In 1989, a low budget science fiction/horror film was released, it was called Moontrap and starred genre icons Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell. Then, thirty years later, director Robert Dyke and writer Tex Ragsdale decided to make a sequel…or remake…or something, and I’m pretty sure that neither of these two gentlemen had any idea what the hell they were trying to do with Moontrap: Target Earth.
Aside from a couple of nods, this film has little to nothing to do with the 1989 original, which dealt with a couple of astronauts finding ancients ruins on the moon and their fight with killer alien cyborgs. Moontrap: Target Earth seems to have been constructed in such a fashion so that viewers need have no knowledge of the previous film, but what this results in is a film that makes little to no sense, which will piss off fans of the original and anybody sitting down to watch this thing.
Abandon all hope he who continues with this movie.
In the opening scenes, we learn that Brian Carter (Chris Newman) has discovered, buried in the desert, what looks to be a part of a large alien artifact, but before he can get on CNN, he is approached by Richard Kontral (Charles Shaughnessy), who works for some shadowy cabal, and he is murdered by Kontral’s henchwoman Nicole (Jennifer Kincer). Dr. Daniel Allen (Damon Dayoub) and his assistant/lover Scout (Sarah Butler), who are working on their own ancient artifact discovery, are also approached by Kontral, and the two of them are hired to translate the hieroglyphics located on the artifact. They complete the job — the writing apparently being a fourteen thousand-year-old love letter from a woman to her god — and after giving their findings to the mysterious cabal, Nicole is sent to kill them. Daniel and Scout survive this assassination attempt, simply because as killers go Nicole is terrible at her job, and they sneak back onto the alien archaeological site to see what’s going on.
Maybe you should put down the iPad and call the police?
Being that Daniel is a complete idiot — which keeps him on par with most of the characters in the movie — he is spotted and quickly dispatched by a helicopter gunship (how this gunship didn’t also spot Scout sitting next to him is beyond me), and thus we get Scout on the run from the evil cabal, with them framing her for Daniel’s murder somehow. She sneaks into one of the meetings between Kontral and his cabal bosses — she got by their security because Nicole was on a smoke break — but she is captured before she can cut Kontral’s throat. Then, just as she is about to be executed by Nicole, they discover that somehow Scout is connected to the alien artifact, and so she is brought back to the archaeological site to see if her presence can trigger some kind of response.
I’d say a big red robot qualifies as a response.
The robot kills Nicole and shanghais Scout and Kontral, taking them both aboard the artifact — which is, of course, an ancient spaceship built by an advanced human civilization that predates recorded history — and they are taken on a fast trip to the moon. Once they arrive on the moon, they are attacked by a big blue robot — don’t ask me who or what this robot is about because I still haven’t figured out the red one’s deal — and soon the red robot is taking Scout on a walk across the lunar surface. While they are out for a stroll, Kontral manages to steal the spaceship (he’d been carefully watching the red robot piloting the craft), but for some unknown reason, he crashes back onto the moon. We then get a Rock’em Sock’em fight between the red robot and the blue robot, and the blue one gets his faceplate knocked off, while the red one falls down, exploding. This allows Scout to continue on her own, where she then comes across an ancient temple.
Could this be an Interstellar House of Pancakes?
Once the temple has been activated — she jams a strange stone that the red robot had been carrying around into the head of the temple to do this — and it then quickly terraforms the moon, giving it blue skies and a breathable atmosphere. Scout enters the temple and finds a strange figure in some kind of stasis field; this figure is her Lord God Garen (Tarick Salmaci) — Scout being some kind of “chosen one” — and we learn that some space chick named Mya (Niki Spiridakos) had been sent to Earth by Garen to pave the way for the Krell people, but she failed and thus had selected Scout to fulfill her destiny. This destiny amounts to Scout stepping into a second stasis field and going into suspended animation alongside Garen.
“Into the River of Time.”
The movie ends with a note written on the exterior wall of the temple, “A New World; Don’t Screw it Up — Scout,” and with a shot of a small plant sprouting out of the lunar soil, and then the credits roll. Now if any of that made a lick of sense, then I did better with my recap than the filmmakers managed, as the movie’s brief eighty-five-minute run-time is simply a collection of scenes with barely a thread to tie them together, and almost nothing is explained by anyone. Who are the members of the shadowy cabal? What’s with the red and blue robots? Did the red robot belong to an enemy faction? Scout kept getting these weird dream hallucinations, but were these visions happening because she is a reincarnation of Mya?
I doubt even Arthur C. Clarke could make sense of any of this.
It’s clear that director Robert Dyke and writer Tex Ragsdale were trying to go with some sort of “Chariots of the Gods” motif here — this idea is directly mentioned more than once — but they didn’t bother to actually put any work into the concept, hoping we would be too dazzled by their Commodore 64 level computer graphics to notice. The writing process is the least expensive element in filmmaking, yet somehow these guys cobbled together a film that not only has bargain basement visual effects — we’re talking effects that would be embarrassing if released in the early 90s — but they also have such “awesome” visual effects supporting some of the clunkiest dialogue ever put to screen, and a script so bad that if someone told me it had been written by a mad hamster after a three-day bender in Las Vegas, I’d believe them. I’d bet my shirt that the actors in this film were paid in coupons — and one of them was the star of the sitcom The Nanny, for Christ’s sake — but worst of all is the fact that most of the movie takes place in four incredibly boring locations, which is impressive considering you have to work hard to make an ancient temple on the moon appear boring.
Here are this film’s key locations:
Daniel and Scout’s barren warehouse, with its breath-taking big screen projector.
The archaeological site with the alien artifact, which could pass for a Doctor Who quarry.
The shadowy cabal’s meeting room, which I bet they timeshare with ballroom dancers.
And finally, the lovely lunar landscape.
Sadly, Moontrap: Target Earth isn’t even laughably bad, it’s just a tedious and unrelentingly dumb film with maybe an occasional snarky comment from Charles Shaughnessy that almost raises a chuckle, but there is nothing in the film’s brief run-time that could ever get me to recommend this to anyone — not even to fans of bad movies. In the words of the late great Admiral Ackbar, do not go see this movie, “It’s a trap!”
Note: In one of the few references to the original film, the blue robot takes the face of Kontral, which is something that happened to Bruce Campbell’s character in Moontrap, but in this film, there is no logical reason for this happening.
Moontrap: Target Earth (2017)
Overall
-
Movie Rank - 2.5/10
2.5/10
Summary
In what seems to be an “in name only” remake of Moontrap Robert Dyke and Tex Ragsdale have cobbled together a mess of a script that is supported by some of the worst and cheapest special effects I’ve ever seen.
The movie was weird and inexplicable. But it had pretty colors… (if that helps)
I found Mike’s recap incredibly accurate, and agree the plot was beyond baffling. Normally a writer will use foreshadowing to hint at possible meaning to the end of the movie, sorry not here! One could guess the evil cabal on earth are allies or opportunist aliens controlling earth and that’s why they want to suppress knowledge of the moon aliens and that humans are descendents of the Krell so when Scout terraforms the moon this gives humans a new home to run to, but… Does it make any SENSE that humans flee to the moon and an alien canal that control s earth can’t follow??? And why would the heroine Scout go into suspended animation as her reward or Destiny? Is she to be preserved for next time? What the hell? I challenge the writer to explain himself and try that justify the logical gaps!
Unfortunately, if you want to make any real sense of the movie you need to do a little interpolation/extrapolation with what is provided to you on screen and create your own plot using parts of the movie as simple “stepping stones” to tie it together.
I watch SciFi from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Many of those films lack the great special effects that we are now so pampered by. I see many new movies that are in essence as vague and ambiguous as this movie, but garnered much acclaim just because of the effects.
I dismiss the special effects and go straight to plot and character development; of which there is little. If the writer/director/producer people did these basic literary steps than you would have had a movie that made more sense.
The movie needs to better clarify the connection between Scout and Mya. Is Mya somehow embodied (physically, spiritually, etc.) in the head sculpture on Earth (is the a “temple” under that head also, as there is under the identical head on the moon?
Is Scout being contacted by Mya in a psychic manner, or is Scout genetically descended from Mya, and upon Scout discovering the Earth artifacts something awakens the genetic coding within her and she starts to see “flashbacks” or memories of Mya’s life and message (however vague) to her.
It would seem that Mya went to Earth with her “protector” robot (red) and somehow failed her mission which, as stated by Mya, should have answered the many questions posed during the movie: “Long ago the Krell crystal created a world for our people. The crystal’s origin was unknown and lost in time. When destruction from the stars is foretold Lord God Garen bid me to bring the Krell to this world so that he could prepare a new home for our people, but I failed so I have selected you (Scout) to fulfill my (Mya) destiny.”
Okay, here we go: It would seem that the “Krell crystal” is the odd shaped object first taken by the red robot from the Earth “mothership” while on the moon, and placed into its torso to be later given to Scout upon the robot’s demise after battling the blue robot. I must assume that this crystal, already having created the initial Krell homeworld, was what was used by Mya to create/terraform the Earth in order to make it hospitable for the then existing Krell/humans. I must also assume that since Garen was on the moon at the end of the trip to Earth that he had at that time given the order for Mya to terraform the Earth. Regardless, we will never really know why Garen was in stasis inside the “temple”. Was it voluntary, or was he imprisoned? The moon was terraformed in minutes by the crystal when Scout placed it in the forehead of the moon artifact (which activated the “terraforming engine”; aka “temple”), and presumably that is what Mya did on Earth 14000 yrs earlier, thus my assumption of there theoretically being the same “temple” structure under the Earth artifact, and possibly held Mya in stasis as did the moon temple. Why was Garen left in stasis after the Earth was terraformed by Mya? How did Mya fail? Was she supposed to release Garen from stasis? Why did the blue robot, which was presumably Garen’s robot (shown with him in a Scout hallucination), attack Scout and the red robot if Scout held the essence or spirit of Mya, and Mya was the lover/mate of Garen? Were both Mya and Garen “gods” to the Krell, or were one or both just the Krell “prime ministers” of the Krell population?
Perhaps the “cabal” individuals were what was left through history of a splinter faction/rebels (existing before, during, and/or after the Krell civilization went to Earth??) who wanted to wrest power from Garen and/or Mya and imprisoned them through stasis (Garen on the moon and Mya on Earth). That mysterious group certainly did not want the ship and to be made public knowledge (ordered destruction of the ship and those privy to it); possibly to avoid conflict with an existing pro-Garen/Mya faction who wanted to release Garen (and Mya?) from stasis to return to the previous power structure that existed prior to seeking Earth as a new haven for the Krell. Why did this group never mention the Earth’s artifact or its destruction? It is obvious that there is a direct connection when we see the identical artifact on the moon. Was Mya dead (murdered?) and thus her “failure” was the inability release Garen and restore the power balance(?) that previously existed? We will never know until we rewrite the script to include a little more background information.
During the entire movie the red robot protects, directs, and guides Scout. Kontral was never abducted. He fell into the Earthship when a hatch opened during the red robot’s egress from the ship to protect Scout while still on Earth. When Kontral even attempts to touch Scout the red robot nearly kills him in the protection of Scout (Kontral saved by Scout’s orders to the robot).
Red is always used for Mya (dress), and Scout (dress, spacesuit, stasis field) when she’s not naked, as well as her/their protector robot. Blue is always used for Garen (costume, spacesuit, stasis field) and his protector robot. Are the colors symbolic of opposites which attract and/or the power balance of Krell society? When shown the bottom of the ship and exterior of the moon “temple” we see a mosaic like design of interlocking blue and red. Again, possibly a reference to balance in the Krell civilization?
Given the known “facts” from the end of the movie I would not be surprised if the writers had anticipated on writing a folliow-up script. We are left with:
1) a mysterious group of presumedly influential and powerful individuals. Krontral appears to be their pawn or some level of subordinate, but can ask for their help if needed; he states early on regarding nuclear force required to damage/destroy the ship: “…well that’s never out of the question….you have no idea what I can do…”. This would imply the the “cabal” has influence and control over some (or all) nuclear devices (or other destructive force). Later on when asked to destroy the ship, Kontral clearly states his will and ability to do so even though we discover his thirst for power outweighs the demands of the “cabal”.
2) an exposed and rather large artifact on Earth with photos that would realistically be known to more than just Scout and at least 2 of her colleagues.
3) an exposed and rather large artifact on the moon.
4) the crashed ship on the moon.
5) the technician in the “food” truck at the ship’s dig site.
We can easily assume that everyone with any knowledge of the events would be made to disappear by the “cabal”, and that they control ALL of the world’s telescopes (even a fairly inexpensive telescope can discern surface features on the moon); government, institution, and privately owned. Even then it is a hard secret to keep with all the dead/missing bodies piling up.
One of the biggest issues with the science (not fiction) of the movie is the moon’s low gravity. Acting and effects were horrible in this area because it is (should be) well known that the moon’s gravitational force is about 1/6th of Earth’s. So Scout would be bouncing/floating slightly when walking, and she would have had to make little effort to climb up the artifact when she placed the crystal in its forehead. The robot battle is another fine example of a lack of necessary detail to convey some sense of reality regarding the physics involved when in low gravity.
And finally, the curse of all space movies: sound in a vacuum. 2001:A Space Odyssey is one of the few movies to get it right; all others shame on you that we hear lasers and explosions, etc., etc.
Wow! I think you should have written the storyline for this movie. It seems that you tore into every shortcoming in the screenplay.
Rewrite that skeletal plot with your fleshed-out thoughts; I bet it would be better than what I went through when watching it.