The earth is covered with mutants, at least all those outdoors a special compound. It's 2024, and a routine flight for air force officer Robert Clarke has him traveling 64 years in a matter of less than an hour. Now, he must find a way to live in this scary new world, not the last man on earth, not the Omega man, and not "I am Survivor". This is a very clever science fiction tale of how man's exploration into space destroyed the world he knew. Gee, seems like man can't have anything nice without intentionally turning it into something destructive.
An interesting use of "What if" has Clarke trying to head back to his time, a la what happened to Kim hunter and Roddy McDowall when they "Escaped the Planet of the Apes". While this obvious drive-in movie makes some very good points, who really was analyzing that back in 1960? It's in retrospective that this has more of an impact as we look past the space exploration of the period after this and the two shuttle tragedies.
There's also political irony with obvious Russians living in the complex, located smack in the middle of what used to be the good old U.S.A. Do we learn from movies like this as warnings, or do we poo-poo their ideals and continue on destructive patterns? The post nuclear age brought out many message films like this, but one thing is obvious: we can't continue to exploit the earth as we have done and expect it to survive.
An interesting use of "What if" has Clarke trying to head back to his time, a la what happened to Kim hunter and Roddy McDowall when they "Escaped the Planet of the Apes". While this obvious drive-in movie makes some very good points, who really was analyzing that back in 1960? It's in retrospective that this has more of an impact as we look past the space exploration of the period after this and the two shuttle tragedies.
There's also political irony with obvious Russians living in the complex, located smack in the middle of what used to be the good old U.S.A. Do we learn from movies like this as warnings, or do we poo-poo their ideals and continue on destructive patterns? The post nuclear age brought out many message films like this, but one thing is obvious: we can't continue to exploit the earth as we have done and expect it to survive.