After earth

[Access]

...so I watched this flick last night against the advice of many of my friends who said it sucked. Well, I liked it! I mean, ok, I get the disdain for the fresh prince of bel air being some alien hunter, but I think he did good in the role, and for a kid actor I felt his son played a pretty convincing adolescent coming to grips with his own fears.

The story was unique, the effects I felt were tasteful and beautiful, and I loved the imaginative take on what animals may be like if they needed to adapt.

Anyone else see this yet?

[madmarva]

I didn't see it because the reviews weren't great and there was so much other stuff out. Thanks for your thoughts. I'll probably rent it.

[Access]

Yeah, thats the exact reason I didnt see it at the theatre too! But I've definitely seen worse sci fi. Sometimes I feel the people writing the reviews are writing reviews for the average movie goer, not necessarily the genre fan. Many of my favorite movies (Big Lebowski for example) werent well reviewed, but are absolute genius. I'm not saying this movie ranks that high, but it wasn't what I'd call "bad" by any means.

[ctc]

>it wasn't what I'd call "bad" by any means.

I've noticed reviews of anything have only two results:

-It's the awesomest, greatest, most life changing thing ever!
-It's the most horrific, mind numbing, soul crushing, mindless childhood raping ripoff ever!

Stuff like this is kinda in the middle for me. It's not horrid, but it's not good enough to be noteworthy. It's there. I suspect movies like this would have been perfectly passable direct to disk/cable/whatnot films; but the number of big names, and huge budgets put too many expectations in peoples' minds.

Don C.

[Access]

...Yeh I get what you are saying, but aside from the 1 big name in the movie, the effects would have rendered this impossible for a 'direct to dvd' release.

and honestly, outside of elements of "Prometheus" and "The Road", I can't think of a movie (sci fi) that I would classify as truly "Noteworthy". (I'm using 'noteworthy' in the sense of, I've not seen it done before.)

So that being said, it seems to me "Passable" is the new "great".

I will also concede that I feel the new movie 'Gravity' is pretty sweet, and visually amazing in all respects, but it's just a (Man vs nature and man vs himself) survival story thats been done tons of time over the generations.

[ctc]

>it seems to me "Passable" is the new "great".

I think you may be right. I suspect the problem is that we, the audience have grown so used to being pandered to that we freak at the slightest thing that makes us not feel good. The problem being; you NEED stuff that makes you not feel good for a truly great story. But the budgets are so huge (even for an indie film) that few folks are willing to go out on a limb and take a chance with something different. So you get slightly tweaked versions of the stuff we've been getting over and over. Hence why (for me, anyhoo) the last decade or so has featured a LOT of films that aren't bad, but aren't noteworthy.

>I will also concede that I feel the new movie 'Gravity' is pretty sweet, and visually amazing in all respects, but it's just a (Man vs nature and man vs himself) survival story thats been done tons of time over the generations.

I haven't seen it yet; but a lot of the reviews remind me of "2001" in that it seems folks are more taken with how it's done over what's being done. So you get refrences to how good it looks, or how well it creates tension, or how well thought out it is but no refrence to the names of any of the characters.

Don C.