The Andromeda Strain

So I got this via Netflix today.

Ahahahahaha this movie cracked me up.

“We don’t know what the answer is… PUT IT IN THE COMPUTER!”
“Lets have our Nobel Prize winning scientists pushing buttons and staring at computer screens!”
“You have to crawl up the CENTRAL CORE that has LASERS to turn off the NUCLEAR WEAPON and you have FIVE minutes”.

Its like the prototype for all bad science fiction summer action extravagazas. The trailer on the DVD was hilarious too, because not only did it give away THE ENTIRE MOVIE, it had lines like…

“OVER 100 minues long!” and
“NO ONE will be seated in the last ten minutes!!”

I remember seeng it as a child when it first came out (read the novel as well) and again about two years ago… I thought it was pretty damn good. Still do.

I don’t know about all summer sci-fi action movies, but it certainly provided the template for all Crichton stories and movies to follow, one big part of which is to exploit a science angle that’s getting a fair amount of play in the popular press and exploit it, even if more than a little outlandishly.

When The Andromeda Strain was published there was a lot of buzz about the efforts that were being undertaken by NASA to ensure that the first Apollo astronauts to land on the moon didn’t bring back some mysterious lunar germ. Respectable scientists (or at least seemingly respectable scientists) could be found all over the media opining that the measures ultimately adopted to quarantine the Apollo 11 astronauts didn’t go far enough.