Knowing

The film Knowing is about precognition of terrible events, but not, alas, its own production. Hollywood has packaged director Alex Proyas’ new offering as a sci-fi film because stuff happens that cannot be explained by science. But the only real sci-fi bona fides this film can claim are the coat tails of the director’s 2004 box office bonanza, I, Robot (2004). Knowing is more of a thriller/mystery/drama/action picture with some sci-fi window dressing, a showcase for yet another of Nicholas Cage’s earnest, iconic performances. I find it creepy to witness another episode in Nicky’s serial murder of the talent, agile freshness and promise he showed in films like When Peggy Sue Got Married, Moonstruck and Raising Arizona. What a loss; he was a great actor.

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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away … science fiction films relied on the viewer’s imagination more than traditional story telling elements like character development and plausible plots. That’s one of the things that made them uniquely compelling to the initiated and pathetic escapism to those who didn’t have the chops to get off-world on their own. Contemporary sci-fi takes the sigh out of science fiction by doing all the imagining for the viewer. Chalk it up to the wow factor of computer generated special effects. Yes, some of this stuff is truly awesome (and the plane crash in Knowing is truly spectacular) but I find it upsetting that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year on making hi-def spectacles out of horrible explosions and crashes. What is this hunger for catastrophic destruction that brings hordes of people to mediocre films like Knowing? Actors have become props, mere set-ups, for the special effects that are the true stars in these films. That’s the most sci-fi thing about them, and the scariest.

Back in the day, the best pre-special effects sci-fi films, like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1952), used the arrival of superior alien intelligence on earth as a foil to prod our species along the evolutionary gyre. Kubric’s 2001 (1968) flipped the idea by taking human beings off-world in search of alien intelligence. The story in these superb films and their progeny [Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982) and Terminator (1984) to name a few] is built by laying high entertainment value over a fully realized alternative world which quietly meditates on the quirks and perks of our species. How and whether we’ll survive evolution’s crap shoot is the unspoken subtext.

Knowing is a different breed entirely, part of a recent run of guilt-free apocalyptic movies where the earth dies but it’s not our fault. Yes, our cavalier abuse of mother earth has mucked up the ecosystem pretty good but ultimately it won’t be the smoking gun of global immolation and human extinction.Old Sol’s erratic behavior is the bad guy in Knowing, not greenhouse gases. Could happen, of course. That's the bad news. The good news is that we can go back to polluting as much as we want because, hey, the really big decisions are made in another galaxy, far, far away.