2.5/5
Reviewed August 18, 2021
Terminator meets Alien meets Battle: LA, this sci-fi film features future humans recruiting current people to fight in their war against a monstrous alien species. Chris Pratt is a veteran, now science teacher and family man, who is drafted to fight and heads 30 years into the future. The movie is…honestly not amazing. Interesting premise, and a few minor twists and turns (nothing genre-shaking, that’s for sure), but it’s relatively competent. Discussion below.
The Bad:
- So you’re telling me the world comes together to send millions of humans to head to the future and die horribly, but then as soon as that link is severed everyone decides that the scientist in the LAST GROUP BACK, who comes back claiming to have the way to kill these things, is straight up ignored and allowed to just return to life? And when he comes up with an idea and a plan to find their alien spaceship, everybody’s like “nah, we’ll pass cause it’s in Russia”.
- The line about not showing soldiers pictures of the aliens cause it would scare them is so insanely stupid (yeah, it would, but they no longer have a choice). What kind of moron doesn’t prepare troops for what they’re fighting? It’s a plot device to make the monster reveal cooler, and honestly the monster reveal isn’t even that good in the first place.
- Speaking of prep, why are there no grenades used and the guns not shooting ammo that’s effective? I get they say they’re armored a bit, but we have standard issue weapons that work a hell of a lot better than they had for the military in this.
- No way you’re sneaking into Russia in a cargo plane, even in Siberia.
- Outside of act 4, basically every character is a cardboard cutout, and even in 4 it’s not that deep.
- The opening news explanation seemed really poorly done as that trope goes.
- Convenient wormhole plot issues about not sending to other times, frequency, etc. It also mattered at the end; why couldn’t they send him back immediately after getting the correct toxin? Answer, so the plot could be forced to happen and have another epic action blowout (which was fun, tbh)
- You’re not surviving a drop into a pool from that height
- Slo-mo can be used quite effectively in action films, but here it felt really weird and out of place. Maybe just the way it was done.
- That was a really, really inefficient and poorly-done capture of the female. Kind of ridiculous.
- You have to love when a movie realizes a plot point is absurd, so it tries to shoehorn a conversation to explain why characters do something incredibly stupid. And still fails. By that, I’m talking about the fourth act spaceship section when they decide not to leave and get the military and just handle it themselves, so of course all but three die (and conveniently all the future soldiers get dead)
- Also, can we talk about the absurd core premise of taking current people to fight and not just training the world to fight the aliens when they would pop out?
- Lots and lots of plot holes involving nobody thinking of super basic things like examining the alien claws and finding the space-ship in real time or consulting a literal high school student on volcanoes….
The Good:
- Chris Pratt does have his usual action charisma, although all the comedy is sucked out of it. He’s just kind of ok in this one.
- Supporting cast of Yvonne Strahovski, Sam Richardson, and Betty Gilpin do a solid enough job.
- The real shining star is of course J.K. Simmons as the estranged dad and military conspiracy nut Slade. Best line in the movie IMO is one of the rare comedy bits, when he baits the final queen with a snowman version of himself (when did he have the time to do that??). “Surprise Dumbass”
- Looking at the war trauma in returning veterans was a solid early idea, unfortunately dropped shortly thereafter.
- The action itself is usually pretty competent and exciting, so that’s a plus. Just don’t think too hard about why people are doing what they’re doing.
- Alien design is pretty fierce, for sure, although probably a bit overkill on the toughness aspect.
- Only 3 people surviving the first encounter out of the entire group dropped.
- Although it’s not super original, I do think that the Forester reunion was done rather well.
- Having a water fortress did make sense given the abilities of the aliens
- Fourth act twist of them trying to stop the war in the first place. It wasn’t super necessary, but it did give some vibes of the OG Alien (as well as the first X-Files movie). I’d have been a lot happier if something like that was the primary focus instead of sending everyone to the future – it makes more narrative sense, but isn’t as block-bustery in the long run.
- Cancer guy dies on his own terms, and takes all the future soldiers with him
- The constant bait and switch self-sacrificing at the end on the glacier was amusing.
Overall this movie had a fun concept that just did not get executed well, and they dropped what could have been a more fun film in favor of big action blowouts. It’s definitely one you can skip, although it imitates a lot of better sci-fi flicks.
Getting Reel with Mr. Sunshine 