When people talk about the great directors in science fiction, names like Kubrick and Spielberg get bandied about... but Robert Wise seldom gets enough love. The director of The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture deserves more attention, argues Den of Geek.
The great Den of Geek feature is worth reading in its entirety, and it includes entries devoted to each of the three aforementioned films. About Andromeda Strain, Den of Geek writes:
What makes The Andromeda Strain so compelling - and relatively unusual - is the realism Wise devotes to his subject matter. Although uniformly strong, the cast isn't studded with big-name stars. Instead, there's nothing familiar to hang on to, and we're forced to immerse ourselves in the pressure cooker-like suspense: rarely has a film where scientists perform experiments and talk to one another about their theories been so engrossing.
And writer Ryan Lambie also offers a spirited defense of the first Star Trek movie, saying in part that "in its best moments, it genuinely feels as though the crew's encountering something alien and unknowable. In this respect, Wise's film is an admirable expansion of the television series' ethos, in that it was about a group of people seeking out new worlds and expanding humanity's understanding of the universe."
Check out the rest of the article over at Den of Geek.