It's important to remember that this came out in 1997. On to the timeline.
2015 - Permanent colony established on the Moon: Really movie? You only allowed for 18 years to pass before a full moon colony? I don't understand why movies do this. I think one of the Escape From _____'s had a similar problem with the calendar. In that case it was how quickly can things get so bad. In this case it was wildly optimistic. We don't even have a space shuttle 3 years past the time of colonization. Why not make it 2115 and remove all question?
2032 - Commercial mining begins on Mars: Are you shitting me? Not only did it only take us just 17 years from moon colony to reaching Mars, commercial drilling was ready to go? You can't build an in-ground pool in California without 5 to 10 years of environmental impact studies and bureaucratic palm greasing but private companies are being allowed to drill Mars in 2032? No way. The NASA egg-heads would want to study it for years, then the military would want to poke around, testing laser cannons and photon torpedoes for a while before anyone else set up shop. No way a private company is getting the proper permits and environmental clearance to drill on Mars before 3105.
2040 - Deep space vessel Event Horizon sent to explore boundaries of Solar System; disappears beyond Neptune, the worst space disaster on record: If the first 2 entries on the timeline were wildly ambitious, we now seem to be slamming on the brakes for some reason. In some respects, our probes have already done a pretty good job of mapping the edges of the solar system. I recall getting some pretty cool pictures of Pluto by a probe that is now somewhere outside the solar system. Besides, they already have mining companies set up on Mars. Why is it that 8 years later the edge of the solar system is still uncharted territory? I also don't buy for a second that a ship simply disappearing, with no explosion or video, is the worst disaster in space history. The Event Horizon, and the Lewis & Clark incidentally, seem to be fully staffed by 9 people. The Challenger explosion killed 7 people and it was broadcast on live TV. That was worse. Also, there is no chance they constructed a moon colony and a Mars drilling outpost without some major disasters. Qatar can't host a World Cup without killing a thousand or so workers. This is bullshit.
2040 - January 23rd - The Event Horizon broadcasts its blood orgy video: Presumably that means they went to the Chaos Dimension (CD) and came back? I assume they can't broadcast from the CD and people don't seem like they live long in the CD. Who knows, maybe it was just rendering for years waiting for the ship to come back out of the black hole.
2046 - The Event Horizon is discovered in low orbit around Neptune, right where it disappeared: Fine. It is interesting to note that the ship was in a degrading orbit. Meaning that if nobody responded to the rescue beacon the ship would've slowly been sucked into Neptune and crashed. Not a great plan malevolent devil ship.
2047 - The Lewis & Clark is sent to investigate and salvage the Event Horizon: Ok, this is odd to me. In 2040 the Event Horizon is sent out to explore the outer solar system, presumably Neptune, Pluto and on to Proxima Centauri. They make it seem like this is a monumental undertaking that requires the special ship, with the magic drive and that it would be impossible to do without Dr. Weirs black hole drive. All well and good. But only 6 years later when they find the ship around Neptune, it only takes them approximately a year to put together a rescue mission that frankly seems boring and mundane. The crew isn't pissed because its dangerous or uncharted territory, they are mad that their day passes were revoked. And they were able to use what seemed like a normal ship and normal stasis to get from Earth to Neptune in just 56 days. How is it possible that in 6 years technology went from "If we don't have the black hole drive we can't go" to "call an Uber to go poke around and see if those jamokes are still alive." Actually, if space travel has advanced that far, why rescue the Event Horizon at all? They don't seem to need it, it was embarrassing for NASA, just let Neptune disappear it and be done with it.
Other Issues:
The Evil Ship - How powerful is the Sentient Event Horizon? Dr. Weir falls under its spell and hallucinates immediately upon awakening from stasis. We don't how far it was then but as they approach the Event Horizon the first distance they call our is 5,000 meters. Thats over 3 miles. Pretty powerful. But trickery seems to be the only real power it has. All of the torment was done by the crew responding to hallucinations and hurting themselves, or by a brainwashed Dr. Weir doing the work for it. The ship itself doesn't seem to be able to hurt people. The exception is Baby Bear who gets sucked into the CD when the ship opens the gate by itself. It does this a couple times. It doesn't seem to be able to actually power the ship through the gate though and needs a crew. Oddly disparate power levels.
The Stupid People - Once the true nature of this Event Horizon is discovered and the Lewis & Clark destroyed, the plan is for all survivors to move onto the deck of the Event Horizon, blow up the bridge between the deck and the engine core, and use the deck as a life raft by going into stasis. Great. The only problem is that as soon as they find the Event Horizon, they run a scan for lifeforms and are informed that the entire ship is showing traces of life. At the time it seemed like a malfunction but once you knew the ship itself was possessed, why would you think escaping to the deck would matter? All escaping on the deck does is remove you from the Chaos Dimension. A worthy goal but the ship you're on, in the middle of nowhere, is still a raging demon trying to drive you crazy.
The Chaos Dimension - Yeah. How does this work exactly? If we are to believe the movie, the CD is a place that just drives people instantly insane and violent. We certainly see this with the original crew of the Event Horizon. The blood orgy was pretty horrifically gross and violent but it also seemed to impact everyone equally. Everyone was participating in the mayhem, gleefully it seemed. From the glimpses we saw that kind of violence would've killed everyone there in no more than half an hour. Even if the CD kind of supernaturally keeps you going, the point of it is to kill you, how long can you live ripping each other apart? Even enhanced by the CD it can't be more than an hour. Which brings us to the visions of the Lewis & Clark in the CD. Nobody but Weir seems impacted by the evil ship. Only Weir becomes violent. In the vision of the CD, all the L&C crew appear to be getting tortured against their will, in contrast to the willing participants of the Event Horizon. Why does it effect everyone differently? For that matter, why is the CD so full of people? We know why these 7 were there but there seemed to be infinite people being tortured. Where did they all come from? There is almost an conscious effort by the movie to say this isn't some kind of religious hell so they aren't damned souls but just regular people who are there. And at the rate the madness kills people, the influx of new bodies must be consistently high to keep that level of activity going. More realistically it seems like everyone in the whole dimension would be killed off in short order. Also, for a dimension that apparently causes instant madness, they must have quite a few people who perform carpentry and iron work during their blood frenzy. There was an awful lot of barbed wire and specifically designed torture devices made of wood and steel for a completely chaotic realm. I hope the psychos tradesmen have a decent union.
Finally,
Who Was Actually Dead? - At the end of the movie Laurence Fishburne is forced to look into the CD by Weir. He sees the Lewis & Clark crew all getting tortured and he says "They're not dead! They're not dead!" to which the evil Dr. Weir reply's "No, not yet. They're not your crew anymore. They belong to the ship and you are all coming with me!" This seems to indicate that Weir believes that all of the L&C crew will be going to the CD and furthermore that ship needs them alive to man the ship and drive it back into the CD. As we saw before, the ship can't do it alone. Yet we very definitely saw the Dr., lady with the wheelchair bound kid, the mechanic and Weir die by vivisection, falling down the tube, blowing up in the L&C and self mutilation/being shot into space/decompression. Furthermore we see blonde crew member, Cooper and the very injured Baby Bear very much alive on the deck of the Event Horizon. Yet all were in the vision of the CD. So were all the dead people really killed or was that some distortion/hallucination by the ship? Can the ship steal souls and bring them back into the CD along with the living? Or was it just Weir trying to torture Laurence Fishburne and break him down as they entered the CD? I suspect its more just torture for Fishburne but it reeks of a scene that was really choppily edited. Why make it a point to say that people who are clearly dead are really alive and coming to hell? An empty threat if we believe the CD has no religious undertones.
Sequel? - The movie didn't really end, it just split up into 2 halves of a sequel. On one side you have Weir, Fishburne, Peters, Dr. Issac and the black hole drive being sucked into the Chaos Dimension. On the other hand you have Starck, Cooper and Baby Bear trapped on the life raft that is possessed by the Chaos Spirit and that after the rescue is probably being towed back to Earth. I don't know how you link that to the Chaos Dimension but if Ant Man can spend lots of time in the Quantum Universe anything is possible.
The Winner? - Who won the movie? Easy. Smith the mechanic. He never really saw any hallucinations and he was killed by the Lewis & Clark explosion, outside of both the core drive section of the Event Horizon and the Deck Escape Raft section. No way he got sucked into the CD and he doesn't have to deal with an evil ship going back to Earth. Good work Smitty!
(nice job Smitty! Bad news Miller . . . . . .)
Posts
