Overall weekend totals plunge 60% from last year as the absence of a "Dune: Part Two"-level hit is felt
  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    22 hours ago

    I didn’t love the film. I enjoyed the story up until the main romantic interest gave a long shouting speech at the politician that didn’t feel fully earned or signposted. The entire last 20 mins or so was the director doing his seemingly common practice of failing to stick the landing and instead going with a disney-esque ending.

    In retrospect, as we discussed the movie for the rest of the night, the themes felt disjointed and the plot less interesting than it could have been. There was a lot of value given to the movie because it seemed like it could be interesting but when the end credits rolled and none of it came to fruition that loan came due and the movie couldn’t pay it back.

    Definitely praise worthy for Robert Patterson’s acting. I wish the film had been more focused with its themes or the world building been committed to.

    Spoilers

    Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if the religious colonization ship was actually full of fanatical red hats instead of what felt like a decent diverse group of level headed albeit corporate people? Wouldn’t it have been more interesting for the bad guys to win, and for the bugs to be killed, and for the colony to either be left in a sorry state or fast forwarded to their early demise? It could have been a message about how “if you vote for idiots and give them complete control and treat them like saviors you’re going to get idiots in power making idiot decisions.” Which I think would have been more timely and poignant.

    I think there were a lot of ways the film could have gone that would have been more cohesive and interesting but instead it felt like it had a lot of great ideas it wanted to explore and failed to explore most of them.

    • froggycar360@slrpnk.netEnglish
      3·
      20 hours ago

      Agreed. First movie in a while that I truly wanted to leave the theater. It was just that boring and bad. Added nothing past the trailer. Just random quirkiness with no feeling.

      • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        14 hours ago

        No, that’s a poor or reductive reading of what I wrote at best.

        Spoilers

        • I don’t like that the ship is shown to have tons of fanatical applicants and be a religious/corporate vessel under the donation and control of a crazed politician and yet the rebellion comes out of no where and is successful.
        • I don’t like that Mickey has a personality matrix and yet he explicitly gets cloned with two very different matrixes when they go multiple. I thought this was a hint that Mickey 18 didn’t have a soul but the serial killer they showed us seemed to have identical personalities across all three of them.
        • I didn’t like that the love interest bad ass cop whose main traits are badass, loyal, horny, druggie, and on a fanatical religious ship gives a speech at the end about colonialism. It didn’t feel foreshadowed, it didn’t feel in character, it wasn’t stylized or clever to justify the over-the-topness like the politician or his wife. It felt like a stand in for the director or audience. In fact the whole last act felt like cheap therapeutic “bad guys losing” porn you were supposed to live vicariously through because everything up to that point justified why they would lose.
        • I didn’t like that the head of the rebellion’s only other scene was when he caught the piece of shit friend dealing drugs and seemed shady. Again, the rebellion came out of no where for me.
        • I didn’t like that there was little corporate political commentary by the end of it all. It was mostly a silly over the top scenario but it didn’t feel like it said anything. Comparing this to Moon, as an example, feels horrible.
        • I didn’t like some of the retroactive explanations like the vaccine was actually now a nerve toxin. I didn’t like the translator coming out of no where for no reason.
        • I didn’t like that they kept any bi-sexual/lesbian hints entirely encapsulated and removable presumably for the Asian market. Like either commit or don’t you cowards.

        Generally, again, the story felt like its premise won me over in the first half. Out of sheer excitement for what could happen I enjoyed the first bit. The stellar acting from the main character and the political couple and the shitty friend was really nice. I also enjoy sci-fi films in general. But by the end none of the possibilities came to fruition and none of the threads felt connected or meaningful. Even in memory the sci-fi aesthetic is fading for me next to movies like Romulus or shows like Secret Level that had more enjoyable eye candy in set design and technology.

        5 or 6 / 10

        • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
          1·
          14 hours ago

          Thanks for the super detailed response! I personally really enjoyed and felt like I really needed to see the rebellion and victory, the catharsis of seeing Marshall get absolutely wrecked with a punch to the face was glorious to me. And it genuinely felt like both he as a character and all the unpleasant shit the film laid out along the way earned that. I don’t think it’s too far to believe that such extreme conditions and such an extremely fucking stupid leader with four years trapped together would lead to enough resentment to cause the rebellion.

          I do definitely agree, most strongly with the final point - there was the slightest hint of some queer love but they ripped it away after half a second of merely implying it.

          Also quite strongly agree with #2 - and I felt like Mickey shouldn’t ever remember his own death if he only backs up his personality once a week, unless there’s some untold story (or I just missed some exposition) where they advanced the tech to be realtime backup.

          I must have missed the part about the vaccine being a nerve toxin. Translator seemed entirely believable to me - if they can print humans and re-implant memory backups, a translator seems comparatively technologically simple