Pretty Good

People are voting emotionally.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

After watching "Earth II", my first thought was 'was this a pilot for a proposed television series?'. Well, IMDb doesn't say but it does indicate it was made for television by MGM-TV...so I can only assume this was the case.The story is set in the near future. The United States has announced that it's building a permanent space station that will be its own self-governing and autonomous nation...open for the betterment of mankind. While the Americans, Russians and others enjoy this new station, the wicked Chinese decide to threaten the station with nuclear destruction.The special effects are very good for the time. While not up to the standards of "2001", the space shots are pretty nice. Additionally, the film had a great premise. But the problem with the film began with the plot involving the Chinese...and the film stayed stuck on this theme throughout the rest of the movie. Additionally, Marriet Hartley's character was inexplicably stupid...too stupid to be realistic. A flawed movie, certainly, but well worth seeing if you love sci-fi, as there is enough of interest to keep us sci-fi fans happy.

Everyone is talking about how EARTH II was ahead of its time with special effects, scientific imaginings, and the like. I was, however, a little more down to earth. The people who worked up this film did not have their feet on the ground.Here's the premise: An international project sends up a huge space station and populates it with about a hundred people from various nations. The USSR is represented but not China - because the Chinese had a bad attitude about it. Instantly the US President (Lew Ayres) tells the inmates of this space station that they are now a new and independent nation, he (evidently without the advice and consent of Congress) is recognizing it as a new nation and he's going to have the UN make it a member state. This is absurd on a number of levels include any business about the exchange of ambassadors.Additionally, the technology pretty much does their thinking for them. In a ship-wide video discussion of a crucial problem of international relations, the ship's computers analyze each person's argument and put subtitles on the screen with disparaging labels about their contribution -- e.g. "Appeal to authority".Apart from this, the interesting stuff (the special effects) is about a Chinese nuclear satellite that is being used to the homelands of the inmates of this space station.So, comic book logic, impressive special effects.

I saw Earth II as a Friday Night movie of the week back in 1971 as an eleven year old. The special effects and production design gave this film a great look, but the story charting the establishment of an independent nation on-board an orbiting space station lost me.Forty years later, I had the chance to see it again through adult eyes. Surprisingly, I remembered several scenes and plot points, but, the entire production was brought down by one simple fact: it's boring. The film has a lot of incident but little action. The cerebral dialog is interesting, but the performances are wooden in the extreme. Only Anthony Franciosa's opinionated character rose above the colorless performances of the rest of the cast.While I understand this was an effort for an intelligent SF series, the lack of human drama kept that series from happening.

The effects were handled by the same folks who gave us "Marooned" but with a superior edge in design and technical know how. 2001,s Gary Lockwood (Frank Poole of 2001} is cast as a space rescue pilot.The space shuttles in this feature bare a striking resemblance to our current shuttle design and the space suits are straight out of the NASA play book as the producers used technical help from major sources to ad realism.One exciting scene of a race against time shows astronauts chasing down a Chinese nuclear satellite as it re-enters earths atmosphere, this scene incorperated early video image technology to generate a shower of sparks creating a burning effect that looked 3-dimensional and will remind you of the slit scan effects used by Douglas Trumball in 2001.Intended as a TV pilot for a possible ABC series it is not to be confused with The short lived series Earth II 1993-94 featuring Clancy Brown and Tim Curry.I was enthralled at a network movie of the week of this quality and have seen it repeated on CBS,s Late show in the early 80,s Catch it if you can on sci-fi channel but good luck finding it on DVD or VHS. This picture is still contemporary in style and is worth a look.