The Perfect Planet (Short)
Two astronauts are walking in a desert landscape on a faraway planet, looking for signs of life. The older one, Jacob (Russ Kingston), is on his last mission, while the younger one, Ethan (Kenneth Sears), is on his first. Ethan is optimistic about the readings they’ve gotten, but Jacob knows better. What Ethan finds, though, may have him wishing that Jacob is right, although Jacob certainly takes the discovery as something more exciting than he’s seen on his previous missions.
Brandon Kaplan’s film, which he co-wrote with Debbie and Hayley Kaplan, is a smart sci-fi thriller about two people who look at their mission quite differently- one from the perspective of past failures, and one from the perspective of potential discoveries. That tension between Ethan and Jacob’s point-of-view is what drives the narrative, and makes it compelling to watch. The visuals, done with as low a tech as they can be, nonetheless set the tone for the drama to come in this film, along with a musical score that hits on some western motifs to hit home the duel between the characters. When you get to the ending, though, you find that humanity will win out over our baser instincts, which feels like an optimistic way of looking at things, but is very much in keeping with the characters themselves, and who they are at their core.
