#701 – The Time Guardian (1987)

The Time Guardian (1987)

Film review #700

Director: Brian Hannant

SYNOPSIS: In the fortieth century, an army of androids are at war with humans, forcing them to retreat to the last safe city that can only escape their enemy by travelling through time. Two soldiers are sent back to 1988 to prepare a landing site in the Australian outback, but run into all sorts of problems…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: The Time Guardian is a 1987 sci-fi film. The opening text crawl gives us the backstory of androids called the Jen-Diki being at war with humanity in the fortieth century, and mankind retreating into the last safe city that can travel through time to avoid the evil androids. Yes, it sounds very Terminator-ish. The opening has a flashy action scene that’s at least a bit interesting, although it’s difficult to work out what is going on most of the time thanks to the close up shots and the lack of any decent lighting (obviously intentional to obscure the lack of budget to construct more elaborate sets). The city escapes to 1988, and sends two soldiers, Ballard and Petra ahead to ready the landing site. What follows is your more typical time travel ‘fish out of water’ style of story, where Ballard teams up with a geologist from the present to complete his mission. the split between the futuristic city and present day presents a whole host of problems for the story: it splits up the film between the future, where poorly-established characters just bicker at each other with no real purpose or direction, and the present where it becomes a typical story of a man from the future having to adjust to present day customs and a flimsy romance subplot. the constant switching makes it very difficult to establish anything concrete: Ballard is supposed to prepare the landing site for the city in 1988, but it’s not really clear what it is he is supposed to be doing, and spends most of his time. The whole middle section is completely aimless until the finale starts and the robots arrive and a mediocre fight sequence serves as the climax.

The most baffling thing I find about this film is that they actually got Carrie Fisher to co-star in this…yet they do absolutely nothing with her or her character. If you get one of the stars of one of the biggest sci-fi franchises ever for your own sci-fi film, it should be a no-brainer to give her a prominent role. What they do instead is have her in the opening shouted at and dismissed by the male lead, and then injured when they travel through time, meaning she sits out nearly the entire rest of the film. I don’t know if they could only pay her for a limited amount of screen time or whatever, but it really seems liked a missed opportunity. Tom Burlinson as Ballard is meant o be a gruff, hard-ass lead, but his character pushes it a bit too hard: it makes him unlikable with just how derisive he is. After this film, Burlinson’s film appearances dried up, which makes me think that this film really killed his career. As mentioned, the rest of the characters aren’t really worth mentioning, and the ones from the future don’t really get established well enough to be seen as doing anything useful. The effects have that flashy eighties feel, but nothing unique or really interesting. The end result is an odd mix of Terminator, Mad Max and Star Wars that fails to capture the magic of any of them. The script is sorely lacking in pacing, clarity or interesting elements, and failing to take advantage of it’s stars or unique setting. A dull affair that never really gets going.