The richly illustrated scenario of The Andromeda Strain

February 26, 2017 3:09 AM

The scenario of the '71 movie The Andromeda Strain is marvelously illustrated. It uses sketches, diagrams, animations and multi-screen effects so as to better convey the complexity of the vision of Crichton’s novel. The article gives backgroud to the scenario and includes a full copy.
posted by jouke (18 comments total)

I've always thought that Wise was an underrated director. He might not have had an identifiable style but he made a lot of good and some even great films. Also given how many current films are so incoherently made, we could use some more "craftspersons".
posted by octothorpe at 5:47 AM on February 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I love this movie. Saw it when it first came out and was enthralled, if a little confused at times. As I've seen it again over the years, I've come to appreciate just how well it's crafted, considering the technical confines of the era. I'd love to see an update made, just to add-in better tech toys, but I'd also be afraid the gorgeous minimalism would be lost to over-teching the scenery.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:30 AM on February 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

It seemed like this movie, along with Soylent Green, was on TV about once a month when I was a kid in the mid-70s.
posted by JanetLand at 6:35 AM on February 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

This movie has always impressed me with how scrupulously it duplicated the text of the source novel, with only a handful of lines of extra dialogue added in to cover the fact that the movie gender flips one of the main characters.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:01 AM on February 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I always admired the production design of The Andromeda Strain for avoiding the use of the MICR* style (or, worse, Computer Regular) font to say "BLEEP BOOP COMPUTER HERE" and instead used the more realistic OCR-A, which totally fit the equipment of the times.

*The original MICR font never had letters, only numbers. It was designed to aid automated check routing (and is still used today) and the designers saw no need for letters there.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:08 AM on February 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

Like JanetLand I first saw this movie on TV as a kid in the 70s. I was sufficiently impressed that I became a Michael Crichton fan for a while, until his politics began overshadowing the storytelling (see also: Tom Clancy). It always amazes me how much work and attention to detail goes into movie-making. It's a wonder to me they don't all turn out like and Ed Wood production. Of course, I couldn't even reach that level of production value.
posted by TedW at 10:34 AM on February 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed the book back in the day. I wonder how it would hold up now.

Anybody read it lately? Comments?
posted by BlueHorse at 10:53 AM on February 26, 2017

I've always thought that Wise was an underrated director. He might not have had an identifiable style but he made a lot of good and some even great films. Also given how many current films are so incoherently made, we could use some more "craftspersons".

I don't know, I think there are plenty of directors working today who show fine command of the basic craft of directing but since high craft is roughly the base expectation from a Hollywood production they might not get the same kind of notice as directors who do something more unusual.

When it comes to "rating" directors, it has as much to do with who you are asking as it does the quality of the work. Wise, like many craftsmen, was appropriately respected by Hollywood, where he worked on A pictures regularly, and by general audiences who like his movies more than the more unusual works by directors that appeal to cinephiles, it's just that cinephiles happen to be the ones who still care enough about movies made before 1990 to still be watching, writing and talking about them so their preferences carry a longer record of influence. There are reasons those people sometimes prefer other directors to Wise, but he isn't ignored even in the cinephile community, just placed in a different context from more general audiences.

There is something of an irony in that too with Wise being involved in the fucking over of two of Hollywood's great behind the camera talents, in Orson Welles, who's Magnificent Ambersons, Wise helped butcher, and Val Lewton, who gave Wise his start as a director and who Wise and Mark Robson betrayed in order to further their own careers later on. So, personally, I think the man's a dick, but one who knows his craft.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:23 AM on February 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'd love to see an update made, just to add-in better tech toys, but I'd also be afraid the gorgeous minimalism would be lost to over-teching the scenery.

There was a 2008 cable mini-series/TV movie "re-imagining," but that was a case where the gorgeous minimalism of the original was lost to an over-complicated and somewhat ridiculous plot.
posted by AndrewInDC at 2:04 PM on February 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thanks for this. "The Andromeda Strain" is probably the movie that I have seen the most times and the book that I have read the most times.
posted by neuron at 2:24 PM on February 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

The 50s produced exactly two good sci-fi films, both 'cautionary tales' (like Andromeda Strain). One was Wise's 'Earth Stood Still', which holds up very well in Black and White.

'Forbidden Planet' was directed by Fred Wilcox who (I'd bet) might have gotten even farther past 'Lassie' had he not quit MGM, then died aged 57. The crappy acting of the 'spaceship crew' skated dangerously close to most 50s sci-fi, but Walter Pidgeon, an intriguing storyline, the Barrons' soundtrack, and visualFX made it a classic.
posted by Twang at 9:55 PM on February 26, 2017

The 50s produced exactly two good sci-fi films, both 'cautionary tales' (like Andromeda Strain). One was Wise's 'Earth Stood Still', which holds up very well in Black and White.

Whoa, whoa! Only two? You'd have to put an awful lot of weight on production values, and by extension budget, to go with that assessment. The Day the Earth Stood Still is definitely the most prestigious sci-fi film of the decade, and Forbidden Planet not far behind in terms of being aimed at the mass market and having some more studio clout behind them, but there are plenty of other sci-fi films from the decade that are good despite their lesser budgets, a great many of which I'd personally list as better, and many of those same have a great many other supporters as well among critics and fans. Just to name a few that have plenty of support:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Thing from Another Planet
The Incredible Shrinking Man
War of the Worlds
Invaders from Mars
The Blob
I Married a Monster from Outer Space
The Quatermass Xperiment
The Enemy from Space
20 Million Miles to Earth
When Worlds Collide
On the Beach
Them!
The Fly
Godzilla
The H-Man
posted by gusottertrout at 2:05 AM on February 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Not to be forgetting 'The Man in the White Suit'.
posted by biffa at 2:29 AM on February 27, 2017

There was a 2008 cable mini-series/TV movie "re-imagining," but that was a case where the gorgeous minimalism of the original was lost to an over-complicated and somewhat ridiculous plot.

Words cannot express my total disdain for this horrible remake.

@BlueHorse: The novel is still a good, taut read.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 7:42 AM on February 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I too enjoyed this movie. I also fear it would not hold up well to a rewatch with modern day RolandOfEld in attendance.

I don't know what to think nor how to reconcile those two statements...... probably something about lawns and how people should avoid mine.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:46 AM on February 27, 2017

This movie and the book scared the crap out of me more than anything else I had encountered when I first ran across it as a kid, except maybe Zontar, The Thing From Venus.
posted by lagomorphius at 9:23 AM on February 27, 2017

Many years ago at the Blinding Light Cinema in Vancouver they played "Strain Andromeda The", which is the entire film re-edited so that every cut is in reverse order - the last shot of the movie plays first, proceeding to the first shot of the movie at the end. People die and then get sick and catch a disease and then are fine, bombs explode, count up, and then are armed. After two hours of this your brain gets rewired to expect effect before cause; it's the most mind-bending thing I've ever experienced in the cinema.
posted by Gortuk at 10:03 AM on February 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Same year as THX 1138, another early sci-fi film that I thought sucked the first time I saw it, but later came to appreciate. I liked Andromeda Strain better the second time, after having read the book...

Come to think of it, there were a whole bunch of pretty good dystopian sci-fi thrillers, in the early 70s...Silent Running, A Clockwork Orange, Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, Rollerball, Death Race 2000...

And the disaster movies!

Earthquake, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure...that was entertainment!
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 6:43 PM on February 27, 2017 [1 favorite]