Coming Soon Reviews Proudly Presents
A Mind's Eye Theater Production of:
Don Jakoby's "Evolution"
OK, let's get the facts out of the way first. The script I read had a cover date of April 27, 1998 on it, so God knows if there's been any revisions to it since then. I haven't heard squat about it, which leads me to suspect it was purchased and is now collecting dust somewhere on some production office shelf. Jakoby's credits include Blue Thunder (I loved it, but I was 12 at the time), Lifeforce (OK, a guilty pleasure), Invaders From Mars (hey, the movie that destroyed Tobe Hooper's career!), supplied the story concepts for Arachnophobia and Double Team, and most recently wrote the screenplay for John Carpenter's Vampires.
(On a side note...look - as much as I would love to sit down with John Carpenter and tell him how much The Fog and Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13 and Prince of Darkness ruled and delighted my growing mind as a kid, where has that man's heart and soul been for the past ten years? Memoirs of an Invisible Man? Escape from L.A.? Even Mike De Luca, New Line's prez of production and a self-admitted huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft, couldn't prevent In the Mouth of Madness from being just...average. With those two guys at the creative helm [De Luca wrote the script himself] that movie should have scared the pants off of Carpenter fans. Instead ask any horror fan about it and chances are they'll half-heartedly recall seeing it. And if you've read John Steakley's novel Vampire$ you'll know the movie Carpenter did wasn't the same story, not by a longshot. Oh Carpenter, where has thou gone?)
After having seen Carpenter's Vampires, I admit I wasn't exactly looking forward to reading Jakoby's script. But after I had put it down I felt a new sense of respect for Jakoby's work. I had judged him strictly on the film Vampires (I never read the script for it), but perhaps even then I hadn't given Jakoby the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Carpenter made some significant changes to the script, or maybe Jakoby's adaptation was something I wouldn't have liked in the first place. Regardless, Evolution turned out to be an interesting fusion of science fiction and horror; sort of like The Andromeda Strain meets Aliens. Cool.
Our story opens with a meteorite arcing across the New Mexico night sky, plummeting down into the arid desert regions. A survey team is sent to check out the meteor strike, and they soon discover the rock crashed through the top of an underground cave. Upon entering the cave the explorers find said meteorite embedded into the floor of the cave from the force of impact - and it's covered with a light layer of blue-green moss. Thinking the rock has been contaminated by terrestrial vegitation, the team reports back to the government, who assembles a scientific team to investigate. What happens next amazes the scientists: they find that there's one-celled microbes scattered all over the soil surrounding the meteorite - and they're not from our planet.
Then comes the real shocker: they're evolving at a fantastically accelerated rate. The microbes develop into larger one-celled lifeforms, then into vegetation. The vegitation start emitting hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, and soon plants develop. Then the later generations of plants evolve into exotic looking bushes, flowers, trees. The trees bud and produce small animal-like lifeforms, each more bizarre than the last. And so it continues, with the underground cavern being transformed into an alien ecosystem. The alien life can't exist in oxygen; it's a toxic gas to them and they die instantly when exposed to our atmosphere. If you're asking how rapid evolution can happen even in sci-fi movie premises, Jakoby does a fair job of explaining it. The lifeforms' metabolisms in the cavern are greatly accelerated; the first few generations reproduce by division and not sexual means. And I think Jakoby had a great idea when he explained how there could be literally thousands of different species co-existing within the space of a week: the lifeforms at the base of the ecosystem leech water and trace radioactive elements out from the soil. The radioactive trace elements are then used to act as the catalyst for mutation, just like how mutation served our planet (except ours happened over the course of billions of years.) This explanation gets one very cool mention when, later on in the script, scientists step over the carcasses of recently-birthed lifeforms that are evolutionary dead-ends, like having legs that come out from your mouth.
As dozens of scientists research and catalogue the alien life, the discovery is released to the world. I give Jakoby another brownie point for that: it'd be easier to simply keep the discovery a secret from the general populace. Lots of other movies have done it, but here we get to see some of the world's reaction to the announcement. I enjoyed that aspect of the story enough that if I was developing this script I'd make a change and include some kind of new character into the scientists' group, perhaps a theologician or a scientist on loan from a religious institution, just to provide a voice for this aspect of the story. Now that extraterrestrial life has been proven, how does it relate to humanity's religions? How do the worlds citizens now feel about these lifeforms? Did the same God who many believe created this planet in His own image also create these beings?
When it gets to the part in the script where the higher evolved lifeforms appear, like the trees and animals, here's where Jakoby lets his imagination run wild. He does a great job with it, talking about strange trees that have leaves and branches that seem to touch anyone who brushes by them; a walking "log"-like animal that gets eaten by another species of "tree"; pods that give birth to strange, quickly-glimpsed creatures. The alien lifeforms are a special effects employee's dream job. If this movie ever gets made the producers shouldn't just hire one or two conceptual designers but three or four to really get some bizarre critters. Someone like artist Wayne Barlowe would be an excellent choice to oversee the team of artists (take a look at his conceptual art on CA's Hellboy page.)
Of course things aren't going to work out. Turns out the spread of the alien lifeforms is starting to creep a little too close to the cave ceiling - where the hole the meteorite punched through is. Even though there's a cover in place, the scientists want to play it safe and decide to release some oxygen into the region surrounding the opening, to slow the progress of the alien life. But with the lifeforms high rate of mutation, it was inevitable that one of the species would be able to adapt to a oxygen-rich environment...and start to flourish. Very soon the scientists investigating have to make a quick decision - and if they choose incorrectly all terrestrial life on the planet is doomed.
Jakoby's written a fine script, one that would be a good place to start at making a cool summertime movie. Some of the later scenes in the script are genuinely frightening as the scientists and their armed escorts march through alien underbrush, with undulating vines caressing their sides, trying to ascertain if they're tasty food bits or not. The growls and hoots that come from the tops of trees or dark crevasses of caves also would provide a field day for giving the audience the willies. As I read the script's latter half I was reminded of the dark corridors of Aliens where things would leap out of the darkness. Additionally, there's a demand from sci-fi fans to see this kind of stuff: already readers of the movie websites have warmed up to David Twohy's Pitch Black movie where the survivors of a crashed spaceship must fend off the nocturnal and carnivorous alien animals when the planet's suns set. Jakoby's taken the age-old concepts of a scary funhouse ride and imagining what walking on a totally an alien planet would be like and married the two together. It hasn't quite been done like this in film yet, and if handled correctly and with the right people on-board, it could kick some serious cinematic ass.
The one area Jakoby stumbles in are the characterizations of the human beings. From a writing standpoint he's got his hands full: he's got to introduce and adequately explain an entire alien ecosystem inside of 120 pages (OK, he uses 122, but Jakoby's still bound by standard screenplay length) and make us care for the scientists investigating and then being threatened by the alien lifeforms. He tries to do that by introducing some tension in the group in the form of a jilted ex-lover working with his ex and her present-day beau, but it's stuff we've seen before. Since Jakoby did such a cool job with the aliens I wanted to see just a little bit more of the same originality with his characters' personalities. There's nothing wrong with what Jakoby's written down - it'll work on the screen - but he's playing it safe. None of the characters themselves are truly memorable, and I simply feel there are better ways of creating social dynamics between the scientists than by introducing a love triangle. That's why I feel you also need another character or two to show the other aspects of the alien equation. If I was in charge of developing this puppy, I'd hire a writer who's speciality is drama and tweak the existing characters. Long after we've been scared by the Aliens we still remember Ripley, Newt, Hicks, Hudson and Vasquez, and if that element can be augmented in Jakoby's script, we'd be all set for giving this one a greenlight.
There's one piece of story description that Jakoby wrote that simply has to be a line spoken by someone. I won't reveal it here but if you've got a copy of the script you'll know it when you see it - the comment about who their "best friend" suddenly is.
All in all, this has got the potential to be an entertaining trip, with the opportunity to provide audiences with scores of surreal, beautful and nightmarish alien beasties. Will it ever see the light of day? I dunno. In the end I rate Don Jakoby's Evolution a B- and hope when all's said and done we'll be able to see it one day on the big screen. Here's hoping.
That's all for now kiddies. If you know something about this script, or you've read it, drop me a line. I'm always interested in hearing other peoples opinions about what gets discussed in Director's Cut. I'll be back in a few with another script review, this time for a project that's in production right now and that's whet my appetite: Warner Bros. Red Planet.
It's good to be back.
