The documentary instincts that helped Wise add a note of gravity to an outlandish story in The Day The Earth Stood Still only serve to render Crichton's detail-oriented, realist Sci-Fi limp and inert. The Andromeda Strain is a thrilling novel, but going into the film, I had reservations about the adaptability of it's narrative to the virtues of film - and it turns out they were well founded. 'Watching a group of dowdy, middle aged scientists petulantly bicker over questions of process for two hours and eleven minutes can only equate great cinema in the mind of the most committed of realists. In the interest of transparency I should note that, generally speaking, Wise tends to test my patience more than stir my imagination :

This is what I wrote back when we did this film for theme month. Do you agree with this assessment or did The Andromeda Strain borrow from other films before it that I am not aware of? Has there been a contemporary equivalent? Would you consider this essential science fiction and, if so, what kind of an influence do you think it has had on modern cinema?

It took a little patience to understand what Wise was trying to do here and whilst it isn't particularly a revelation to me, I did quite enjoy seeing a different approach to telling a story that had, even by 1971, been overdone. Crichton and Wise once again examine the fact that the biggest threat to humanity could be humanity itself with the alien antagonist here being a rather passive organism rather than the physical, aggressive alien threats we are used to seeing. Much like Jurassic Park, a more famous Crichton adaptation, the conflicts here arise from human hubris rather than the external threat. In fact, the text at the beginning of The Andromeda Strain presents the film as a text/document of what happened and keeps up this pretense throughout with subtitles and dates constantly appearing at the bottom of the screen, a trend that would become prevalent in future science fiction action movies like Independence Day and Deep Impact. The tension arises from heated conversations and sudden scientific revelations rather than action set pieces (aside from the final five minutes of the film which descend into cliche territory but still feel necessary as a climax). However the most interesting angle that Wise approaches the film from is in its form, using very little camera movement, choosing to keep the 'action' static at all times. Of course, there are certain character quirks but unlike most science fiction films, The Andromeda Strain relies on its premise and style rather than a charismatic lead. The characters could be labelled as dry and uninteresting because in reality, most people are pretty dry and uninteresting and this just adds to the authenticity of the film. Even at 130 minutes long, you feel as though every scene was necessary to tell the story in the way that Wise wanted to tell it. Has anybody seen this weirdly engaging alien virus film, adapted from a Micheal Crichton novel and directed by the prodigious Robert Wise (who is probably best known for The Haunting and The Day the Earth Stood Still)? It struck me as an incredibly unique take on an alien invasion film due to its cold efficiency and undisguised efforts to be as clinical as possible.

Alien invasion strain