Millennium is a 1989 science fiction drama film directed by Michael Anderson and starring Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, Robert Joy, Brent Carver, Al Waxman and Daniel J. Travanti.
The film follows an air crash investigator who discovers curiously strange details while investigating a recent crash. A woman is sent back to his time from the future to try and derail his investigation before he uncovers their secret.
Millennium is based on the 1977 short story "Air Raid" by John Varley. Varley started work on a screenplay in 1979, and released the expanded story in book-length form in 1983 as Millennium.
Plot
In 1989, while on its landing approach, a commercial airliner is about to be struck by another plane from above. The pilot struggles to control the plane while the flight engineer checks the passenger cabin. He returns to the cockpit yelling that everyone is dead and the corpses are burned.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Bill Smith investigates the accident. He and his team are confused by the flight engineer's words on the cockpit voice recorder, as there is no evidence of a fire before the crash. Meanwhile, theoretical physicist Dr. Arnold Mayer is also curious about the crash, which borders on science fiction. In a lecture, he discusses the possibility of visits from time travelers.
About one thousand years into the future, pollution has rendered humans unable to reproduce. Teams are sent into the past to abduct people who are about to be killed; the plane crashes were part of this plan. The abductees are kept in stasis until they can be sent into the far future to repopulate the Earth. Most of the current population is in poor health but the time travelers—mostly women—are relatively healthy and are given the best food and care to pass for 20th-century humans. Present-day air is too clean for the time travelers to process; they smoke cigarettes to mimic their own timeline's atmosphere.
Every incursion into the past causes an accompanying "timequake", with a magnitude proportional to the incursion's effects. Time travelers try to minimize their effects by replacing the humans they abduct with organically grown copies. This explains the flight engineer's comment about the charred passengers; the replicas had been pre-burned in preparation for the crash.
In 1963, a time traveler on a plane is shot before it crashes, losing a stun weapon as a result. This weapon winds up in Dr. Mayer's possession, setting his path to investigate what is happening. Twenty-five years later, Smith finds a similar artifact among the wreckage of the crash portrayed at the beginning of the film.
Worried that the discoveries made by Smith and Mayer might change history, time-traveler Louise Baltimore is sent back to 1989 to deter Smith from pursuing his investigation. She gains Smith's trust and seduces him into a one-night stand, attempting to distract him. Smith gradually becomes suspicious and visits Dr. Mayer. Louise materializes from the future and reveals her mission to them, hoping they will voluntarily keep the secret. During the conversation, Mayer dies while reassembling the stun weapon.
Mayer was instrumental in the development of the Gate technology that made time travel possible; his death results in an unsolvable paradox—a force infinity timequake—which will destroy the entire civilization of the future timeline. The only course of action is to send all the people who were collected into the distant future before the Gate is permanently destroyed.
Bill and Louise, who is pregnant, step through the Gate together and disappear. As an explosion destroys the Gate and as the blast wave engulfs Louise's android advisor, Sherman, he quotes Winston Churchill: "This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning."
Cast:
• #Kris #Kristofferson as #Bill #Smith
o #Jamie #Shannon as #Young #Bill #Smith
• #Cheryl #Ladd as #Louise #Baltimore
• #Daniel J. #Travanti as Dr. #Arnold #Mayer
• #Robert #Joy as #Sherman The Robot
• #Lloyd #Bochner as #Walters
• #Brent #Carver as #Coventry
• #David #McIlwraith as #Tom Stanley
• #Maury #Chaykin as #Roger Keane
• #Al #Waxman as Dr. #Brindle
• #Lawrence #Dane as #Captain #Vern #Rockwell
• #Thomas #Hauff as First Officer #Ron #Kennedy
The film follows an air crash investigator who discovers curiously strange details while investigating a recent crash. A woman is sent back to his time from the future to try and derail his investigation before he uncovers their secret.
Millennium is based on the 1977 short story "Air Raid" by John Varley. Varley started work on a screenplay in 1979, and released the expanded story in book-length form in 1983 as Millennium.
Plot
In 1989, while on its landing approach, a commercial airliner is about to be struck by another plane from above. The pilot struggles to control the plane while the flight engineer checks the passenger cabin. He returns to the cockpit yelling that everyone is dead and the corpses are burned.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Bill Smith investigates the accident. He and his team are confused by the flight engineer's words on the cockpit voice recorder, as there is no evidence of a fire before the crash. Meanwhile, theoretical physicist Dr. Arnold Mayer is also curious about the crash, which borders on science fiction. In a lecture, he discusses the possibility of visits from time travelers.
About one thousand years into the future, pollution has rendered humans unable to reproduce. Teams are sent into the past to abduct people who are about to be killed; the plane crashes were part of this plan. The abductees are kept in stasis until they can be sent into the far future to repopulate the Earth. Most of the current population is in poor health but the time travelers—mostly women—are relatively healthy and are given the best food and care to pass for 20th-century humans. Present-day air is too clean for the time travelers to process; they smoke cigarettes to mimic their own timeline's atmosphere.
Every incursion into the past causes an accompanying "timequake", with a magnitude proportional to the incursion's effects. Time travelers try to minimize their effects by replacing the humans they abduct with organically grown copies. This explains the flight engineer's comment about the charred passengers; the replicas had been pre-burned in preparation for the crash.
In 1963, a time traveler on a plane is shot before it crashes, losing a stun weapon as a result. This weapon winds up in Dr. Mayer's possession, setting his path to investigate what is happening. Twenty-five years later, Smith finds a similar artifact among the wreckage of the crash portrayed at the beginning of the film.
Worried that the discoveries made by Smith and Mayer might change history, time-traveler Louise Baltimore is sent back to 1989 to deter Smith from pursuing his investigation. She gains Smith's trust and seduces him into a one-night stand, attempting to distract him. Smith gradually becomes suspicious and visits Dr. Mayer. Louise materializes from the future and reveals her mission to them, hoping they will voluntarily keep the secret. During the conversation, Mayer dies while reassembling the stun weapon.
Mayer was instrumental in the development of the Gate technology that made time travel possible; his death results in an unsolvable paradox—a force infinity timequake—which will destroy the entire civilization of the future timeline. The only course of action is to send all the people who were collected into the distant future before the Gate is permanently destroyed.
Bill and Louise, who is pregnant, step through the Gate together and disappear. As an explosion destroys the Gate and as the blast wave engulfs Louise's android advisor, Sherman, he quotes Winston Churchill: "This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning."
Cast:
• #Kris #Kristofferson as #Bill #Smith
o #Jamie #Shannon as #Young #Bill #Smith
• #Cheryl #Ladd as #Louise #Baltimore
• #Daniel J. #Travanti as Dr. #Arnold #Mayer
• #Robert #Joy as #Sherman The Robot
• #Lloyd #Bochner as #Walters
• #Brent #Carver as #Coventry
• #David #McIlwraith as #Tom Stanley
• #Maury #Chaykin as #Roger Keane
• #Al #Waxman as Dr. #Brindle
• #Lawrence #Dane as #Captain #Vern #Rockwell
• #Thomas #Hauff as First Officer #Ron #Kennedy
- Category
- Kris Kristofferson
- Tags
- #Movies
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