Prototype X29A (1992)

Posted on Sep 25, 2002 under Sci-fi |

Directed by Phillip Roth
Written by Phillip Roth and George Temple
Starring
- Lane Lenhart
- Robert Tossberg
- Sebastian Scandiuzzi
- Brenda Swanson
- Coulj
Produced by Talaat Captan, Phillip Roth, and Gian-Carlo Scandiuzzi

This is more than just a very bad movie (though it definitely is that); it’s a puzzling very bad movie. Most movies, no matter how bad, have an idea at the core, a concept, a certain something that you can recognize as the reason that someone originally wanted to make the movie. Even the worst of movies — Armageddon: The Final Challenge, Bad Magic, even the single most festering boil on the anus of cinema, I Stand Alone — have an identifiable something-or-other that lets the astute viewer know what it is that the moviemaker was trying to make a movie about, no matter how bungled the final execution was. (This doesn’t mean that the inciting idea had any merit whatsoever — “I want to make a movie about a butcher who’s really really angry and really really stupid” gets no marks in my book — but at least you can discover what first seized someone’s imagination.)

This one, though… I’m stumped. What, exactly, was writer/director Phillip Roth trying to accomplish? What story was he trying to tell? Whatever it was, he bungled it so badly that not only did he fail to accomplish his storytelling goal, I can’t even discern what that goal was.

Why would a cyborg need a codpiece?

According to the onscreen textual exposition (99% of the time, this is a bad thing), in the mid-21st century there arises a group of humans called “Omegas” who have been cybernetically altered. They gain the ability to change their programming and implants, so in 2057 the government creates a line of cyborgs called “Prototypes” to hunt down the Omegas. In other words, the Prototypes aren’t actually prototypes; they’re a done deal. When an entire movie is focused around a misused word, you know you’re in for 90 minutes of pain.

Actually, the first twelve minutes aren’t terribly painful, mostly because they’re an action setpiece. In the futuristic landscape of destroyed Los Angeles, represented by a semi-demolished industrial yard (shot through a yellow filter, naturally — as are all of the exteriors and most interiors in this movie), a few rebel Omegas (watch for Kato Kaelin in a small speaking role) are guarding against the onslaught of a single Prototype with a big-ass gun. The Prototype has several features characteristic of cheap robot suits: huge square metallic pecs, a dozen cables connecting the clavicle area to the jawline, and a built-in protective cup.

Inside the building being guarded, an Omega scientist is jacking into a computer via an I/O port on the back of his neck. He then hands his toddler daughter, Chandra, off to a Bedouin-wrapped woman along with a medallion that will “tell her when it’s time” or somesuch. The daugheter’s Raggedy Ann doll is significantly left behind as the woman heads with the child toward “the outskirts.” Meanwhile, the Prototype breaks in and offs the scientist.

That part wasn’t too bad. Then we fast-forward twenty years, and everything’s going to go to hell.

Mullets — of the FUTURE!

Yes, it’s all still shot with a yellow filter, and apparently it’s being shot in the same demolished factory. Everyone’s dressed like in Mad Max castoffs, and apparently spend their days sitting around in the ruins like homeless people. Look, people, the city’s been knocked down. There’s no industry; there’s no food source. There’s no reason to stick around. I know Los Angelenos have this idea that the world outside LA doesn’t exist, but come on.

The notable people in this yellow world are grown-up Chandra (Lane Lenhart), a beret-wearing bad-ass girl; her teenaged brother (yeah, foster-brother) Sebastian (Sebastian Scandiuzzi), and wheelchair-bound veteran of something-or-other Hawkins (Robert Tossberg). Hawkins, being paraplegic, is necessarily a tech wizard; he also demonstrates that, despite all of the worthwhile things the world has lost, the mullet, not unlike the cockroach, has tenaciously survived. These three form a little cadre: Sebastian leeches off his sister and gets tech favors from Hawkins, Hawkins pines for Chandra despite feelings of inadequacy, and Chandra basically acts surly and petulant and unsympathetic and not at all like the savior figure her father had intended her to become.

There’s also Dr. Alexis Zalazny (Brenda Swanson), the young, sweaty, tank-top-clad science hottie who’s gotten government permission to enter the city and reopen the sealed Prototype project to rediscover some of the medical benefits associated with it. Which means she’s going to spend the lion’s share of her screentime typing, staring at computer screens with one eyebrow cocked, and perspiring into her cleavage.

Thank heavens they’ve retained the technology for chintzy costume jewelry.

And here’s where my plot synopsis breaks down, because for so much of the rest of the movie, nothing happens. That is, things happen, but they’re uninteresting things which don’t move forward anything resembling a plot. Hawkins has cybersex with a VR Chandra. Dr. Zalazny types some and exchanges pointless dialogue with Taurence (Paul Coulj), the caretaker of the old Prototype facility. Some zen-like fighters wander the city, wordlessly beating up antisocial punks. Sebastian pisses off Hawkins’ preacher landlord. Chandra apparently turns tricks as a post-apocalypic hooker. Hawkins has his insensate ass handed to him by some more young punks, despite his impressive wheelchair fu. Zalazny types some more, and tries to revive one of the original Prototype subjects from a suspended animation tube (she fails). Chandra plays “come here/go away” with Hawkins far past the point I would cut bait and told her to go to hell.

Finally, close to an hour into the movie, something resembling a plot drags itself from the primordial ooze. Zalazny checks old veterans’ records and finds Hawkins living nearby. For reasons that escaped me (not that I had the will to pay close attention any more by this point), his veteran-ness makes him a perfect candidate subject for the Prototype project, so Zalazny visits him and offers him, essentially, the use of his legs again by being made into a Prototype (which, this time, is really a test case, so he’d be a prototype Prototype).

Aha, you say. There’s finally a story here. Hawkins will get made into a Prototype, but the Prototype’s mission is to wipe out Omegas, and Chandra is the last Omega. and you’d be right, but hold your horses. There’s still a lot of meaningless filler in the pipeline. Sebastian almost gets killed while “processing” (which, after mentioning it without explanation for most of the movie, turns out to be using a lipbalm-sized computer to count cards), and he and Chandra are rescued by the silent toughs, who turn out to be the “Protectors” — devoted only to protecting the Omega, and called into action when the Prototype computer got turned on.

Scratch that earlier caption — THIS is a codpiece!

Which, I suppose, is as good a place to rant as any. The prologue almost paints Chandra in messianic terms, rocketed from the dying planet Krypton to rally and lead a people. She does none of that; in fact, she’s the least active person in the story. She exhibits none of the enhancement and leadership ability that her father expected of her; she’s not even remotely worth having four bruisers devote their lives to protecting. Yet they do, dragging her off to her father’s old lab, cutting through the skin on the back of her neck which hides her implant, and jacking her in to speak to her VR father. She responds by whimpering and running scared.

Meanwhile, among all of this, Hawkins has gone in and gotten transformed into a Prototype, with his memories recorded and reimplanted so he can do that “searching memory” thing every time he sees someone’s face. He goes and visits Chandra, who’s expectably freaked by his transformation. And then the evil Taurence, who turns out to have been the originator of the Prototype program in the first place (does that mean we get to blame him for calling them “Prototypes”?), kills Dr. Zalazny and turns on “Level 3″ of the Prototype programming, which is the “kill all Omegas” part.

Which, you may think, will finally ratchet the story into high gear. But no. ProtoHawkins goes out, homed in on Chandra’s signal, and runs into the Protectors, who make great strides against what’s supposed to be an unstoppable, indestructable cyborg; one of them manages to judo-flip him twice. Then Chandra shows up and tells her Protectors, “No! Don’t kill him!”, giving ProtoHawkins a change to slaughter all of the Protectors. Yay, Chandra. Way to exhibit those enhanced leadership skills.

Boy bands — of the FUTURE!

ProtoHawkins chases Chandra down and has his hands around her throat when Sebastian shows up and starts shooting at him. ProtoHawkins breaks off and grabs Sebastian around the throat — but then his memory banks dredge up Sebastian’s image, and ProtoHawkins drops him and wanders off to tear off his protective helmet and die. The end. Catch that? Hawkins was completely prepared to kill Chandra; it was the remembering the supporting character that reasserted his personality and control over his programming. Even here, at the very climax of the movie, Chandra’s presence amounts to “no big whup.”

And still, as the closing credits roll, we have no idea what the point of the Omegas was in the first place (I suppose I could posit, “Considering how clueless and ineffectual she is with her implants, imagine how bad she’d be without them!”), nor what they were doing that caused the government to start the Prototype program. There’s no indication of why the world’s gone to hell. All in all, there’s nothing here to tell me why somebody thought that this movie was a good idea.

If, however, I had done a little research before viewing, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised at how pointless the entire exercise was. Phillip Roth’s next film was A.P.E.X. (1994), a horrendously bad sci-fi film (also involving cyborg suits) that I’ll probably force myself to watch again and review when I feel myself guilty of some horrific sin. And the pain doesn’t stop there; Roth’s filmography spans twelve movies over a decade and a half (including such cinematic failures as Boa and Interceptor Force). For those of us who desperately wanted to believe that Albert Pyun was an isolated case, this is chilling news indeed.