ideally business and creative are supposed to work together in Hollywood
the producers represent the business and the writer/director represents the
creative with some overlap again in an ideal situation but with annihilation we
really have a vs. situation and let me explain so Alex Garland the writer
director of this movie who has earned some prestige at this point screens his
movie for the man who paid for it executive producer David Ellison and
also the company that will distribute it paramount and they say we've got some
notes Alex and Alex says you ain't touching it and I guess his management
team did a good job giving him final cut on the film or did they you'll have to
decide down below especially after you see how things have turned out so since
they couldn't get him to change the movie creatively they decided to take a
flyer on it and shunt it to Netflix outside of the United States and China
where will debut 17 days after its United States release now when I saw the
trailer I was on Alex garland side but having seen the movie I'm on David
Ellison and paramount side I think this movement this movie totally belongs on
Netflix but in a good way allow me to explain I think paramount
and David Ellison were like help us help you Alex
cuz you basically just wanted to make a black mirror episode and not even the
best of the season you know we're talking like second or third best of the
season but I still think worth seeing at some point most likely on a streaming
service ok so Natalie Portman's character describes being in the shimmer
as being in a dream and that's also how I would describe this movie itself
stunning mesmerizing memorable but incomplete with ultimately no deeper
goal but to exist in this case is a pretty standard sci-fi movie but one
that's been through the shimmer okay once you see this movie I think you'll
totally understand where Alex garland is coming from I mean you have you have to
experience it and then step back from it and be like why did you do that
and you'll understand what I mean by taking a standard sci-fi movie and
putting it through the Shemer this this prism changing it and that's actually
pretty neat from a craftsmanship perspective right I like a sci-fi piece
of modern art but you don't look at modern art for like almost two hours
right you go ah interesting hmm and then you move you move on and I
think in some ways a lot of ways that's how I would also describe annihilation
because from an entertainment perspective which is what movies are
supposed to largely be that's you know what the business side is supposed to
remind you of I think this movie ultimately Falls way short so basically
again what you have here is a stereotypical sci-fi movie but changed
okay so I'm gonna go through this without spoilers because there are some
pretty cool twists in the movie that I didn't see coming it's very hard to
surprise me to move it because I've seen so many movies right they always borrow
from each other and so you learn to see the signs etc and there's only so many
twists out there but Alex Garland found some cool new ones well they're kind of
new but I didn't see him coming so I was very happy about that
all right so anyway the first thing is like we're putting together a team right
we've seen that so many times before and it consists of the standard stereotypes
for a movie like this but here's the twist here's putting it through the
shimmer they're all women now the movie doesn't do a particularly good job
explaining why they are all women I mean there's one line where they're like the
teams that have gotten so far are mostly male and you're like well they're not
all male why would you go all female and then it's made even weirder by the fact
that the beginning of the movie Portman's class is almost entirely made
up of female students like until a guy showed up like in the background out of
focus asks like is this an all-female College and then when she was walking
around the college for just like a short amount of time it seemed in the
background that everybody was a woman so again dreamlike you know but I wouldn't
have done that so I think it under well I don't think is I don't know if this
movie is about women working together I think it's inverting the stereotypical
all-male team simply by making them women and that was cool though I did
like that because nobody here is playing a wife daughter mother girlfriend or
sister I mean they are those things they're a couple of those things but
that's just a part of them like with male characters each woman is a person
first well she's a member of stereotypical group and they do such a
good job the actresses I was so impressed but also this is what's really
interesting to me there is that undefinable female feminine quality to
them as well like they were very much still women and that made them stronger
and unique but it didn't take away from them being like real people I loved
their reactions I loved their their their jokes I loved their insecurities I
thought they were just incredibly complex in fact I would go so far as to
say that this might be the best depiction of female characters in a
movie that I have ever seen it was very exciting and worth noting that as we get
a little militant these days it was written and directed by a man so
everybody is welcome to make better roles for everyone okay so next the
earth is being morphed into something alien seeing it but here instead of
something bloody and metal like they usually do it's delicate and colorful
one character describes it like a wedding which I thought was an apt
description and it also has like a feminine quality to it which I thought
was really cool but it's still terrifying right to garland and the
production design teams credit you never feel like you can let your guard down
and then there's an ending a typical sci-fi ending but here no twist which
was what made it disappointing and in fact a lot of the movie was
disappointing because it not only uses dream logic whereas it's incomplete
I know some of you I'm sure like I love incomplete dream logic it's not
satisfying particularly without a good payoff and also the pacing so it's not
just the lack of logic but the pacing which I believe was one of the main
problems that paramount and David Allison had with the film truly is as a
disaster I mean you're gonna have to decide for yourself if you want to enter
the shimmer because I get nervous that you're gonna be like especially for
movie wanting you're gonna be like a more bored than I should be I got bored
and I as you can see I'm geeking out about it a little bit and I liked a lot
of it so again by the end it seems you know what this particularly makes it
seem like a black mirror episode is that it just doesn't have enough story to
make up you know to constitute a movie right it just has like a TV TV like 30
to 40 minutes well black mayor episodes can run almost feature-length but you
know what I'm saying just seems smaller right more like a
that was interesting instead of like a whoa which should be what happens when
you see a movie but there aren't speaking of that reaction there are a
few scenes and surprises that make the movie really stand out and worth seeing
at some point like I'm streaming you will know the scenes when you see them
they are so good there's two in particular one when they get to this
like abandon like habitat where people will have lived where they didn't were
they introduced something that they never really confirmed it so that was
weird that's not what I'm talking about the sea you'll know the scene and then
something toward the very end which was amazing it has to be seen but you don't
have to see it in theaters and in fact if this were a better movie I think this
would be a rewards level scenes they were that good so to sum it up great
acting by the women and not just Portman across the board so good
and great female characters for them to portray great dialogue incredibly
inventive and stunning VFX and production design that is awards worthy
if this film isn't remembered in those categories at next year's awards season
something's wrong because it's just amazing work and it's new work it's like
stuff you haven't seen before so I was blown away in that regard and again some
scenes and twists that are worth seeing at some point but on the negative Alex
garland is more into impressing the audience intellectually and I think
entertaining them with thrills and and you know engaging them and then even
emotionally I think the movie is a little lacking also with male character
is really stiff like as dynamic as the female characters are the male
characters are like cardboard cutouts and the acting even doesn't seem
particularly good and almost cries it's a good actor on that note there is a
scene in the movie where he has some accent and you know now that I think
about it I understand why it's there but it's so jarring and the accent is so
poorly done that it I can't believe it they let him go through with it I'd be
like let's do that scene again well why don't you try a different accent or dial
it down a little bit because this is a little bit almost I don't feel on the
verge of like a little making fun of like a middle American southern accent
and then of course there's that ending which I thought was very cliche almost
like species and you so you're like what so that's my review of annihilation I'm
very curious to hear your thoughts down below don't spoil it for anyone though
put a spoiler warning if you want to talk about something and it's a spoiler
but I'm particularly curious to hear how you feel about whether it should be seen
on the big screen or on Netflix because again some of you don't have a choice
but as I said you should feel bad about it cuz I actually think that's the best
place to watch the movie so again you can write your comments down below and
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