In 1989 a midair collision between a 747 and a DC10 caused the two planes to crash into the countryside near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Assigned to investigate the crash are Bill Smith (Kris Kristofferson) and Tom Stanley (David McIlwrath) from the NTSB. On the ground already is Roger Keane (Maury Chaykin). At the crash site Bill meets Dr. Arnold Mayer (Daniel J. Travanti), an ecology professor and a theoretical physicist who seems to have a deep interest in plane crashes.
In the wreckage they find the cockpit voice recorder. Something on the tape surprises Bill. It sounded as if First Officer Ron Kennedy (Thomas Hauff) was telling the pilot, Captain Vern Rockwell (Lawrence Dane), that all the passengers were dead prior to the plane actually crashing to the ground.
Among those at the crash site is a young woman, Louise Baltimore (Cheryl Ladd), who appears to be a flight attendant helping serve coffee to the investigators. Something about the woman intrigues Bill. The two get together and end up spending the night together. In the morning Bill says good-bye to Louise before going back to the crash site. He leaves. He immediately returns having forgotten something in his room. Bill returns to find that Louise has disappeared into thin air.
Louise turns out to be a time traveler from the year 2989. Her job is to travel to a plane that is destined to crash and take the passengers into the future, replacing them with already dead copies. The reason is because pollution in the future has gotten so bad that people are sterile. The travelers put the healthy people from the past into a form of stasis in the hopes of sending them into a future where they can once again populate the planet.
Part of Louise’s job is to make sure nothing happens that upsets the space time continuum and cause rips or paradoxes. Unfortunately, a future tool called a “Stunner” is left behind on two occasions, one in a flight that crashed in 1963, and one in the recent 1989 crash. The tool is used to put passengers to sleep before taking them into the future. The stunner from 1963 was found by Dr. Mayer. With it he has the potential to upset the future causing a paradox that would result in the destruction of life on Earth. Louise must try to get the stunner back before anyone figures out what it is.
“Millennium” was released in 1989 and was directed by Michael Anderson. It is a Canadian and American science fiction film and a time travel story. The movie was based on the 1977 short story “Air Raid” by John Varley. Varley also wrote the screenplay. He also expanded the story into a book in 1983 called “Millennium”. There is also an international version out there somewhere that has a less ambiguous and more upbeat ending.
It’s a time travel movie so things are going to go back and forth a bit. It can be a little confusing, but I found that it was less jumbled than many other time travel movies I’ve seen. It is an interesting concept, and it was done pretty good for the most part, despite it being a little implausible.
The statement in the final scene spoken by the robot named Sherman, played by Robert Joy, says: "This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning." This quote is slightly paraphrased from a Winston Churchill speech given at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon in the Mansion House on November 10, 1942.