the footage in the wild blue yonder is entrancing, and the soundtrack works well with it. it's the kind of footage you never see. the mundane world of space. the underwater footage is also mesmerizing.

but the ridiculous plot with its naive alien meanderings - would extra-terrestrials who somehow have isolated earth as a place to travel, put all that effort and technology to the task, be so utterly stupid? the absurd overacting by brad dourif (although what more could he have done with those lines)? why, werner, why? which came first, access to the footage or the idea? because the film really comes across as the results of someone who found himself with really fantastic space/underwater footage and wanted to use it somehow. the plot, of sorts, feels painfully stitched around this - unnecessarily so. excise the plot and it's still a beautiful film, meditating on our obsession with exploring outer/inner reaches.

still, it's not like this dud will prevent me from potentially enjoying any future herzog works. i will go out of my way to see them, regardless. i suppose it's just that after enjoying so many of his films that this one stands out for me as singularly disappointing.