Community and Fandom in ‘Beyond the Eagle Obsession’

Coming to the Twin Cities Film Fest on Sunday, Oct. 18 is “Beyond the Eagle Obsession,” a sequel to “The Eagle Obsession,” which showed at the fest last year.

Well, maybe not exactlya sequel. According to the film’s director, Stillwater resident Jeffrey Morris, “Beyond the Eagle Obsession” is more of a complimentary film than a sequel. While they both focus on the Eagle, a spaceship from the ‘70s TV show  “Space: 1999” and its influence on its audience, pop culture, and science as a whole, Morris views them as independent pieces that one need not see one in order to enjoy and understand the other.

What Morris originally thought would be a 20-minute add-on to last year’s film quickly became a 65-minute feature of its own. “We started realizing, ‘Wait a minute, we have a story here,’” Morris says.

So, why the Eagle? What was so notable about this fictional spacecraft from a 50-year-old TV show? To Morris, it’s what the ship represented.

“Being a 7-year-old and watching this TV show that has this spaceship in it, that the show was set 25 years in the future, it made me think, ‘Hey, this could be me. That could be the world I grow up to live in,” Morris says. “In a lot of ways, the Eagle … became an iconic extrapolation of the dreams we had about the future.”

Much of the first movie focuses on the influence the Eagle and “Space: 1999” had on its viewers—including Morris, his childhood friend Anna Barab, who became a doctor because of the show, NASA scientists, and more—and a profound disappointment for the present and the future that didn’t—or perhaps hasn’t yet—materialized.

“People joke like, ‘Where’s my jetpack’ or ‘Where’s my flying car’ and things like that, but I think there’s more to it,” Morris says. “I know, for me, I didn’t just think the technology was going to get more advanced; I thought that people would get more advanced.”

Not to say the movie is glum and depressed in tone, rather, it is gracious in its account of the impact “Space:1999” had on viewers and dedicated multiple scenes to students at University Avenue Elementary School in Blaine and how a project Morris put together for the students involving creating models of the Eagle brought out their creativity and inspired the students.

“Beyond the Eagle Obsession,” on the other hand, is far less about the practical application of lessons learned from old sci-fi than it is about the nature of fandom as a community builder. In the first film, Morris went to Denmark to meet Jan Wenneberg and put together Wenneberg’s model of the Eagle, the largest Eagle model in the world. In “Beyond the Eagle Obsession,” Morris returned to Denmark to meet up with Wennberg, who he now considers a friend.

Wennberg and Todd Morton, co-founder of “Space: 1999” Props and Ships in Indiana, even came to Minnesota earlier this year to hangout as Morris and his team recreated some scenes and visuals from the show using an Eagle miniature. They used the same processes that would’ve been used to make “Space: 1999” back in the ‘70s, but with some updated tech.

This fandom brought two men, one from Denmark and another from Indiana, all the way to Minnesota in the dead of winter to hang with their friend while he remade some shots from one of their favorite shows. Talk about community.

Morris says that Minnesota itself has been a great community for him to make films in. He even showcases the state in both of his Eagle films. Morris moved to Minnesota in 1998 and started his film company, FutureDude Entertainment, here in 2010. He has also worked in education throughout the state. He emphasized that, while his movies are made in Minnesota instead of Hollywood, they are still world-class productions—a claim supported by the Peabody Awards, who invited Morris to submit “The Eagle Obsession” for award.

“So, we made something special, but we made it from the home base of Minnesota,” Morris says. “I think both films showcase Minnesota in a very positive light because we love living here and we’re very proud of it.”

“Beyond the Eagle Obsession” shows at Edina Mann Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. Find tickets here.