Judging from the finished product, the rough texture not only did not lower the grade of the film, but on the contrary revealed a strong cult flavor. Whether it's a simple to a bit rudimentary space capsule, or the alien that shocked people's jaws, the low cost has not limited Carpenter's imagination, and the nature of the spoof makes this film unique among science fiction films.
Unlike most sci-fi films, the astronauts are the embodiment of justice with both courage and wisdom. The astronauts in this film are set up as boring hippies who take the responsibility of destroying unstable asteroids all day long, and can't get them. Any support from the earth is almost equivalent to being banished into space. The mental state of the group can be seen from their messy sleeping pods, and this abandoned character setting also sets the overall tone for the film - a sense of emptiness, and this inner emptiness leads to a deeper level of loneliness. There is a section in the film where Doolittle plays a hippie song with a homemade instrument. This plot design has nothing to do with the story, but it is indispensable to the display of the characters' hearts.
In addition to creating a sense of decadence, the pervasive black humor makes up for the lack of fun to a certain extent, and it is Pinback, who is entertaining himself, who undertakes this funny task. In order to relieve loneliness, Pinback raised an alien creature. This is obviously an alien image with a pair of claws under the balloon. He almost killed him during the chase, and Pinback finally let out a sigh of relief for the alien. Among them, the scene where Pinback is trapped in the elevator shaft is full of tension, from which we can also see Carpenter's good at promoting the atmosphere and the signs of shooting horror themes in the future. In fact, this exaggerated plot is also independent of the plot, but you can't ignore its role. Like Pinback's confession to the video recorder later, this is a kind of self-mockery with no choice, even with a bitter taste. For the loneliness that has nowhere to solve, it can only be chewed and swallowed by oneself, and then digested in an indifferent attitude.
The climax of the film comes from a dialogue between Dolittle and the bomb, which is obviously a spoof of "2001: A Space Odyssey". Dolittle tried to use phenomenological logic to persuade the bomb to disarm the bomb. After a chat about existentialism, the bomb has its own thinking. And truly escape into nothingness. At the moment of the explosion, a huge light bloomed in the universe, and Doolittle finally fulfilled his wish to surf—flying into the distance on the debris of the spaceship. This romantic bridge that ignores weightlessness can be said to be the most ironic of the film. One scene, they are lonely not because they are hippies, but because they are no longer needed, like those annihilated asteroids, which eventually turned into a dust in the universe.
View more about Dark Star reviews
