Too silly for my enjoyment. Tried to send a message, but apparently pressed the wrong button.
Probably the most overrated movie of 2022.
Did you all give high ratings to make a point? Half way through the movie I could not keep my eyes open. Seriously... 8.7 / 10 in IMDB. Crazy!
Visually stunning. It would have been impossible to be faithful to Asimov's novels. Because they cover a time span that lasts centuries, and because they were written in the 1950s, imagining things that today could have a steampunk flavor. So adaptations are welcome. The novels themselves were born on the basis of short stories and were anything but perfect. Only later were they appreciated. But just as the novels were innovative in their time, in the same way this TV series represents, in my opinion, the best that could be expected. The distortion of roles should not be displeasing. If a woman can play 007, I don't see why shouldn't be able to play Salvor Hardin. Those who loved Asimov's novels will only be surprised. Not disappointed.
There are comments saying "butchered the books" etc. Darn.. I've read them too, I love them too, but to be honest you're wrong.
God damn it... read the fricking description: "Based on the award-winning novels by Isaac Asimov(...)" it's not even adaptation. So don't expect it to follow the same story-line, don't expect the same characters, finally don't expect it to be reflection of the book.
Show is brilliant. I love it.
This movie was so much fun! I'm glad I got to see it in the theaters before it left. Beautifully played. :-)
I cared so little about all of the characters that watching this film was as interesting as thumbing through a stranger's photo album...and just as boring.
To make matters worse, there is far too much talk and far too little action to make this a good teen movie. Just watch the trailer again instead.
Denis Villenueve. A solid lineup. A different take on first contact. I loved Sicario but went in expecting a cerebral epic sci-fi.
That was a mistake.
Good things:
- Some really nice visual scenes
- Interesting aliens Calligraphy aliens!
- Clear theme of communication is omnipresent
- A neat score that might be awesome in a different movie
Bad things:
- The acting
- The lack of emotional reaction to ALIENS! The students asking to turn on the TV, all of the main characters
- Lack of useful characters Only the aliens and Louise actually did anything the entire movie.
- Supporting characters are very stupid in an attempt to foil the main character slightly
- Very clumsy exposition. Genre-typical news reports, voice-overs, dumb characters asking stupid questions.
- Very slow pacing. This worked in parts of Sicario, but didn't work in this movie because there was no tension. The main characters never seemed remotely threatened.
- Lousie showing up at school thinking everyone will be there after aliens arrive and there's a state of emergency
- Why can't you translate alien language like you can translate Farsi. This is a paraphrase but in the spirit of what Colonel Weber was saying.
- Useless love interest when the costars have no chemistry.
- Ultrasecure military base lets someone steal a ton of explosives and put it in an ALIEN SPACECRAFT without anyone noticing.
- Many unbelievable plot points
- Poor dialogue Let's make a baby - real quote
- Poor handling of the major plot points Looking through time seems to undermine the fact that the aliens need help. Why did one have to die if they could see the future? Why did only one die when they were right next to each other?
- Very heavy handed moral messaging that didn't align with the rest of the movie.
- Why couldn't Ian also see into the future as he studied the language, or any of the others?
Overall extremely disappointing. I'm honestly surprised critics or general moviegoers like this. The premise was very good. It's a real shame the execution failed so miserably.
YouTube Red is still in its early stages, so there’s not a ton of original content out there, but you’ll soon notice that their numbers are indeed growing exponentially. I’ve wanted to watch one of their programs for a while to see if they are legitimately any good as far as TV shows go, or as movies go. YouTube Red in itself, costs more than Netflix or Hulu, so the real question is…why. Sure, it does extra things like, get rid of commercials and it also allows you to listen to the videos in the background…which again…why? So I still have a hard time validating the cost of YouTube Red, but what about the content? To answer that, I watched their newest original film, The Thinning. How did they do?
Well, this film is a post-apocalyptic thriller that has the likeness of any good young-adult thriller like The Hunger Games or perhaps even Divergent. It’s about killing off kids, but why? Well, the U.N. decided that its growing overpopulation problem needed to be dealt with, so they told each nation to figure out how to decrease 5% of the population. Other nations would kill off old folks, some would change their birthing plans to only one child allowed, and the United States decided their method would to give kids from first to twelfth grade an aptitude test, and the dumbest students are killed off in what they deem “The Thinning”. When a couple of students get wind that the results are sometimes rigged, they go deep to find out how to stop it.
First of all, let’s talk logistics. This movie isn’t as believable as other young-adult thrillers like it because its foundation is the part that doesn’t make sense. Why would you kill off innocent kids…I mean, even down to first grade, to lower the population rates? Other nations are killing old people anyway, why wouldn’t the US? Why not just hold a Hunger Games…I kid, I kid. That being said, no matter how realistic it is, it still chills you to the bone because the idea alone is revolting, and you cannot stop watching. You want to see what will happen. In fact, the more the film plays out, the more political the roots become.
The entire idea of the system being rigged to keep the popular alive and maybe kill off the rebellions is exactly where we are as a society. The rich aren’t imprisoned, the celebrities do whatever they want, and the whistleblowers trying to do the right thing are expelled from the country. It’s almost satirical in that light, but at the same time – the same system is happening in our schools today. Dumb jocks are given scholarships and end up being among the richest in the nation, and straight A students who get a bachelor’s, even a master’s degree in college are a part of the middle class struggling to make ends meet.
As a movie, The Thinning did a pretty good job creating mystery and suspense from beginning to end, and when it finally ends, you want a sequel…which in my book, is exactly how a movie like this should be. Sure, there were certain parts here and there where you can tell it didn’t have the biggest budget and maybe it felt like a Youtube video, but the good part there is…it is YouTube. I think it could benefit from another movie and I hope to see this story advance.
I was hoping SyFy could continue their recent trend of awesome shows like 12 Monkeys, The Expanse and others. But this is just bad all around. Terrible writing, acting, pacing and stupid characters.
In general a fine pilot with an already charming cast (except Wyatt, a character that is boringly written).
But it has some issues in terms of time travel they lay down early on as a ground that is flawed throughout.
If there's a group of "terrorists" stealing the time machine to change the past, wouldn't they have already changed the present the moment they can disappear with the time machine? So, how to "correct" the past if it was already changed in your heads?
The follow up issue here, that ties in with that occurence of stealing, is how they solve the grandparent paradoxon. If you go back in time and kill your grandparent(s), are you never born? If you are never born, you cannot kill your grandparents. Seems like this show is only picking what's convenient for the story telling. A story that does not make a lot of sense whatsoever in the process.
Example: Lucy remembering her sister. Why can she remember her when she was never born? The past was changed the moment the time machine was stolen and hence the sister wasn't born anymore at that same time. Lucy shouldn't be able to remember.
In the same vein Lucy could kill her grandparents in the past, get back to the future (ha!), go home and her mother wouldn't be there but she still remembers her....but how was she born, how does she remember? No. No, no, no, no. You cannot write coherent time travel stories with so much selectivity. Even if you'd come up with some weird-ass explanation later on.
I can live with "no do-overs", that you personally can't travel back to the same time again. I've seen the same thing being handled in Stargate and explained as well, hence I can suspend my disbelief at least for that.
But what I can not accept is the fact that the Hindenburg miraculously did not burn down as it should have, but was sabotaged later on with a bomb instead. A bomb they found and instead of destroying the window and throw the damn thing out of it they go for some weird-ass "take over the airship"-plan to land it and let everyone out within much less than 4 minutes. To top it off they destroy windows twice when the Hindenbrug explodes anyway to escape from the burning wreck with ease what gave me the impression of blatant mockery, just like their standing behind the window with the bomb on their hands, wondering what to do. What the actual...unnecessary drama and suspense that felt absurd.
Yet an intriguing and somehow fresh show that was to some degree entertaining to watch but will probably not make any more sense with more episodes, rather the opposite. Due to the aforementioned blatant issues in story telling my guess is cancelled after 10-ish episodes. Unless it becomes an audience magnet. I could see that for the cast alone but not for the writing.
