Millennium (1989)

Time-hoppers from the future, led by Cheryl Ladd, are abducting airline passengers about to crash, and transporting them a millennium hence in order to reseed a future blighted by environmental disaster. This is a dangerous business, plagued by the specter of accidentally creating time paradoxes, which could throw the future out of whack. Unfortunately, they've lost a couple of the stunners they use to subdue troublesome passengers, and these fall into the hands of a curious physicist (Daniel J. Travanti) and an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (Kris Kristofferson). Cheryl Ladd must retrieve these devices before a time paradox wipes out her world, but manages to complicate things by developing a romance with Kristofferson. All of which is very intriguing, having come from the short story, "Air Raid," by science fiction luminary John Varley, who also is credited with the screenplay. The part about airline abductions to save the disastrous future is straight from the original story, and the rest is expanded (you wouldn't say extrapolated) from it. The results are not very happy. About a third of the film is maddeningly wasted by repeating action from a different point of view. Seems natural when there are disparate timelines to deal with, but here nothing is added by the conceit. Only Travanti turns in a creditable performance as the physicist, bent on proving his theories about the future. He seems hungry for discovery, which is one of the things you want from a science fiction story, that sense of awe. But here it's just, "Aw, shucks!" --Jim Gay Amazon.com

Film version of a story by John Varley

John Varley's time travel story "Millennium" which came out both as this film and as a full length novel with the same title in the 1980's is one of his best pieces of writing.

Varley's initial concept was first published as the short story "Air Raid" and he was commissioned to write the screenplay for this film version: at about the same time as the film came out he published an extended version of the short story, lining up with the film but including some rather broader themes and more detail in several areas, as the novel "Millennium."

If you have read the novel and are wondering whether the DVD measures up, it was not practical for the film makers to get the full scope of the novel into this film adaptation, but they did a pretty good job. Most of the political comments about air safety in the book, particularly those about the battle between Ronald Reagan and the air traffic controllers did not make it into this film, and neither did the quasi-religious aspects of the book. But most of the guts of the story did.

In particular, the film is faithful to the plot and tone of the novel, including both the central romance and some of the most gripping action scenes. Both the book and the film captures brilliantly some of the most memorable scenes in the story, and incorporate one or two quite funny moments, none of which I can begin to describe without spoiling the story.

Kris Kristofferson is excellent as an air crash investigator, who discovers some unusual anomalies in the wreck of an aircraft. Cheryl Ladd is equally brilliant as the mysterious woman who sleeps with him and then disappears. As the story continues we learn more about the investigator's past, and why the mysterious woman reminds him so much of someone he remembers from his childhood.

I can recommend both the book and the film. If you might want to experience both I don't think it makes any difference in what order you do it.

DVD extras are a little basic: they include a trailer, short filmographies on Kristofferson, Ladd, and one or two other people, a short synopsis of what the producer was trying to do, and an alternative ending, which differs only in the backdrop to the Winston Churchill quote which provides the very last words of the film.

Varley made a joke about this book (and film) in one of his much more recent novels, "Mammoth" which I can also highly recommend. June 7, 2008

feels longer than a millenium

I saw this movie when it first came out, and the thing I remember most was that halfway through I was so bored that I wandered out and bought popcorn and played video games for a while before going back to check on my friend in the theatre. I asked what I had missed and she just looked up with glazed eyes and said "nothing, they just had the longest flashback in movie history and replayed half the movie! "
This story had potential, but was just so badly done that it is almost unwatchable.
Later I found the story it was based on, I think it was about 8 pages and covered everything it need to. April 19, 2008

The inspiration for "LOST"

I suggest you buy this movie if you find it, it has been pulled from publication for a very dubious rea. IMHO, the TV series "LOST" is using key points of this movie for it's plot concept.

Anyhow, it is darn good cheesy sci-fi! January 18, 2008

Millennium

I recently saw this movie and loved it. It is cheezy but a great SciFi. January 2, 2008

Cheese Whip Supreme!

If it strikes you as a little strange that a big-budget sci-fi extravaganza aspiring to be first out of the gate with the millennial doomsday theme starred Cheryl Ladd and Kris Kristofferson, you're already in the right mood for the 1989 time-travel howler Millennium. The fun begins when airline-disaster investigator Kristofferson meets mysterious airline employee Ladd while checking out the wreckage of the latest crash. Because Ladd, done up in an appalling perm and enough eyeliner to outfit a pack of raccoons, looks like she's about to shoot The Donna Mills Story, you first suspect Kristofferson might be the weird one -- he invites her to dinner. Then Ladd chain-smokes while eating, a dead giveaway that she's the movie's space case. And that's before she has sex with Kristofferson and gushes, "You're the best thing in a thousand years!" Apparently well aware he's not that good in the sack, Kristofferson responds, "The first rule is: Don't go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself. You're right up there on the top 10 of my Weird List, lady." To which Ladd replies, "If you knew me better, I'd be number one." Then, when Kristofferson's back is turned, Ladd disappears -- literally.

Wandering alone in the plane wreckage the day after this romp, Kristofferson comes upon what looks like a futuristic set of brass knuckles. And indeed, when he touches it, he's knocked out! Then, lo, a tacky blue hologram appears in the air, and Ladd steps out of it in S&M Tinkerbellesque regalia with a hairdo shaped like a giant Foster's Freeze soft ice cream swirl. Yes, Ladd is actually a human visitor from a thousand years into the future. She's here on a mission to -- well, let her tell it: "We're all dying. We can't have children anymore. We steal people from the past and send them somewhere else to start over, to give them a second chance." That's right: Ladd takes airline passengers who are about to crash and transports them to the future. But what about the dead bodies found after the crash? Ladd simply brings a supply of look-alike corpses from the future to leave behind in the live passengers' seats. Ah, but how does she get the passengers to cooperate? Well, that's what the brass knuckles are for, dummy.

Alas, two of the stunner devices were left behind on this latest crash and Ladd's got to retrieve them or "a paradox" will occur and destroy the future. A what? As Nobel Prize-winning physicist Daniel J. Travanti explains, "Say you build a time machine, go back, and murder your father when he was 10 years old. That means you were never born, and if you weren't, how did you build the time machine?" See, this is why Ladd was willing to sleep with Kristofferson - she thought he had the devices. So when Kristofferson sees the futuristic Ladd in the plane wreckage, she's still after the stunner, which she finds and takes with her in her tacky blue time-travel hologram before Kristofferson can ask her on a second date. Later, it turns out that Dr. Travanti has the second scanner, but when Ladd appears from the future this time, Travanti accidentally zaps himself to death with it. For reasons you really don't want to know, this causes the dreaded paradox, which compels Ladd to take Kristofferson back to her future world, where everything is rapidly coming apart -- which is hardly surprising since it's one of the cheapest-looking sets ever seen in a sci-fi pic. Just before the world explodes, Ladd resets the time-travel dial so she and Kristofferson can go even further into the future -- in hopes of more convincing production design, better scripts and more flattering hairstyles.
August 10, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...