I wanted to like it for basically everything going for it - premise, Pattinson, Bong, sci-fi, āoriginalā film - but came out pretty much as bitter as I have ever after a film. Iām not one to do it, but I was close to walking out on it.
There are some touches of what the film could have been, some moments maybe. But on the whole it felt like a train wreck where Iād bet that people knew on set that it just wasnāt going to work.
At some point I noticed there was a good amount of yelling from the actors (Iām wondering if thatās just me) and canāt help but suspect it was the director or actors trying to find energy in scenes that were struggling. Or maybe that happened in the edit. Then thereās Ruffulo and Colletteās satirical characters that just didnāt land and felt dumb and amateur (along with Poor Things, Iām thinking Ruffulo is just not good and āoriginalā film makers would do well to stay away)
All up, I think itās embarrassingly bad, or āobjectivelyā bad. No real depth, no coherence or pacing or well directed momentum, much of the comedy doesnāt land, characters and plot often feel like afterthoughts, and it got boring too.
I think this movie review (from a pleasantly non-hype yt channel) says it better than I can.
Whatās funny is I think a lot of people want this to be good. For the sake of original, fun, quirky, satirical films (and honestly, me too). But are stuck confronting a film thatās only making that situation worse not better and which represents the risks that studios need to accept not the successes they donāt understand).
Am I off here? I was pleased to find the review I linked as it seemed to match my thoughts.
EDIT - epilogue
And on the point about the fate of films ā¦ I saw this in the cinema (somewhat in support of original films) and dragged a friend too.
It was expensive. There was bad behaviour in the cinema (people taking photos with flash of each other!). And the film was bad, IMO, in a way that I feel people should have been more honest about (like I said, I think people wanted this to be good). Plus my friend doesnāt trust my choice in movies any more.
Itās really put me off going to the cinemas TBH. Iāll see how I end up feeling over time, but I think this might have been the straw that broke my back on the whole cinema thing. In part, sadly, because I donāt get how the film was that bad.
No. āObjectively bad,ā lol. At least make an attempt to distinguish your opinion from objective reality about a subjective medium.
I think it was pretty OK, not bad, a few odd pacing choices. The biggest flaw was how underdeveloped Kai was. She was set up in act 1, had a lot of screen time in act 2, then completely disappeared from existence for the entire last act except for one brief āoh yeah, hereās Kaiā shot at the end.
Some of the on-screen violence against the baby bugs was repugnant, but it was supposed to be, so Iāll forgive it.
Otherwise I thought Pattinson did a great job realizing his characters and the overall plot worked pretty well as a movie, without being too simple or too complex.
I totally forgot about this! I completely agree, it was so bizarre how much screen time and development her character received in the middle of the film for it to ultimately lead nowhere. I thought for sure she was going to be setup as either a new love interest (with a twist where his previous lover turns on him) or setup as a new villain but they did neither. She didnāt even influence the plot in a sidekick role, she was just totally absent following the riot scene. I wonder if something was cut because it seemed like big inconsistency.
Yeah, I had the same thoughts about where her character was going, and that either her character arc was cut for time or got lost in a rewrite.
But the really weird thing was how Bong portrayed her as a little unhinged when she was shooting the baby bug: no restraint and no expression. They made sure to show her face at the end of that scene after the baby had been turned into hamburger, and it seemed a little intentionally unsettling based on the context.
When they depicted Nasha as a little unhinged as well, I was wondering if they were saying something about future soldiers. No, I guess, based on the ending. Nasha just gets homicidal about Mickey, and who knows whatās up with Kai because her character failed the Bechdel Test and then disappeared.
Yes, I 100% agree about that bug execution scene. That was the āriotā scene I referred to, where her little character arc seemed to peak like there was about to be this big mask-off Starship Troopers moment. And then they just did nothing with it. So weird.