A scientific context is offered by interviews with researchers expounding modes of intergalactic travel, but the real pleasures are in the organic beauty of deep spaces and the ambiguous position of the humans suspended in them.
The Wild Blue Yonder
2005 · 1h 21m · Not Rated
Science Fiction
Directed by
Werner Herzog
Overview
An alien narrates the story of his dying planet, his and his people's visitations to Earth and Earth's self-made demise, while human astronauts in space are attempting to find an alternate planet for surviving humans to live on.
Director and cast
- Werner Herzog Director
- Brad Dourif as Alien
- Donald Williams as Astronaut Commander
- Ellen Baker as Astronaut physician
- Franklin Chang-Diaz as Astronaut Plasma Physicist
- Shannon Lucid as Astronaut biochemist
- Michael McCulley as Astronaut pilot
- Roger Diehl as Mathematician
- Martin Lo as Mathematician
- Ted Sweetser as Mathematician
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
This wacky 'science fiction fantasy' (2005) by Werner Herzog looks like it was made for a few thousand bucks, but it's held aloft by the filmmaker's inexhaustible curiosity and wonder.
The Wild Blue Yonder is at times playful and inventive, at others simplistic and silly. Ultimately, Werner Herzog's free-form, idiosyncratic devolution of the documentary is beautiful but dull.
When Herzog cycles through scenes of scuba divers under the ice and astronauts sleeping in zero gravity, he conveys a strong sense of what 'alien' really means.
For devotees of lunatic Herzog adventure a la Fitzcarraldo, it's only a serviceable time-killer 'til the arrival of Rescue Dawn, the director's Americanization of his 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly.
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