The Philadelphia Experiment (2012)

It did not need to make sense I found the exciting story great to watch. Loved the acting it had great hero's and villains what more do you want. I can't understand why others hated it. I loved it and the ending was brilliant.

Some films just shouldn't be re-made, however Hollywood seldom agrees with that statement. In the case of the Philadelphia Experiment, there was oddly a consensus not to remake it. For almost a decade, people tried and failed to get it done. After almost every star and major film company rejected them, the re-make came out in 2012, as a direct-to-video feature, with a much smaller budget and a cast that just left people scratching their heads. For those unfamiliar with the story, The Philadelphia Experiment was a military operation, intended to transport matter, much in the same way as they do on Star Trek. It was first attempted in the 1940s and failed, as a ship was lost with all hands on board. In 1984, a private contractor attempts to revive the project and the ship, with one surviving crewman, miraculously returned. I always found this to be a clever story and I enjoyed the original, but to do a b-movie remake of the film was just ridiculous. For starters, the special effects in this film were worse than the ones they had in 1984, and they couldn't get anyone to star in this thing. Aside from Malcolm McDowell, who I'm convinced will do anything for a check, the cast is nothing more than a bunch of TV show extras, literally. Nicolas Lea, surprisingly does a very good job with the lead role, but what's one good performance, when combined with an inexperienced cast and no budget? For what it was, the re-make of the Philadelphia Experiment wasn't as bad as it could have been, mainly due to Nicolas Lea, but it certainly fails to live up to the original in every way possible.

Usually I watch SyFy original movies just for laughs, but this actually had some interesting plot points and decent acting in some of the major roles. The basic concept is sound: a top-secret project to create an invisibility cloak, building on the supposed 1940s Philadelphia Experiment with the destroyer USS Eldridge, actually creates a link between the two events, with increasingly catastrophic results. Instead of the star-crossed lovers of the 1980s movie, we have the 1940s Eldridge survivor (played rather well by Nicholas Lea) teaming up with his own granddaughter. Kind of sweet, and makes for an interesting scene when she meets him--she recognizes him from old family photographs, and here he is, sitting in her (his?) house. And not every time travel story has the guts to end with, "Okay, we fixed the timeline, so actually none of this ever happened and no one's the wiser."The biggest plot issue: The government baddies who keep trying to kill people who could help them solve the problem. For crying out loud, once a destroyer has landed on top of the Sears Tower, it's a little late for a cover-up. It really seemed as though the evil-government-operatives angle was more an excuse to have chase scenes and explosions than anything else. There were also some interesting plot threads that were left hanging--Who was on the telephone, warning our heroes about the baddies? What was the "Ivory Gate" thing about? If Salinger thought the whole concept was a bad idea, why did he instigate a shadow project to parallel the government's research? Maybe there was more on these originally, but it got cut from the final edit because someone thought we needed more gunfire and explosions.Not a great movie, but so much better than most of their original movies!

There is still a chance that the Fortean/UFO/Paranormal Community will see a Movie based on the controversial claims about a Naval Experiment in the 1940's to render a Ship invisible to Radar. It is rife with Colorful Characters with Names like Einstein and Tesla inserted into the Lore. There are elements like Time Travel, Invisibility, and Scientific Parlance like Unified Field Theories and Space Time Continuum to spice things up.Books have been Written and Talk Radio has had its share of Researchers, Witnesses, and Believers making various claims and tweaking Imaginations. So the Mythology is Rich and just waiting for someone to climb aboard and do it Justice.So far the 1984 Movie of the same Name is an Entertaining piece of Fluff that is a Fun if Flawed Film. This one is not as good but contains enough of the Story to make it a bit Mystifying but is sunk by its lack of Intelligence and contains only a smidgen of connection to the "Real Life" Experiment. It relies on shoot em ups and is heavy on the Government cliché, lets stop this by blowing things up and if conventional Weapons fail, bring on the Mini-Nukes.Maybe worth a view but this is a Made for TV Movie that wastes a lot of Money on a lot of Hooey and is another one of those Syfy Originals that continues to embarrass the Network and their Name is almost synonymous with the foregone conclusion of Mediocrity.