GENESIS II
US, 1973, 74 minutes, Colour.
Alex Cord, Mariette Hartley, Ted Cassidy.
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey.
The main reason for looking at Genesis II is the fact that it was written by Gene Roddenberry, the originator of Star Trek. There are quite a number of imaginative similarities between this brief screenplay and the Star Trek series.
This film features Alex Cord as a scientist who has been preserved in suspended animation, intending to wake up in a short time, to help people in understanding suspended animation for space exploration. However, there is a roof collapse and he does not wake up for over a century and a half to find that World War Three has devastated the planet and that only a primitive society exists. It is time for another Genesis, so to speak.
The film is quite inventive in its look as well as in its imagination for the future. Alex Cord is something of a stolid hero for the film. It was directed by John Llewellyn Moxey who worked in British television and then moved to the United States where he was a prolific director of television movies during the 1970s and 1980s.
1. The meaning of the title? indication of themes?
2. The quality of the telemovie, styles, brevity, science fiction themes for a home audience? How profound can such a home movie be?
3. The appeal of science fiction, the overtones of science and gadgetry, the implications of the scientist and experimentation, the fiction? The appeal to the imagination? Questions about the present and the future? The interpretation of the present by the picture of the future?
4. The structure of the film: Dillon's narrative, the prologue and the presentation of science in the present, experimentation, failure? Human nature confronted by this kind of experiment?
5. The dramatics of the explosion and his being propelled into the future?
6. The portrait of the future world, the way it appeared, the audience identifying it, yet the strangeness, America in two centuries' time, what had happened in the 20th century, the decline of humankind, the mutants and the subordinate position of human beings, the changes in the face of America, the changes of attitude and morality? The kind of world of the 21st century?
7. Dillon as hero, as a person, his coping with being projected into the future, his coming back to health, his experience with the people who found him, not believing them? His believing Lyra? His going to Torrania and being tricked, punished? His becoming a social hero? An appropriate hero for this kind of film?
8. The portrait of the humans, their needs, the way that they had changed, their being taken prisoner by the mutants, the scouting parties helping the prison training, the need for a revolution? 9. Lyra and her attractiveness, her knowledge of technology, helping his escape? Her talk of the beauty of Torrania? Her plan, her life, the dilemma of her love?
10. The presentation of the mutants and their tyranny, the need for revolt, Lyra's persuading him to help with their nuclear reactor, her willing death?
11. The presentation of the fights, the escapes, the nuclear scare and the resolution?
12. How much fantasy in this kind of film? Science fiction message for the present? Communicated in acceptable form for television?
