Humanities End

Title: Humanities End
Rating: 1/5
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Starring: Jay Laisne, Cynthia Ickes, Rochelle Vallese
Director: Neil Johnson

So I managed to keep my eyes open for this one, thus removing it from that bottom category, but they should consider this an act of kindness on my part. One of the first things that struck me was the gratuitous use of CGI; often in low-budget affairs they try to limit the effects, but here they’ve gone for gusto and used in by the bucketload, and whilst it clearly looks dated, was fairly well utilised. In fact, it was probably the best thing about this film, and that’s not a good thing.

The plot follows a captain whose name we never learn. Or I didn’t remember. Anyway, he goes fishing on some desert planet (wrap your mind around that one) for seven years because he’s hiding from the woman he desperately loves who dumped him. He receives a transmission from her saying she needs help, but only one of the ships she was towing survives. A half dead old guy and a ridiculously hot ‘breeder’ is all that remains, and it is here that we are told that the captain and the breeder are the last two humans left alive. Oh bollocks, I forgot to mention the war. Basically, cavemen were actually smarter than us, and rather than becoming extinct simply left; they are called the Nephilim, and they come back pissed at us for…actually that never gets explained. They form an alliance with the ‘Construkts’ or ‘Homo-Technis’ as they are sometimes called, which are man-made cyborg’s that rebelled and killed most of us.

The acting is laughably bad, as in I’m not sure if they intended it to be a joke, where we come into contact with a ridiculously hot ‘breeder’ and the captain is told he’s the last man alive and has to repopulate the species with her. But then on the other hand, the jokes from the captain are so bad, that they are possibly the least funny aspect to the entire film. But even given the shoddy acting, the CGI – which in fairness, for the budget they were on was used pretty effectively – what really gets me is the script. Now, I don’t want to appear to be claiming that most films are completely original – they really aren’t – but this film goes one step further and blatantly plagiarises others, in the characters, effects, plot-lines, etc. I honestly don’t think there was an original though that went to into this (a list of all the stolen idea’s that come to mind will be added as a spoiler at the end).

And it’s almost disappointing, as the plot in itself didn’t reek of failure; the very premise of a few stragglers on the brink of the extinction of humanity, struggling to survive against overwhelming odds to preserve the species is in itself quite plausibly a powerful idea. It’s just a shame that this idea gets relegated so that they can pretend to be all their other favourite films.

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Stolen Idea’s:

1) The laser fire was identical to that in ‘Star Wars.’
2) Hand-held nuke weapon identical to that from ‘Fortress.’
3) ‘Blue,’ the ships computer was remarkably similar to the Nebuchanezzer from ‘Farscape’
4) The Nephilim overlords are actually just ‘Borg’ from ‘Star Trek.’ The exact same way of walking and talking. In fact, I’m pretty sure I heard a “Resistance is Futile” at one point.
5) The ships captain was basically just trying to be Harrison Ford. As if he couldn’t decide between Han Solo and Indiana Jones, except his wit was about as clever as a ten year olds comeback.
6) Humanity fell when they were infiltrated by bioengineered robots that looked identical to humans, who blew up all the worlds. Didn’t Battlestar Galacatica already do that? (twice).
7) One of the characters is actually a ‘pleasure model’ re-configured to have human feelings. The entire show ‘Lexx’ is devoted to such a character.
8) The main big bad guy from the Construkts is basically ‘Xerxes’ from ‘300,’ with perhaps a bit more leather. Also, the black guy wasn’t that tall so he puffed out his chest a lot, as if that would compensate.
9) One of the Construkts switches allegiance at the very end. Seeing as how the Construkts accept Nephilim rule in return for immortality, I don’t think a ‘Stargate’ comparison is out of the question (the Go’uold ruling over the Jaffa in return for the promise of immortality), and low and behold Te’ulk switches allegiance in one of the very early episodes.