BEFORE: Still taking care of some business left over from last year - I recorded this film to go on a DVD with "The Core", and I really meant to watch both films in the same year at least. Since this film had three connections to "Avengers: Endgame" I thought it was a pretty safe bet that I could work this one in, that it could help with my linking too. But I ended up linking to and away from that Avengers movie in another way - God knows that with such a large cast there must have been a few hundred ways to connect to that film. Anyway, it's leftover on the list so I've got to deal with it sooner or later, why not to help connect "Whale Rider" to the rest, with Cliff Curtis carrying over?
In other news, even though we're only two days in to the new year, I'm already looking at October, to see if I can make a chain out of the horror films left over that I didn't get to in 2019. So far I've got one chain of 10 films and another one with 7 films. That seems like a great start, and just shy of the number of films I watched in Oct. 2019 (after taking time off for NY Comic-Con and a vacation), so I feel I might be on to something, if only I can find a way to link the two chains. Yes, this represents both a compulsion and a sickness.
It's still early, and obviously more films can be added to the horror list between now and then, but I think I've got a good start, assuming I can finally stomach watching the "Twilight" films - from there I can link to the "Maleficent" sequel and a couple horror films with Daniel Radcliffe, while the other chain has "Goosebumps 2" and "The House With a Clock in Its Walls" with Jack Black, passes through "It: Chapter Two", "The Addams Family", "Suspiria", and two zombie films with Bill Murray ("Zombieland: Double Tap" and "The Dead Don't Die"). If I can't find a way to connect them, then I may have to choose one over the other, we'll have to wait and see. It may come together at the last minute, like 2019's horror chain did.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Core" (Movie #3,210)
THE PLOT: In 2057, a team of international astronauts are sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying sun with a nuclear fission bomb.
AFTER: Boy, it's pretty rare when a science-fiction film offers us a peek into the future, and gets things THIS wrong. Here's a film made before Global Warming was front-page news, and they said, "Hey, what if in the future, there's some kind of Global Cooling?" In other words, what if the sun broke and started dying, much earlier than we predicted? Our best theories say that our sun will last for another 10,000 years, so we'll never have to worry about this during our lifetimes, and humanity will probably kill itself, one way or another, long before that, right? But what are we basing that on, and what if we're wrong?
If you ask me, and you didn't, if the sun started cooling off in 2050 or so, that should JUST about, maybe, counter-act some of the effects of global warming? Hey, a guy can dream... Right now we STILL have people who don't think that climate change is real, because it still gets cold in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter - yeah, but not as much as it USED to. There were people walking around on New Year's Eve in shorts and tiny dresses, what about that? Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of tiny dresses, but maybe not in December, because it's a sign that we're headed past the tipping point on climate change.
Anyway, the proposed solution to jump-start Old Sol is to send a spaceship there with a giant mega-ton bomb and a device that's going to start a new chain reaction, essentially creating a new smaller star inside the big one. Sure, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with this plan? (I'd love to see the proposed solutions that were thrown out in favor of, "Hey, let's throw a giant bomb at the sun.") And be sure to staff that ship with people from all different countries around the world, because we all know that people from different backgrounds always get along swimmingly, there are no cultural conflicts that could possibly arise. Then, let's make sure that we include some of those big, strong alpha males with fragile egos, because who doesn't love a good brawl in space?
But wait, there's more, because this is really the SECOND mission to the sun to jump-start it, the first one didn't succeed, and nobody knows why, because once you get too close to the sun, of course there's a communication "dead zone" where the radiation prevents people from sending messages back to update everyone on the mission status, or warn future travelers of potential dangers. And if you think about it, there's only one reason for there to even BE a first mission that failed - if Icarus I didn't come into play in the movie in some fashion, why would it even be mentioned? So there's that.
Then to add even more danger into the mix, traveling directly to the sun turns out to be a trip that's fraught with all kinds of problems - one little slip in a calculation, and the sun's radiation will eat right through the shields. Gotta call NITPICK POINT #1 on this, because they've got some advanced Siri-like computer A.I. on-board, who won't let them exercise too much because that takes up too much oxygen, and it DOESN'T alert them to the mistake that damages the shield? Why do they even have the type of shields that get destroyed if the angle is like 1% askew? Couldn't they have designed shields that would function at every possible angle?
By the same token, they're using a form of coolant, which is very, very dangerously cold and there's an oxygen garden that's making a product that's very, very combustible. Nope, don't see any potential problems there, I'm sure everything on the mission will function 100% according to plan. As long as there's not some hidden danger that they couldn't possibly have prepared for. I'm going to try to withhold the specifics due to spoilers, but just think how boring this film would be if everything on the mission went well. Then I guess you'd end up with something like "Apollo 11" - and I think even back in 1969 people didn't fully appreciate how many things went very RIGHT for them to essentially throw a tin can with three humans in it at the moon, land right on it, and then GET THEM BACK. (Sure, anybody can put a man on the moon, but can they also bring him home alive?)
But at some point, things get weird. I guess you'll know it when you see it - or maybe it's a little bit subjective regarding when the weird stuff begins - it's all relative, you see. Let's face it, things were already pretty weird, but then they get weirder. Down becomes up and up becomes sideways, and I don't know if that's because everybody's going crazy from radiation exposure or if time and space get a little loosey-goosey when you're that close to a big gravity mass. Hey, yeah, speaking of gravity, it's time for NITPICK POINT #2 - I've been led to believe that larger masses in space, like big planets and stars, have more gravity. Isn't that what keeps the planets in our solar system where they are, in orbit around the sun and not ricocheting out into deeper space? The sun has gravity, so how come this spaceship can get close to it, and the plan is to escape once they jettison the bomb? Wouldn't the gravity be SO powerful that close to Mr. Sun that the ship wouldn't be able to fly away? And shouldn't the big-brain physicist guy be aware of that? Oh, right, it's the future and maybe 40 or 50 years from now somebody created a work-around. LAME, that's just lazy storytelling, relying on inventions that haven't happened yet.
And while I'm at it, when the crew gathers to watch Mercury go across the sun (we're assuming that the ship's heavy optic filters are what makes it possible for them all to see this, and not go blind within seconds) isn't Mercury traveling the wrong way? Is this another N.P., or am I mistaken about which direction the planets go around the sun. Then again, we don't know which direction the ship is approaching from, maybe they're upside-down (relative to the solar system's orbital plane) so they're watching the planet cross in the other direction? I've got to concede this one, because I think everything's relative in space, and we shouldn't just view everything from the direction that we Earthlings call "north", that's got no bearing in space. Right? I mean, I thought the planets went around clockwise (or what would be clockwise if you were standing WAY above our system and looking down from the direction of Polaris) but if the ship's on the other side of the flat plane that holds our planets, then they'd see things moving the other way. Umm, I think.
At the risk of giving away a spoiler, I've also got to question whether an unprotected human in the vacuum of space would freeze so quickly. Someone getting ejected from a spaceship into space, with no spacesuit or other protection would NOT (as movies would have us believe) freeze up immediately and look like Iceman from the X-Men. Don't get me wrong, they'd still be dead very quickly, but they wouldn't FREEZE. If a warm human body fell into icy water, their body heat would be transferred to the cold water very quickly, but space is a vacuum, there's nothing in space, no "cold air" that would draw the heat away. Plus, in case the screenwriter forgot, this crew is closer to the sun than any other humans have ever been - so isn't it logical that space here might be a tiny bit warmer than, say, out by Pluto?
I'm not sure I even agree with the decision to switch gears in the last third of the film and go from a sci-fi drama about a crew working together to solve problems to what's essentially a low-grade slasher film. I'm all about the mash-ups but this switcheroo felt sort of like a damn shame.
Also starring Cillian Murphy (last seen in "Dunkirk"), Chris Evans (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Rose Byrne (last seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines"), Michelle Yeoh (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Troy Garity (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Benedict Wong (ditto), Mark Strong (last seen in "Before I Go to Sleep"), Paloma Baeza and the voice of Chipo Chung.
RATING: 5 out of 10 distress signals
No comments:
Post a Comment