Things are, once again, looking not-all-that-great when it comes to getting to the other side of this pandemic—yet another COVID-19 mutation is spreading globally, just on the heels of society trudging our way through the Delta variant. It’s a scary, uncertain time (when is it it not these days?), and there remain a lot of unknowns about just how the next few months will play out. There is at least one thing we all know for sure, though: “The Omicron Variant” sounds like the name of a schlocky retro sci-fi flick that you’d find in an episode of MST3K.
Chris Miller, one half of the Lord-Miller dynamic directorial duo, certainly thinks so, too, and recently even photoshopped a vintage movie poster mock-up worthy of the nonexistent classic.
Miller tweeted his take on The Omicron Variant over the weekend, presumably during some post-Thanksgiving down time, and it certainly nails the retro-futuristic nail on the head. “What is it? How dangerous will it be?” reads the faux-film tagline, which really could be everyone’s fallback motto right now.
Keen-eyed film buffs will also note Miller’s source poster comes from a largely forgotten 1966 genre B-movie directed by Franklin Adreon, Cyborg 2087, which stars Michael Rennie of The Day The Earth Stood Still fame alongside Karen Steele and Wendell Corey.
To be honest, Cyborg 2077's actual plot certainly sounds more like something made for conservative anti-vaxxers than it does anyone else:
In the future world of the year 2087, freedom of thought is illegal and the thoughts of the world’s populations are controlled by the government. A small band of “free thinkers” send a cyborg back in time to the year 1966 to prevent a scientist from making the breakthrough that will eventually lead to the mass thought control of the future. Our time traveler soon discovers he is not alone when government agents from the future try to prevent him from carrying out his mission.
That, or an overlooked inspiration for The Terminator series.
Anyway, leave it to Chris Miller to entertain us with a clever, self-aware adaptation of a widely reviled IP. In other news: that’s apparently exactly what he and Phil Miller are doing soon.
[via BoingBoing]
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