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THE TIME GUARDIAN
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The year is 4049. I have to give the writers some credit with this. Too many times these sci-fi films from the late seventies and eighties were unable to comprehend the idea of time that was more than 20 years in the future; therefore many sci-fi films created at this time start out like "in the year 1996…" and show people running around with laser guns and mechanical pants. So, 8 seconds into the film, I havn't had any dry heaves. So far so good. In addition, the strongest initial draw I had to this film was of course Carrie Fisher (Petra). What astounded me about her in Time Guardian is that although this was 6 years after Return of the Jedi, she seemed to have walked straight from the ewok villiage into this movie. The voice, the inflection, and even the strong will and attitude of Princess Leia carry over in an uncanny fashion. It almost seems that the creators of Time Guardian told Carrie Fisher that this was in fact episode VII. Maybe it was. This movie tried very hard to capitalize on Star Wars not only through Carrie Fisher, but subliminal messages. In the control room of the flying city, there is a marquee in the background with various, jumbled letters and numbers flying by. My eye caught something. I rewound the tape and checked it again. Yup. A quick eye will notice that amidst the random characters, you can read both R2D2 and C3PO. Go ahead, look for yourself, it happens at exactly twelve minutes and fourty nine seconds into the film. On top of that, it doesn't take a trained ear to hear that the robots breathe with slow, deep breaths. No originality points here. Umm, ok, so what am I doing again….Oh yeah, supposed to actually review this thing. So basically, this is your run of the mill 'robots created by mankind (except they actually are part human themselves) have turned on them and are wiping out humanity and a group of humans travels through time in a floating city to prevent this all from happening' film. Anyways, the flying city gets damaged in a battle and needs a place to land, so Princess Leia and some guy are sent to scope out earth and make sure it's safe for landing. It seems they cannot just assume that somewhere on earths 197 million square miles there would be a suitable landing area. This plot point is only made more useless by the fact that the city is going to land in the outback of Australia. I've never landed a city myself, and should probably leave this to the pros, but it just seems to me that people from earth a couple thousand years in the future would know something about the past geography of their world and not need this extra scouting. As mentioned, the actual year is 4049, but the hero's are stalled in 1988. The story focuses more on Ballard (Stockwell) who came down with Petra, and Annie (some actress) who is a local aussie. The latter always dressed to seduce with a knack for forgetting to wear a bra. Now either the rating system didn't exist in 1989, and they had to guess what this would be but no one on the ratings committee was willing to watch it, or the ratings board simply got up to grab another bottle of E-Z cheese, likely the kind with bacon flavoring added, right at the time Annie decides to take off her clothes and jump in a lake. In the world of bad movies, gratuity is always key. Whatever the issue, this somehow received a PG. Well, a local cop fools with technology he stole from the heroic trio, and accidentally alerts the robo-army to their whereabouts. Haste is made, the city arrives on earth, and the humans take on the robots. During the end battle sequence, some intensity is lost because the soundtrack consists of a crazy guy playing a mouth harp. It doesn't last too long, though. Ballard gets sick of it all and sucks up all his foes into a giant bubble gun a Chinese man gave to him. In comparison, I actually enjoyed this movie. As far as b-movies go, The Time Guardian almost achieves some amount of entertainment. In the world of b-movies, that means it's a winner. © 2005 actionplant.com. all rights reserved.
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