I saw this movie a few weeks ago and was kind of disappointed. Matthew McConaughey chewed scenery like a champ and shows that he is one of the better actors of his generation. But as a Sci-fi movie it fell flat as far as I am concerned.
First of all, the movie was very long but it did not drag like some recent movies have. It was paced well with scenes of action and drama served up at a pretty decent rhythm. It did not drag on and on forever like Amazing Spider-man 2 did and my attention span did not waver as much as it could have.
The acting was pretty top-notch for the most part. McConaughey did his usual great work and Anne Hathaway did a pretty good job and was somewhat believable as s scientist and astronaut. Jessica Chastain had a few moments of pathos but seemed underutilized a bit. The rest of the cast did not detract from the drama and did not phone it in at all.
What I did have problems with was the science of the Sci-fi. They did a few very interesting things like had them go close to a black hole which warps time. So they had a great scene were McConaughey and Hathaway escape death on this water planet and return to the mother-ship and 30 years had past while they only spent like a few hours on the planet. So the guy on the ship pretty much was alone for 30 years waiting for them to come back. I had the fill in the blanks here but I imagined how lonely it would have been waiting day-after-day and not known if they were alive or dead on the planet. That part was pretty well done and I enjoyed it being in the film.
However, all of the other plot holes could fill a pretty sizable tome so I'll just touch on a few. First, if there is a blight that is killing all vegetables on the planet so instead of figuring out new ways of feeding people (lab grown beef and pork, special nutrient rich gel, etc.) they make farmers the most important job on earth and downplay science. In fact science is so bad people think the moon landing was faked so that the US can beat the Soviets in the Space Race. Of course farmers still use the exact same techniques they have always used with no technology upgrades at all. You would figure the entire world would do everything they could to either stop the blight or figure out alternative food sources but they don't. Instead they just send a bunch of secret astronauts to look for a planet to colonize.
For some reason they send only a handful of astronauts out there for some reason. You would figure they would send out a team to each of the viable planets and have that embryo bomb on each of the probes. That way you have redundancy and increase the chances of saving the human race. Instead they place everything on only 7 people and a handful of weird robots and hope for the best. You would figure that the entire world economy would revolve around next gen foodstuffs that do not have to be grown in the ground and spaceships for colonization and saving the human race. Instead we have farmers with 20th century tech (but drones with fusion power) and a rogue NASA program trying to save humanity. That part was hard to fathom for me.
Finally all the black hole stuff made me have to turn off my brain after a while. The part with the water planet with the black hole's effects was cool even though it would probably be torn apart by gravitational forces or destroyed by those jets that black holes sometimes vent. Everything else about sling-shotting the black hole and falling into it and such made me have to just say "watch the movie and don't think about it." I had to actively suspend my disbelief and hold it through the entire last act of the movie. It was written in a way that you have to not know anything about astronomy and black holes so you can enjoy the action. In any case the movie was a fun romp and McConaughey chewing scenery and interacting with his family was worth watching because I am a big fan of his. The Sc-fi parts needs a very healthy dose of belief-suspension in order to take without going "wait their ship would be destroyed in tenths of a second" if they got close enough to that black hole.
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