Ever since the mid 90s, Roland Emmerich has attempted time and time again to repackage and recapture the ideas from Independence Day. After many failed attempts, I wonder why there’s still a theatrical market for films like this. Or rather, it’s odd that Hollywood thinks there’s still a market for it, given that all of Emmerich’s films since 2012 have flopped at the box office. And, he’s about to add another one to his resume. This should’ve gotten a streaming release at best, as it belongs in the same category as a film like The Tomorrow War. It’s background noise you throw on while you’re doing the dishes or folding the laundry. It's too disposable, phony, poorly acted and boring to pay any serious attention to, let alone pay money for. There's a sense of authenticity and fun to dumb action movies like Independence Day that you're never going to capture with the way these kind of films are made now. You have to applaud Emmerich for making a big, original studio film, but it’s still generic schlock that doesn’t have a single ounce of personality. Fuck whoever financed this.
Edit: after a little bit of digging I found out that the primary investor of this thing is a Chinese company called Tencent Pictures. They’re also responsible for financing other great films such as Terminator: Dark Fate, Warcraft, Kong: Skull Island, Men in Black: International, Monster Hunter and the 2 Venom movies. To put it mildly, it appears that it’s this company’s sole purpose to flood the market with trash, and not exactly the fun kind. Now I know what you’re thinking: maybe their involvement helps with receiving a Chinese release from the CCP? But here’s the problem: Venom 2 was banned in China. So, they’re clearly just a bunch of incompetent investors, given that all of their films (the Venom films excluded) have been massive financial and critical flops. The takeaway for Hollywood should be pretty simple: if Tencent wants to invest in your production, cancel all plans before you have another Moonfall on your hands.
2.5/10
Watch it if you’re a fan of Toto, or genuinly laugh at any point during the first scene.
One of the producers on this film is Jonathan Nolan; brother and sometimes collaborator with his brother Christopher Nolan. And although he's not been given any screen credit for the script on this movie it; I'm betting that his marriage to the film director Lisa Joy allowed both Jonathan and Christopher Considerable input to the script development and the eventual shape of the finished project. (From this point forward there are some mild spoilers.)
Like most Nolan films this movie deals with time shifting and memories. Hugh Jackman runs a memory clinic in the futuristic sunken/water logged Miami. He and his Army Buddy (Thandiwe Newton) help their customers do everything from find lost keys to reliving the actual feeling of being held in the arms of their lover. The technology is amazing and allows Jackman & Newton to guide their customer through the catacombs of memories in their mind and view it as a 3D representation and record a legal document for posterity. They are licensed by the state and also are called upon by local prosecutors to recover memories that could prove the guilt or innocence of criminal suspects.
Against this backdrop Rebecca Ferguson plays a fem-fatale who's featured presence in the movie is all too short. She drop's into Jackman's life; he falls for her and the she's gone as quick as she appeared. Leading him to spend the rest of the film try to find her. For me this is where the movie began to go off the rails. The hunt begins a series of disjointed sequences -- including;
1). clients recorded memory sequence.
2). encounters with leads generated thru from scrubbed memories sequences.
3). leads generated from leads, leading to leads... etc.
You best be paying rapt attention here because the story pacing is breakneck speed.
To say the least Rebecca Ferguson's character is not what Jackman thought.
Jackman's fixation on her isn't healthy, but he can't help himself.
Thandiwe Newton's character could have used more development, but she did very well with little time that was allowed to her.
The very end of the movie tried to be both innovative and sentimental... but somehow seemed trite and fell flat; in keeping with the movie as a whole.
"For John."
'Dark Fate' was meh. I mean it's basically the Force Awakens of the franchise just more cash grab. Like...how many times can they keep alternating T1 & T2, and yet it's astounding that it never ruins the legacy of the series.
Despite all that, it's the third best in the series. At least this movie knows that Terminator is not for kids! I had some engagement in the movie, even through the reason being that it follows a familiar plot line.
Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger are both the stand outs. Hamilton playing a cranky bad-ass and Arnold playing an involved machine that has a life of his own. Mackenzie Davis was surprisingly not as annoying as I thought she will be just from the marketing alone. Her character was straight forward in terms of motivation and can take damage.
Tim Miller really knows how to direct action scenes effectively and in this movie he delivers some grand action set pieces. However, after seeing the movie a few days ago, only a small selection stick to memory.
Gabriel Luna did a decent job playing the new advance Terminator. They took the "Robert Patrick" approach with picking an ordinary looking guy and making him into the biggest threat of humanity. Although it was a bit hard for me to feel threaten by him as throughout the movie he seemed easily out match by pretty much everyone.
I didn't really buy into Dani played by Natalia Reyes as the main "saviour of the future", mainly because of her stiff acting and everytime she holds a gun it's twice her size.
The visual effects at times looked pretty OK, but the rest looked really bad. It really doesn't help when there's close ups on the effects where you can see the fakeness. At times the movie was a little too dark and I don't mean in tone, just whenever it's night time.
Overall rating: Not as great as T1 & T2, but nothing will without James Cameron magic touch.
What a totally empty movie, a shell of what came before it, and not much better than the entries after 2.
Seeing Linda Hamilton be a grouchy, no-fucks-given action star was good, but nowhere near captivating or versatile enough to carry the over 2 hour runtime.
Mackenzie was decent, but spent most of her screentime either overheating or rolling on the floor in pain. This is the augmented super soldier you send back to protect your only hope? Wish they'd given her more time to be badass and cemented herself as a force to be reckoned with.
Arnie was great and was kinda used as Tim's comic relief stand-in. There is some decent one liners and Arnies delivery fits this perfectly. I enjoyed the spin on his character and what he has become, even if it wasn't fully realised outside of some emotional baggage to give the ending added weight.
Everything else is just popcorn fodder. Loud, sometimes slick, sometimes cumbersome action scenes that feel mashed together with very little coherency or requirement. Nothing stands out as a defining moment or that the movie is finally hitting its stride. It just feels like a bunch of individual scenes inspired by the original movies but without any of the innovation or polish. Like going to see your favourite band and finding out you got a tribute act. Sure, they can play the songs, but it lacks any of the original authenticity.
The story retreads the same ground its prequels walked much, much better; do yourself a favour and just rewatch T1 and T2.
Not as bad as I thought it was gonna. Still full of clichés though but that's to be expected(obviously it had to include the whole innocent girl and bad guy trope). The main thing that gave me the impression that it was gonna be really bad was based on the things I've heard about the book but a lot of the really bad stuff that happened in the book was left out of the movie which is good. In the book he kept the used condom(!!) and a sheet with Tessa's vagina blood on it to prove to his friends that they had sex....so the movie could have been worse, there's also a bunch of manipulative and abusive shit in there and some dubious consent but thankfully that's not really in the movie.
Every single character in this movie annoyed me(mainly in the first half) except Selma Blair. Bless.
Hardins backstory was severely underdeveloped.
Tessa is deadass out here being a dumbass. If a man that you barely know asks you to go into the woods with him, YOU SAY NO!This is common sense y'all.(I know that's not technically what he said but like if a stranger asks you to come with him somewhere and he drives into the middle of the fucking woods...bitch, that is when you run.
Also, towards the end when the teacher gives Tessa the assignment Hardin turned in for that class...you're definitely not allowed to give someone another student's work, wtf.
Not to mention at the very end where Hardin basically compares them to Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy....I have to laugh.
One more thing,this is not important in the slightest but I can't be the only one that thougth Noah was Tessa's brother in the beginning.
The acting is subpar at best but the script didn't give them much to work with so I'll let that slide.
It is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a movie that was based on a Wattpad "book"(I use the term "book" loosely).
