A Look at “Marooned” by Adventure Galley

Let me ask you a question.

What do you get when you mix an episode of The Twilight Zone with a Stanley Kubrick comedy?

This:

A music video made in the modern era that pays homage to the old 1950s-style science fiction films and television.

In a grim future, the planet Earth is depleted of its resources and a group of scientists send out an intrepid crew to save us.

It’s brilliant. The video does everything it can to evoke that old aesthetic of B movie cheese with smart designs throughout in terms of filming, from the cardboard-looking walls to a spaceship takeoff that looks like it is being pulled on wires. It really brings you back to the old science fiction days. It does a great job of showing without telling. They only rely on a single statistic to communicate the premise. Everything else is told from facial cues and motions. On its own, it would make a fantastic black and white movie, a nostalgic silent film for times of old.

But it does it one better, by pairing it with just the perfect song, this electronic-rock track that is never too obtrusive to the video. It starts with a countdown, leading into this hypnotic beat.

Immersion into the story is immediate, and then they drop this provocative line on you: “Marooned on an island with a bullet and a gun.”

BAM! That sentence alone sums all of it up for you. Identifying the trope with a single sentence. You almost don’t need to watch the rest, you already know what’s in store. But to not watch would deny you an excellent experience. All the classics show up, the board meeting, the scientists, the medical tests on the astronauts. It knows what it wants to be, it knows what it wants to do, and for us long time science fiction fans, it’s like meeting an old friend again.

Yet, it goes a step further, bringing in a factor that the old movies often lacked. Levity. This video is funny, really funny. The robot fight training, the dancing politicians. It’s satirical, but not cruel. It knows it’s cheesy, and it embraces it. The only way It could have been better was if the psychiatrist started moon-walking halfway through.

Even though the ending does bring us back down to a more somber tone, it’s just a fun video, a nostalgic video, an excellent video.

If you enjoyed Brandon’s piece, you can find more of his work on his website, Coolerbs Reviews. You should also take a look at his many short stories in our Friday Fiction category.

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