BEFORE: Sure, Netflix keeps recommending this film to me, but what does that even MEAN at this point? The streaming service's recommendation engines should know by now that I'll watch just about anything, right? So I can assume that they're just throwing everything at me that THEY want me to watch, for whatever reason. I've already screwed up the one on my wife's Amazon Prime account, she gets some real wacko recommendations and she KNOWS I'm to blame, because if it were just based on her history, it would only suggest more baking shows. But if she gets suggested a comedy about lesbians being chased by criminals because there's a mysterious suitcase in their trunk, well, I'm going to hear about it, aren't I?
Kunal Nayyar carries over from "Trolls Band Together".
THE PLOT: Six months into his solo mission on the edge of the solar system, an astronaut concerned with the state of his life back on Earth is helped by an ancient creature he discovers in the bowels of his ship.
AFTER: This is the story of a man who's sent to the edge of our solar system to investigate a strange phenomenon, and what that trip does to him, because of the isolation and loneliness of this one-man mission. You could say he's set up to fail from the start because it's a solo mission - who can spend that much time by themself and not go completely bonkers? To make matters worse, his wife stops answering his communications and he fears the relationship is in jeopardy AND he's also got to read sponsored content into his feed as part of his duties on the ship. Hey, space travel is expensive, somebody's got to cover the cost, plus it's not a NASA mission, it's some kind of Russian or maybe Czech space agency.
Now, there are two explanations for what happens next - one is that Jakub, our cosmonaut, has a mental breakdown, or perhaps his brain is affected by the radiation from the phenomenon that he's investigating. If this is the case, then everything seen in the second half of the film is perhaps not meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps he's seeing hallucinations again, caused either by his brain or by the radiation's effect on his brain. Nobody really knows how the human body or brain could be damaged during deep-space travel, because it hasn't happened yet.
The other option is that the creature he sees come aboard his spaceship is 100% real, and honestly I don't know if this option is any better. Either way there is (or appears to be) an alien creature that approaches Jakub and speaks to him, calling him "skinny human" and asking questions about the nature of Earth and what it means to be human. The only correct answer here, when dealing with a potentially real alien, should be "Well, they're all crazy, so whatever you do, don't go there, and I know you didn't ask, but they taste terrible, just saying. Don't eat them, you wouldn't like it and you'd probably die, they're so full of chemicals and such."
I'm inclined to go with option #1, the crazy option, because what are the odds that an alien creature would look almost exactly like a certain Earth creature (I'm not spoiling it here) only more giant-sized? Also, Jakub does not appear to have the most basic human reactions when dealing with such a creepy-looking giant-sized creature, which would be to start screaming and immediately try to kill it with fire? Since he does not do that, I'm guessing that the creature is a manifestation from his own brain, and also the creature speaks English, what are the odds?
OK, but if you support theory #2, that the alien creature is real, then you have to account for its ability to communicate, it may be telepathic, for example, so it's not speaking out loud but directly into Jakub's brain. Could happen? The creature also has fun poking through Jakub's memories from childhood and his early relationship with his wife, so if it can do that, surely it can speak telepathically too, right? But it wants to know, to learn, to understand, not to eat Jakub or suck his brain out. Would such a peaceful creature have traveled through black holes and across space and time just to kill and destroy? Well, yeah, probably, so it's almost definitely a hallucination, then, because it seems to have peaceful intent. Also, it would love to know what chocolate tastes like, since they don't have it on his home planet.
Jakub names the creature Hanus, and through their conversations and Hanus's scrolling through Jakub's memories, a bond forms between the two, and really, that wouldn't have been possible if Jakub had been freaked out by the creature and threw it out an airlock or trapped it in a life-pod or just set it on fire. (Again, that would have been a justifiable human reaction, based on its appearance alone.). If we continue the "crazy astronaut" theory just a bit more, perhaps this was all some form of therapy that Jakub needed, one that would help him remember the good times with his wife, before they grew bored with each other or her miscarriage drove some kind of emotional wedge between them. The space agency's excuses for why Lenka isn't returning his calls were getting pretty far-fetched, after all.
Look, maybe we have to go back and take another look at the "Alien" franchise - perhaps in that first movie the alien on board their ship was just trying to find a way to communicate with humans, to figure them out, see what makes them tick by, you know, climbing inside through their face-holes and creating little baby xenomorphs inside them. How was it to know that the birthing process for humans would be so violent? Or that only female humans had the right equipment to bring a child to term? The birth was never meant to take place via the male stomach, but come on, what other option was there? Guys, this changes everything, the first "Alien" film is not a horror movie at all, it's a weird twisted sci-fi rom-com!
The phenomenon that is new to the solar system is called Chopra, and it's a colorful collection of dust and particles, but Hanus refers to it as "The Beginning". Good luck trying to predict what happens when Jakub's ship finally gets there, but hey, at least we know he's not going to face it alone, he's got his imaginary (?) alien friend to help him through whatever he encounters there. Yeah, I've already started a list of the weirdest movies I've seen this year, we'll go through the whole breakdown right after Christmas - but there have been some doozies, haven't there?
In the end, this played out like some weird mix of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Interstellar", with a bit of, I don't know, not "Alien", more like "E.T." thrown in. Yet it feels oddly original, so maybe it's safe to say that there's never really been a movie quite like this before - but on the other hand, maybe there's a reason for that. Possible tag-line; "In space, no one can hear you slowly go insane."
Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Carey Mulligan (last seen in "Saltburn"), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "The Wolfpack"), Lena Olin (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Petr Papanek, Marian Roden, Zuzana Stivinova, Sunny Sandler (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), John Flanders (last seen in "Moonwalkers"), Jessica Bechynova and the voice of Paul Dano (last seen in "Dumb Money").
RATING: 5 out of 10 requested repairs for the toilet module
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