Cybernator: A Movie Describing 2010

People who have jobs in the field of futurism try their best to predict how the world will turn out at some point down the road. Elements of this practice can be seen throughout the sci-fi genre. For instance, hand-held communicators in the original Star Trek series foreshadowed today's cell phones. Often, screenwriters will try to outguess the trends of tomorrow and then extrapolate their likely course over time. As another example, this is how we can go from the artificial heart (today's reality), to Robocop in "the near future."

One movie that made very little or no use of futurism, despite being set in the future and telling a story about cyborgs, is Cybernator. This 1991 indie film from Simitar Productions is a great reminder of why low budget sci-fi is such a difficult genre to work in. I have plenty of ideas that would lead to fantastic, bad sci-fi movies. I also have the good sense not to raise $50,000 from my relatives, hire some community theater actors, and actually film these movies. Robert Rundle, director of Cybernator, would disagree with me on that last point.

In the event that anyone would like to watch this movie with the goal of enjoying its creamy plot twists, I will not reveal any critical story points here. Instead, here is a brief flavor of some key themes and attributes of the movie that will help the reader to judge whether or not Cybernator is their sort of movie:
-There is a morbidly obese belly dancer included in a needless scene that goes on for too long.
-There is a scene in which a mildly attractive woman dances go-go style (with tassels) in a strip club. It should be noted that the end of this scene is devoted to the stripper, Blue, delivering a strident speech about how she is only working as an exotic dancer to pay her tuition bill.
-Also featuring the go-go stripper is a hugely overlong and graphic sex scene. This made me recheck the rating on the DVD box. Still R. It may be telling that one of the screen shots for the chapter buttons on the menu of the DVD is a picture of this woman's nipple from the sex scene. Enough said.
-Most of the cyborgs in Cybernator either dress like Kanye West, or appear completely human.
-A major villain, Captain Hair, is a cyborg who looks speaks just like Dee Snyder.
-All special effects and titles are below the level that can be achieved in iMovie...such levels are still better than Windows Movie Maker.
-The entire soundtrack is comprised of synthesizer hits and a loop of late 80's generic melodies. Imagine 'Dramatic Theme From Magnum, P.I.,' and you have it.
-Finally, the main character rides into the sunset in a Chrysler LeBaron convertible.

I was hoping, foolishly, that Cybernator would provide me with some small glimpse of what people in 1991 thought today would look like. After all, it is almost 2010, the time in which the movie is set. Sadly, Cybernator starts off assuming that the 1990's were the future. It's almost as if this movie was written in the 1970's and nobody got around to filming it until 1991. This confusion, bound to an utter lack of budget, could only lead to a campy sci-fi outing.

So then the question becomes one of pure enjoyment value; can Cybernator be valued in any way? Well, the story makes enough sense that boredom doesn't set in, and the bad parts are funny enough to be mildly entertaining. Overall, however, this movie isn't really worth the time. My main reason for watching it was that I somehow came to own it and had never dropped it in the DVD player. Plus, it had to be better than Hancock.