Last weekend I got to experience bookends of SciFi, beginning with attending an in-theater showing of the 1954 classic, Them! and ending with the latest installment in the StarWars saga, The Mandalorian and Grogu. If anything, to me this signals that It’s going to be an interesting summer of movies. 

Nothing quite as fun as beginning my Saturday watching a classic movie at Cinema 21, in this case the sci-fi classic “Them!”  Add to that the theater is full of fans and families sharing the experience. Having spent the majority of my post-COVID movie watching in nearly empty theaters, it’s so cool to find a theater full of movie fans who share in my happy place of watching movies on Saturday mornings. I know that plenty of people prefer watching movies at home in their private controlled environment, but they’re missing out in the added communal energy of shared experiences and emotions that movies and live performances of music and plays offer. And given that I’m often watching independent or classic movies, anyone in the theater for these are interested fans or they wouldn’t be there.

I happen to have a copy of Them! in my DVD collection and I love watching the “first reaction” YouTube videos, particularly from Jen Murray, where she shows the movie edited down to the beats, offering commentary and her reactions as the movie plays. On her non-Patreon channel the movies are edited down, so that a 90-minute movie is 30-minutes. All this to say that I’m very familiar with the film. But I had never seen it on the big screen and I was pleasantly surprised that they did a pretty good job given the limitations of special effects at the time.

The first act is a detective story that begins in the deserts of New Mexico and ends in the concrete underground water ways of Los Angeles. It also stays focused on the collection of people caught in this unbelievable situation beginning with the little girl who was found catatonic, wandering in the desert who screams the word, Them! when she is exposed to a sample of the scent that the creatures leave behind. Then it becomes a creature feature when a pair of scientists, a father/daughter team joins the small New Mexico police force and an FBI agent played by a young James Arness, to determine what it is that’s killing people and damaging property in the desert and what to do to combat this possible apocalyptic invasion. The trailer kind’a ruins the monster reveal that takes over 20-minutes to show up on screen. Damn trailers. 

But beyond the quoting of questionable “biblical verses,” the stodginess elderly doctor and the awkwardness of the others adjusting to a young attractive female doctor is a source of much needed comic relief. It’s a good balance between the extraordinary and the mundane of a small group of strangers thrown together to battle an invasion that could spell the end of humanity if they fail, perfect 1950s Sci-Fi. Enjoy  

Next to seeing movies in the theater on a Saturday morning, my next favorite time is Sunday afternoons, which is when I saw The Mandalorian and Grogu. The theater was far less than half filled which is sad for an opening weekend, but I’ve gotten used to post-COVID. Next challenge is I have no idea how this movie played for those who have not seen the streaming TV-series, The Mandalorian. That is ever the possible curse of any story attempting to make the jump from serialized story telling (in other words, TV) to the big screen. That was the problem that shows like Firefly which became the movie, Serenity faced. And before that, the X-files many failed attempts to jump to the big screen highlighted the problem of how much do you have to retell of the lore for those who didn’t bother with the TV series? Fans are going to be there if even a halfway decent story, so that shouldn’t be a problem. 

I enjoyed the adventure of this movie. And given how Pedro Pascal, in other shows, has experienced a character death, I was not altogether sure how this one was going to end. Also I wasn’t at all sure whether I trusted the character played by Sigourney Weaver, whether she was going to turn on our heroes or not. Finally, I’m not a StarWars purist (sadly I haven’t watched the Andor series which I hear is excellent or any of the animated series), so I’m not likely to detect any of the elements that Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni may have tweaked of the StarWars canon. It’s not something that I’m going to concern myself with. This is a great story between an adopted son, who doesn’t speak a word of dialogue and a guardian mercenary father who’s face is covered by his helmet for the whole film except for one pivotal scene. It’s a nearly perfect popcorn movie (“nearly perfect” because nothing is really perfect… 😎). One indication of how good the movie is was that I came away suddenly wanting to purchase the new-ish LEGO Razor Crest that was featured in the film. Enjoy. JBB

[Them! viewed on 2026-05-23 at Cinema21]

[Mandalorian & Grogu viewed on 2026-05-24 at Regal Pioneer Place]

Sources:

Tags: I love movies, sci fi, StarWars, The Mandalorian, video Fridays

Creative Commons License

JosephBruceBustillos.com (website) by Joseph Bruce Bustillos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License