Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Such a frustrating disappointment

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I just watched Werner Herzog's 2005 science fiction fantasy film The Wild Blue Yonder, and am left in that rare position of not having much to say of the film that could really change the opinion of a viewer, pro or con, toward it. This is not because it is good nor bad, simply because it is one of those works of art that is not even on a good/bad scale. It is beyond such reckoning, a purely aural and visual experience for most of its 81 minutes, and thus has an effect similar to the phantasmagoric end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.The narrative, however slight, is this: the alien (Dourif) comes to earth some decades ago, in a Third Wave of colonizers, before the supposed 1947 Roswell UFO crash, because his home planet entered an Ice Age. Upon landing, they attempted to establish their own version of Washington, D.C. out in the California desert, thus justifying Dourif's rants out in a ghost town. Their failure leads him to the conclusion that all aliens suck- a point he repeatedly hammers home. It also lets him go on about how mankind has ecologically ravaged the earth. He speaks of his CIA involvement, and more found footage, of the Jovian Galileo mission, allows him to hypothesize on the Roswell matter. Then he claims that the aliens brought with them microbial diseases. NASA launches a space mission to find inhabitable planets, but none are found in the Milky Way, until, via silly mathematics, a gateway to the Andromeda galaxy is found- one even the aliens did not know of. As the earth is getting more and more uninhabitable humans, who shortcutted their way to the alien Andromedan world, decide to explore it. Cue the Antarctic ice footage, meant to portray the frozen atmosphere and liquid helium ocean of The Wild Blue Yonder. While intensely beautiful and hypnotically mixed with the oral sounds of a bunch of Sardinian singers and an African singer, the film becomes really indescribable- but not in that good nor bad way. You just have to watch, whether you like or dislike it. When it's done, we see that the humans have returned to earth, aged only 15 years (comparisons of the archival footage vs. that Herzog shot for interviews) while the earth went through 820 years, and reverted to a wild state. Humans left the earth, and now treat it as a planetary game preserve. In the audio commentary, Herzog reveals that shots of the high green plateau that ends the film were from Venezuela, part of the leftover footage from his earlier film The White Diamond.This film will doubtlessly bore many people, and it will turn off still others for a plenum of possible reasons, and in no way, shape, nor form, is this a masterpiece on par with the best in Herzog's oeuvre. But, even if one views it in the worst way, and calls it a daring failure, it is a film worth watching again. One day soon, I will.

With The Wild Blue Yonder, Werner Herzog has pushed the boundaries of cinematic experimentation further than most post-modern art films have. what we see here is a zone between, fiction and non-fiction. It is an amalgamation of every form of photography ever invented from 19th century hand cranked camera film to the most advanced digitally enhanced still images. Despite a little pretentiousness in the writing, it remains a fascinating picture, (even if it may require multiple viewings)The Wild Blue Yonder starts off in an urban wasteland, with Brad Dourif as an alien from a 'Blue World' in the Andromeda galaxy. He tells us about the journey he made to Earth hundreds of years ago, about a settlement that his race tried to build, about his work in the CIA, and about a secret galactic voyage taken by a small team of astronauts which brought them to his home planet, in search of a replacement for Earth. The movie also looks at the advanced mathematics used for space travel, the lives of astronauts in space, the mystery of the Roswell UFO, and the exploration of the mysterious and ethereal blue planet submerged in water from which our strange narrator came. Whenever Brad Dourif is on screen, you cannot help but be drawn to him. the ambiance surrounding him is very deep and his behaviour is both human and alienated. He is a wise but strange being.Just as it is hard to classify this movie, It is equally difficult to say who will like it. I will tell you that extreme patience and calm is required in order to enjoy The Wild Blue Yonder. There are depths to this movie so great, that every time I see it, I am increasingly in awe.

I made the mistake of thinking I was about to watch the Herzog documentary Rescue Dawn was based on, but i soon found out I was wrong...very wrong. Instead, I spent 81 minutes watching "a science fiction fantasy" titled Wild Blue Yonder. In WBY Brad Dourif play an alien who narrates his way through NASA and arctic diving footage that Herzog interestingly uses completely out of context. The context is entrusted to Dourif's character who spins an elaborate yarn of human space exploration to his former home, the exploration of this distant planet and the astronaut's return to a future, pre-historic earth almost 200 years later.WBY is essentially a found footage film, albeit an imaginative and interesting one. The highlight is the diving footage which truly feels like exploration of a alien world. The footage is hypnotic, perfectly accompanied by the equally hypnotic score by composer Ernst Reijsiger along with a song thrown indy rock genius Jim O'Rourke.Herzog sandwiches interviews with real-life mathematicians between the found footage segments, adding credibility to Dourif's yarn. Yet overall there is a sense of tongue-in-cheek behind WBY -- Herzog obviously doesn't want us to take things too seriously. But if he doesn't, then what does he want? By taking these images out of context he forces us to shift our perspective and see them with new eyes. He succeeds and by doing so, he begs the question: why don't we always change our perspective when looking at the world around us? If we did there's a good chance we would be less likely to take things for granted and instead we would see the world with the amazement of a child's eyes.http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/

Werner Herzog's science fantasy about a trip to a far off planet. The plot concerns an alien played by Brad Dourif, who has come to this world from Andromeda when his world begins to die. He out lines the story of his time on earth and of our trip to his far off world. Consisting of new footage by Herzog the film also contains a great deal of footage from a space shuttle mission as well as images from under the Antarctic ice. Its a strangely hypnotic film thats often a head trip as we are forced to look at our own world as something, somewhere than what it is. This is a heady mix of facts and fictions mixed with beautiful images set to some intriguing vocal and cello music (think Tibetan throat songs) . For much of the film the mix works as we begin to see believe that the aliens are here and that we sent a mission that went there. The problem with the film is that there are long passages, particularly with the space shuttle stuff where its nothing but image and singing. It would be fine if there was a change of image but Herzog holds the images, say of an astronaut jogging, much too long. I don't why he felt the need to use all of the footage that was shot of some subjects. It will drive you to the point of slumber. Which isn't to say the film is bad. Its not. the dialog, well monologue is very witty and contains some great quotes. It also presents a few facts, about distance and our ability to bridge it that is wickedly disheartening for people looking to jump in a ship one day and travel far away, while at the same time opening you up to the possibility of actually doing it. Ultimately this is a movie that you will think about for a long time after you see it.