ship) but overall this is a subdued and sober affair.
So, production-wise there’s not a lot to complain about. It’s a polished and visually pretty movie as well as having good sound.
The problems come in the heavy borrowing of themes from other movies. Too much of the movie is essentially a bunch of scifi-staples thrown together to form a movie, and while these themes are always interesting this movie doesn’t really add anything new to them. It’s also a bit hindered by the slow tempo which means there isn’t enough time to explore these themes without making the movie too long. As it stands it introduces the themes and then has to rush ahead to finish the film. A good number of plot-devices are also rather hastily ended and could’ve used a lot more exposition to make them seem more fully realized, but I understand that there’s a lot of compromise being done. A minor subplot is also quite annoyingly left completely ignored, even though the outcome of that subplot isn’t essential to the whole ending.
The acting is a bit wooden, but I suppose that goes well with a movie where one of the primary themes is the dehumanization and isolation in a cold and unforgiving future. Thus I don’t really know if the wooden acting is intentional or simply something that couldn’t be avoided. In the end it somehow works in the movies favor.
Overall I guess you could do worse, and it’s decent enough entertainment provided you don’t expect the typical Hollywood-fare. This movie is a lot more subdued and slow-moving, which might not be something the twitchy teens might like.
Im going to try and see it.
But anyway, the thing with the engines is quite probably. Now i dont know where exactly these engines are located (shuttles etc? but on a space-ship traveling between systems, a continious acceleration is prefeered to just coasting. If you accelerate with 1g you essentialy have earth-gravity on board and dont need a spinning-wheel type construction. At the same time, you can de-accelerate with 1G (half-way).
In books i have read (Alastair Reynolds – revelation space and followups, realy recomended books if you like sci-fi as he belong to one of the best modern sci-fi writers) they travel with engines doing 1G continously and when they approach relativistic speeds the time dialation comes into effect, thuss making a trip take 5-10 years “outside” and only 5-8 months inside.
Anyway, i guess they use inertial dampener that “removes” acceleration (transfering it to space/other dimensions whatnot) and thuss make a ship accelerate 5-20G without making the inside unbearable for humans.
A ship accelerating at, say, 1000G will never be overcome by a ship accelerating less, and even if you are able to accelerate faster catching up will take months (shiptime) or millena (outside).
Aaaaanyway. I will try and see it, as you say hollywood is a bit booring when it comes to decent Sci-fi (last memorable movie was sunshine and to some extent star trek).
This movie obviously took place in “real” space and in zero-g, and burning for constant thrust is unnecessary when you’re doing sublight travel. Which is what these people were doing since they were mostly in cryo-sleep. Thus I found it a bit annoying.
no, not realy. If you want to travel wast distances but dont have access to FTL you need to accelerate continously, atleast if you are moving wast distances.
If you want to travel far you need to have a acceptable speed – say 10% of lightspeed, and how do you get there? yes, by acceleration. But instead of doing 200G acceleration for 1 day you do 1G for 200 days. But the real problem is not accelerating – it’s stopping.
So yeah, you are essentialy required to burn engines during the entire lenght of the trip if you want to get there in a lifetime (and its more practical as you get full or partial gravity for the awake crew, instead of making one large rotating dome).
ION drives (when they get more powerfull) is capable of these kind of feats, or whatever plasma-fusion they use in the movie.
I realy recomend you lend one of my Alastair Reynolds books and read it. Just ask Micke or Anders, they love em to.
Btw, if you do have a ship capable of accelerating for 1g continiously, you can essentialy make ship in the form of a scy scraper, placing the engine in the basement, making ship constructs simple (atleast for spacetravel).
Or simply put, step on it until you are halfway, turn your nose backwards and step on it until you arrive at your destination.