Hello my Beautiful Watchers and welcome back to Lost in Adaptation, the internet review
show about books and the films based on them. Today's subject is the 1969 dark science fiction
novel, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton.
Bit of backstory: a few months ago I was contacted by Penguin Random House, Crichton’s publishing
company and offered a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of the book and while I wouldn’t
usually deviate from the paid Patreon list I realized this was my not to be passed up
chance to make up for the Jurassic Park Lost in Adaptation from years and years ago where
my dyslexic arse spent the entire episode calling him Michael Crich-ton.
In case you’re not familiar with him, Crichton was a hugely multi-talented gentlemen being
a gifted screenwriter and film director in addition to writing books that sold in the
millions and often took a large role in adapting his own novels to the big screen.
Not all of Crichton's books are the same but the most popular ones tend to all have a certain
message at their core, namely: Humanity! Do NOT play God with _______.
In Jurassic Park it was nature, in Prey it was artificial intelligence
and in The Andromeda Strain it's biology...
Or possibly the unknowns of outer space depending on how you look at it.
A film adaptation followed very quickly in the book’s footsteps in 1971. Unfortunately
it's not one of the projects that Crichton was directly involved in. The rights to the
story were bought out by Universal, who hired Robert Wise to direct.
To Universal’s credit though, they also brought on Nelson Roosevelt Gidding, a man
known for being very good at adapting books into film to write the screenplay so this
was evidently not intended to be a project devoid of respect for the source material.
As usual before getting into the adaptation, let's talk about the book and the film’s
individual merits and flaws.
The Andromeda Strain was one of Crichton’s early big hitters almost instantly rocketing
up all the best sellers lists.
It’s presented as a novelization of a recently declassified document. I was amused to read
the fictional disclaimer saying that because all of the people involved in these events
were often as stupid as they were brilliant they would inevitably end up being offended
by this retelling.
I dunno how many of you will actually remember my Jurassic Park book review from way back
when but uh, in both of them, Crichton decided to illustrate his book with like very simple
drawings, or occasionally just present the information in a different than usual way.
You know, mixing up the format a bit.
Because of this I was kind of curious to know what the audiobook would be like so I downloaded
the one off Audible and I mean, you guys know that I’m usually super adamant that it is
equally valid to read a paper book, or an ebook or listen to an audiobook but in this
case Crichton has kind of made it so you really have to get a physical book to enjoy it the
way he intended.
For example there's a recreation of an audio log and in the audiobook the narrator has
to read out the timestamp on every single freaking line and trust me it got super old
super fast.
Interestingly right, Crichton went out of his way to highlight out something about each
of the protagonists during their introduction that makes them a bit of an arsehole.
One of them has apparently gone through 4 wives, and two of them were married to his
friends beforehand and another is apparently a really hard man to work for because he’s
super anal about the way things have to be done and ends up snapping at his underlings
if everything doesn't go according to plan.
Now I like a flawed hero, it adds depth to the character but it almost seemed like he
wanted to make sure that I didn’t like any of them too much.
The Andromeda Strain isn’t quite as polished as Jurassic Park which really should surprise no one
considering there's 21 years of novel writing experience between them.
Like a lot of Crichton's work there's horror elements to it but it’s certainly not straight
up horror.
The War of the Worlds was often brought to my mind when I was reading this, mainly because
of the deadly bacteria connection though of course in this case it’s flipped and humanity
is being assaulted by an alien pathogen instead of aliens being brought down by earth viruses.
A lot of this book is given over to describing scientific experiments. Now don’t get me
wrong, I love science and science fiction but I got the distinct impression... You know,
just judging from the amount of time and enthusiasm that he poured into it page after age that
err… Crichton REALLY loved science… Like he really REALLY loved it.
:cell phone beeps:
Thank you for calling the naughty science appreciation line, the premium phone line that
satisfies all your confused feelings towards cutting edge technology and scientific theories.
For applied physics press 1, for engineering press 2, for cellular biolo-
:button noise:
The electron microscope was a magnificent tool I’d LOVE to get my hands on. First
developed in 1931 it uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination.
A quick word of warning before I move onto any film footage: I know some people can get
quite upset at the idea of live animal experimentation so I feel I should warn you that this film
has some very realistic images of just that so you might want to keep that in mind before
watching this review.
This film is known for its unusual employment of the split screen. Whether you like this
or hate it is up to you but hey, at least they were trying something different.
I super appreciate how much effort must have gone into this production. I try not to harp
on about CG too much as that's kind of…. Every other internet critic’s thing but
I have to confess, seeing a film that predates it and as a result has real helicopters, real
sets, real mechanical arms, real animals, real babies, real towns with… Well realistic
bodies littered around it is a nice change.
An unfortunate downside of the film is the utterly obnoxious scoring and foley work.
It's hard to describe and unfortunately I can’t play a clip of it because that’s
like a beacon for the copyright bots to swarm me, but for some reason they decided to inundate
the film with semi computerish whirring and buzzing noises, the Andromeda Strain itself
is represented by an alarming screeching noise and there's several scenes with a crying baby
and that little bugger is drowning out the actors trying to talk.
Middle aged ass, middle aged ass.
I hope you get a good look at the middle aged man’s ass.
In 2008 a second adaptation took the form of a TV mini series but… err…. It was
crap so let's talk adaptation about the film.
Usually upon getting these sorts of results from the Patreon survey I would feel inclined
to do a book plot synopsis to bring everyone into the loop before starting the comparison,
but this film is so freakishly accurate to the plot of the book it renders that entirely
superfluous as this section would just be a word for word repetition of it.
A satellite orbiting the planet getting knocked off course and crash landing not far from
a very, very small town in Arizona.
Slightly later a pair of US army soldiers following its signal to the town and finding
everyone there dead except for a mysterious old man in white robes, shortly before dying
themselves.
A spy plane making a flyover of the town and confirming that everybody is dead.
The officer in charge calling in the codeword “wildfire” to the higher ups.
Wildfire turning out to be a contingency for dealing with the containment of a deadly virus
or disease being brought to earth from space. Once activated 5 expert scientists and doctors
are brought to a secret high tech underground lab to figure out how to contain or cure the
outbreak.
Doctors Stone, Levit, Burton and Hall being grabbed by the military but the 5th member,
Dr. Kerke being in a poorly timed hospital stay for an operation.
The scientists being informed that the satellite was part of Project Scoop, a data gathering
mission that was collecting microscopic flecks of biological matter from the immediate space
around planet Earth.
Two members making a hazmat suited visit to the town, after dropping some bombs designed
to kill the birds around it to stop the buzzards from spreading whatever it is what killed
everyone.
Discovering that almost everyone affected instantly collapsed without any fanfare, but
one or two, mostly older people were driven mad instead and performed bizarre suicides.
Eventually finding the space probe and two survivors, an old man and a baby, who are
transferred to the wildfire base.
Access to said base being through a secret elevator inside a tool shed in the middle
of nowhere. The lab itself being five levels of high tech machinery and isolation units.
Equipped with a supercomputer and a nuclear bomb that will automatically activate if there's
a breach in containment.
Wildfire also having super uptight decontamination procedures that go above and beyond all reason
to completely sterilize and immunise its workers.
Hall, a surgeon not entirely sure why he was brought onto the project being informed that
he is there partly because of a theory known as the Odd Man Hypothesis that concluded from
a range of simulations that only an unmarried man would consistently make the right choice
when it came to the decision of whether or not to shut down the nuke once it was armed.
The majority of the rest of the book and the film is a lot, and I mean a LOT of science.
Experiments, simulations, discussions, you name it they have it. Crichton’s aforementioned…uh...
appreciation for it is most definitely recreated in this film.
Sprinkled in amongst this are other book accurate plot points like the President not having
the balls to immediately order the infected town nuked, despite the recommendation of
the wildfire team, and the cutting edge communication equipment in the base breaking down because
of a tiny scrap of paper that got caught up in the machinery.
Dr. Levit choosing to not inform the team of their epilepsy so having a fit at just
the wrong moment costing them valuable time in an emergency.
The mysterious old man, who incidentally is called Peter Jackson, coming to and revealing
that he has an ulcer problem that he’s self medicating for in a way that gives him extreme
acid. This eventually leads to them to discovering that infected people with massively imbalanced
pH levels in their bodies will be spared death.
The team eventually discovering that the satellite picked up a tiny piece of space debris that
contained a substance entirely alien to earth that's capable of reproducing and mutating
in any environment and feeds on energy, leading them to realise that nuking it would have
been a terrible thing after all as it would have turned it into goodness knows what while
simultaneously provided it with all the energy it needed to spread around the world instantly.
The Andromeda Strain mutating into a completely new organism that’s harmless to humans but
eats a certain type of plastic, causing an air force jet to partially dissolve and crash
and a containment breach within Wildfire, activating the nuke bomb countdown.
Due an incredibly stupid design oversight, the only guy with the ability to shut it off
getting trapped on a level with no panel installed for him to insert his key into, forcing Dr.
Hall to climb a shaft filled with defence mechanisms designed to stop lab animals from
escaping.
Dr. H, despite tripping balls on tranquilizers, getting to the shut off just in time to stop
the base from exploding.
I was super happy and amused to see that the film included the super janky voice recognition
software that frustrated all users. Something of a clairvoyant prediction by Michael Crichton.
In an interesting adaptation choice, the film follows the books format of not strictly linear
storytelling as well. Flashing back to past events and forward to post in short bursts
in a way that you don’t often see in a visual storytelling format.. Unless that’s like
the whole gimmick you know like Lost or something.
Amazingly I was only able to clock two even remotely important changes to the story.
The first, the gender swapping of originally male Dr. Levit, doesn't impact the plot in
any significant way...but I’m still not 100% happy about it to be completely honest.
Usually I would be super down with the choice to add some diversity to the sausage fest
cast but unfortunately the film appears to have taken most of the negative character
qualities that I mentioned were shared amongst the leads in the book and dumped them into
the now token woman scientist.
She spends all of her time complaining, shouting and dragging her feet on every issue so instead
of representation of respected female scientists we get a shrill grump the rest of the cast
have to put up with and occasionally condescend to.
The other big change is the ultimate fate of the Andromeda Strain. While both stories
end with it mutating into something that doesn't directly kill humans anymore, in the film
the Wildfire scientists finish it off by figuring out how to use acid rain to completely neutralize
it forever. In the book, no such thing happened.
The written Andromeda Strain migrated into the upper atmosphere, spread out over the
whole planet and continued to eat any plastic-like substance it came into contact with, causing
the deaths of several American and Russian astronauts attempting to return to Earth.
Basically the book ends with humanity surrounded by a barrier preventing them from flying too
high from now on, and all space exploration being put indefinitely on hold as a result.
An arguably darker fate then the “What if this happens again?” note the film left
off on.
Some of the next few things I wouldn’t usually even bother mentioning but it’s pretty slim
pickings in this section and I like to make these videos at least ten minutes long.
Hall goes on the away mission with Stone instead of Burton and when they meet Jackson he briefly
brandishes a knife at them. The film also plays him up as more of a creepy pervert than
he was in the book.
This leads to the other gender issue with the film as the only other woman with any
decent screen time is a nurse who finds it charming and amusing when old men grab her
arse. I know this kind of behavior isn’t out of place in this time period but it just
irks me to see it added to a story that didn’t have it before.
In both versions of the story it’s revealed that the government was collecting space viruses
to use in biological warfare, however the film handles said reveal with more dramatics.
I got the impression that none of the scientists were even a little surprised to learn that
the government was up to such shenanigans in the book and for their part the military
adopted a “Yeah we’re doing it. Fuck you, it’s the Cold War” stance on the matter.
You know when you hear a really bad joke and you know it’s not funny but you laugh anyway
and then kind of hate yourself?
If we’re eliminated, the aircraft and pilot will have to be sterilized.
Uh wait a minute. That’s not what they told me.
Just incinerated.
Again there's a few things here and there but legitimately not a lot worth mentioning.
I got some serious House vibes from the book. They have a medical mystery to solve at high
stakes and incorporate jargon in a way that's designed to let the PHD and MD lacking audience
keep up with it.
While I still got SOME similar feelings from the film, they left out one thing in particular
from the book that cemented the comparison for me, namely the classic random word used
offhand that sparks a eureka moment.
Dammit we can’t find any connection between the old man and the baby. Every experiment
we try is so meaningless we might as well be wailing like the wretched child.
Wailing...What if the wailing IS what's keeping him alive?
What?
Crying causes rapid breathing, which can oxygenate your blood and cause a shift in your pH level.
That’s it, alkaline! And acid! That's what stops Andromeda.
Final Thoughts:
This film is as close to an exact recreation of the book as I’ve ever seen on this show,
something that I have over time and experience come to realise isn't necessarily the best
thing for an adaptation.
I know this is adaptation 101 and I’ve discussed these things many times before but just in
case there are any new Beautiful Watchers in the audience, films are shorter, there's
a lot more emphasis on show don’t tell, you can’t just be told what the cast are
thinking and feeling like you would in written form and it's a LOT more jarring if it’s
not told in a linear format.
This film doesn't really account for ANY of these things and it suffers for it.
Subjective complaint but I think the over reliance on scientific experiments to make
up most of the story is even more obvious in the film as you can’t skim read paragraphs
of it and it drags at bit in places as a result.
That said, there are obviously some advantages to hyper loyalty as well, namely the book
was popular for a reason and at least SOME of those reasons are going to transfer over
the film.
As I mentioned at the start, I super appreciate the colossal effort that must have gone into
making this film and all its practical effects and even if I don’t think it was entirely
a good thing, the adaptation critic side of me can’t help but be impressed by their
extreme attention to detail when it came to recreating the book.
If you enjoyed reading the Andromeda Strain and would like to see it, just all of it in
film form this adaptation will not disappoint.
Thank you for joining me my Beautiful Watchers. Seeing as we’re already talking about terrifying
unknowable things that change and mutate randomly and could spell doom for hundreds, please
remember that the best way to help with the Youtube Algorithm is to leave likes, comments
and subscribing to channels you do not wish to be condemned by it. See you soon.
As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible
light photons, electron microscopes have a higher resolving power than light microscopes
and can reveal the structure of smaller objects.
Much love and appreciation to my Patrons of Honor: Aaron G. Duncil, Sasha I. Edwards,
and Shelby Hotz.
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