Die Hard is hands down the greatest action movie ever made. The characters, the writing, the action sequences. The simplicity of the movie being just about one cop trying to stop some thieves from stealing a lot of money and how its all set in just one building but it’s that simplicity that gives the movie such a focus that allows the audience to relate to the story and care about what’s going on and gives it those high stakes that make it so exciting. You won’t find any of that in this piece of shit.

Die Hard 5 is a travesty of a movie that pisses on a great franchise and does a disservice to the movies by even putting it on the same level as the other movies. And yes, I’m including 4.0. I’m actually one of the few that even likes 4.0. Don’t get me wrong, it had its problems not the least that it didn’t really feel like a Die Hard movie but it was a serviceable action movie that had its moments. At least Die Hard 4 had a more structured story with a clear villain with well defined motives and a clear end point that gives some sort of stake in the movie that we could relate to. At least Die Hard 4 had well directed action scenes and wasn’t incompetent on even a film making level. At least Die Hard 4 had a John McClane that actually felt like John McClane who was actually the hero of the movie and not some guy who just happened to have the same name as the character and just accidentally walked into the movie to stand around and do nothing for half the movie. Which is much more than could be said for Die Hard 5.

Die Hard 5 is just an incompetent movie…on every level. And I’m not just using hyperbole. Story, characters, dialogue, acting, directing, on every aspect you just get the feeling that the people working on the movie had no idea what they were doing, it just felt so amateurish. I’ll go over each aspect in turn to try and emphasize just how badly made this film was.

Story: As I mentioned earlier, the reason Die Hard was such a great action movie was because it was so simple that we could focus on the characters and their motivations and their struggles so that we feel like we’re going along with them on their journey. While I like the other Die Hard movies of the original trilogy, I feel like they overcomplicated the plot to the point that they could not replicate those personal stakes that the original Die Hard had. This is the most apparent in Die Hard 4.0 which had some elaborate hacking plot with the fate of the United States at stake, an outlandish, impersonal premise that we just couldn’t relate to because of how overcomplicated and unfocused it was not helped by the stupid hacking tripe the movie used to progress the plot. But you know what, overcomplicated doesn’t begin to describe the terrible story of Die Hard 5.

The story is bad in a way that is just bizarre in what a convoluted mess it is. Which is amazing given that the premise itself is very simple. John goes to Russia to try and save his son from a murder charge. But then they introduce all this nonsensical grandstanding conspiracy plot lines that are just there to make the stakes seem bigger and the story more grand than it really is. This is all mired with countless pointless scenes that contribute nothing to do the story and are never mentioned again, characters just showing up and getting killed off without no one giving a damn, hyped up bad guys being killed off in an anticlimactic manner, the real villain not showing up until the last ten minutes of the movie, characters doing things that make no sense besides being convenient for the plot. The movie is so badly written that you can just see the scriptwriters at work, follow their superficial reasoning on why scenes played out the way they did. In the beginning of the movie there’s a scene with John and some taxi driver having a terribly written conversation on Frank Sinatra that contributed nothing to the story but you know why they put it in there, because they wanted to have some sort of human scene with John as well as to pad out the running time. There’s a scene with a corrupt politician walking with an army of judges behind him, I guess to symbolize that he’s a powerful figure that owned the court system, yet that never comes into play so I suppose the scene was only put in there to remind us the character existed not that he mattered that he got killed off haphazardly the next time he showed up in the movie.

It’s that sort of transparently obvious writing where you can see the hamster wheels running in the writer’s brains that makes for the most superficial and pretentious of stories that just take you out of the movie, take you out of the experience of trying to immerse yourself in what’s going on in the movie and instead you just sit there predicting beat for beat what will happen next in the movie because the writing is just so predictable.

Characters: The appeal of John McClane, what makes him such a great, likable, character that differentiates him from all the other typical action heroes is that he’s just a normal guy. He’s not like Stallone or Schwarzenegger where he’s a superhuman who has no fear and is absolutely invincible. He’s just a normal, smart ass cop who’s thrown into terrible situations, who’s scared shitless at his situations but who can do nothing more but try his best to survive the situation to the best of his ability. He’s human, he has human moments, he gets hurt and when he does, he racks up those injuries. If he runs across a floor of glass bare-footed, he bleeds and ends up limping for the rest of the movie. This is a problem in Die Hard 4 where he becomes that sort of untouchable superhuman. But at least in Die Hard 4, he still felt like John McClane, he still cracked his smartass New York City cop jokes, he still felt like the hero in his own movie. Not in this movie. Bruce Willis looks so tired in the movie, like the only reason he’s in it is because of a contract. He just feels like a prop than an actual character that they just put him there just so they can call the movie a Die Hard movie. For most of the movie he does nothing but bitch about how he’s John McClane Jr’s father. When he finally does get into action, he’s assaulted by helicopters with miniguns, chases bad guys in a truck that gets flipped over and keeps on going, drives off a helicopter on a truck stored in its cargo bay, jumps off high places and lands on the ground, all without a scratch and all without any of it registering on an emotional level. He just looks bored and tired by it all. His son is a completely unlikable one dimensional character that is just an amalgamation of every rebellious teenager that hates his father cliche rolled up into one character and spends nothing but cracking out pun after pun on how much he hates his father. The whole father son relationship was so abysmally done that it even beats Crystal Skull in how terrible it was. The rest of the “characters” are just your collection of unmemorable baddies that disappear as soon as they show up. Even the main villain whose a character we don’t realize is a villain until much later gets killed off pretty quickly in an offhand, anticlimactic fashion.

Dialogue: The dialogue is just insipid. Shallowly written, unnatural sounding, insultingly simple, the sort of dialogue that you know real people wouldn’t use and you can just feel the actors reading off their scripts as they deliver the lines in such an awkwardly stilted manner. It’s hard to even call it dialogue as much as mass text of cliches to try and hammer in the father son theme of the movie home to (what the writers think are) dumb audiences.And again, it just takes you out of the movie because it just doesn’t feel natural.

Acting: You can just see on screen how none of the actors gave a shit about the movie. Bruce Willis looks tired and just going through the motions, the actor playing his son is sort of trying but the character he was given to work with isn’t helping. Which is a shame because the actor does have potential (he was pretty good in Jack Reacher). No one else is worth mentioning.

Directing: Now this I wanted to leave for last because of how terribly incompetent it was. The directing in this movie sucks. I mean really, really sucks. The kind that stands out in how awful it is. The director couldn’t keep the camera still for a freakin’ minute. Even in dialogue scenes, the camera is shaking all over the place instead of focusing on the actors faces. There are action scenes where the camera is zoomed out in shots and then just zooms in quickly like it’s one of those old, cheesy Hong Kong martial arts movies. There are random scenes of just horribly placed, terribly looking slow mo effects that don’t contribute to the scene at all besides the fact that the director thought it looked cool. Action flows, the pacing, the choreography, the camera angles and where the camera focuses on and how the camera follows the action are all important parts of a good action scene. There’s a reason to why you compose shots in certain ways that contribute to accentuating how the scene should feel. But the director clearly doesn’t have a clue on how to do any of these things, he’s shaking the camera every second even during dialogue scenes because he probably thinks it will make them seem more exciting but it doesn’t, it’s just distracting and annoying and personally gives me a headache. Speaking of headaches, the editing in the movie sucks too. The camera constantly cuts scenes at a million frames a second. It’s like the editor had ADD. During an action scene, the camera never focuses on a scene for more than three seconds, usually for no more than one second and it just makes it impossible to follow along with what’s going on and you can’t even enjoy the action scenes not that what you could see was choreographed well mind you.

In conclusion, Die Hard 5 is just a lazy cash in movie acted by actors that don’t want to be in the movie produced by a staff that had absolutely no idea what it was doing. It’s just a hot, convoluted mess. The only merit the movie has is as a learning experience for other potential film makers on how NOT to make a movie. Don’t spend money on this, I only spent a fraction of normal ticket costs to see the movie and I still feel ripped off. Don’t buy it, don’t rent it, don’t even watch it for free, it’d still be ripping you off. And it’d be a disservice to such a great franchise if you do. Die Hard is not only my favorite action movie of all time but one of my favorite movies period and to see such a phenomenally good movie fall to such lows because Hollywood won’t learn to let great movies lie in peace but continues to forcibly resurrect them just to cash in on their legacies is just heart-breaking.

I’m not a Trekkie. Only Star Trek thing I’ve watched besides the first film of the J.J reboot is Wrath of Khan. I say this to make it clear that I’m not just some fanboy whose hurt that the movie mixed up a name or got the design of the enterprise slightly wrong. My opinion of the film will mostly be based on how it fares on its own. My opinion? It was a piece of shit.

I admit I wasn’t going in with high expectations. I did not like the first one ( I don’t like J.J Abrams aka Mr. Lens Flare as a whole), I thought it had stupid characters, poor writing, a horrible villain and just this unpleasant feel of being manufactured just to pander to brainless audiences that I did not like. And I heard this new one was written by Damon Lindelof aka that horrible writer who wrote Prometheus that keeps getting work because he cowrote Lost. But man, was this movie bad.

A lot of people will defend it as “It’s just a blockbuster film, quit thinking about it so hard, just turn your brain off!” You know, those people who use the same argument with films like Transformers or Phantom Menace. Well there’s turning your brain off and there’s lobotomizing yourself. Even for popcorn films, there are standards. And oh boy, did this film not meet them.

The writing is bad…like really bad. The kind you just can’t ignore because of how much it stands out in its awfulness. Not even the kind that you pick apart after you watch the film, the kind that sticks out while you’re watching the movie. Just nothing makes sense in this movie…at all. It’s just incredible how nonsensical the entire plot is. It’s one thing to have blockbusters like say in Iron Man where you have plotholes and plotthreads that lead nowhere. But you know, at least the film is structured and paced well and you have a clear sense of where the film is going with the story. It’s just amazing to me how this film could be so simple and yet so overly complicated at the same time.

From the opening scene, we get action scene. Not even some sort of transition into it, literally first scene, Kirk and Bones running from angry natives. We’re thrust into some mission to stop a volcano from exploding and destroying a random planet by detonating an ice bomb in the centre of the eruption. Without being given any sort of ground that we as the audience can stand on, no clear idea of what’s going on, what’s at stake, how we got to this point, sure it’s all explained later but we lack any sort of emotional investment into the action scene, it’s just pretty lights. And it just made no sense. So Kirk was given a mission t survey the planet but he decided to defy the prime directive and interfere with the planet’s destiny by saving it. So he and Bones go steal some scroll from the natives…for some reason (I guess just to start the movie with a chase scene) while Spock takes an ice bomb into the centre of the volcano to detonate it. Why they couldn’t have just threw the bomb in there instead of sending their science officer inside to plant it, I don’t know. And when Kirk goes to save Spock from the explosion, Spock tells him no because it would break the rules of the Prime Directive to let the natives (a very primitive race who hadn’t even invented the wheel yet) see them. Even though Spock wouldn’t have been in that situation if he hadn’t willingly broken far bigger rules of the Prime Directive in the first place. And of course there’s no emotional investment in the scene because it’s the opening scene so you know Kirk is just going to ignore him and save him anyway. Which he did. And then to thank him for saving his life, Spock files a report on the mission that makes Kirk lose his captain position. This is the opening scene of the movie. It gets worse from here.

The premise itself is pretty simple on the surface. Kirk is given a covert operation to kill a terrorist, a genetically engineered super being, who blew up an important government facility and assassinated several high ranking government members including a long time father figure to Kirk. The terrorist is hiding himself in Klingon territory (how he teleported from Earth to a different quadrant of the galaxy is beyond me) so there is some sensitive diplomatic issues as one wrong move could incite the Klingons to go to war with earth. Okay, interesting enough premise, it could work. How it turned into some convoluted plot about smuggling people in photon torpedoes outfitted with cryogenic chambers is beyond me. The plot is just so nonsensical and absurd. the Klingons show up pretty quickly in the movie and then just drop out just as quickly and are never heard of again. We find out that the Admiral that gave the Kirk the mission to kill the terrorist is secretly trying to incite war with the Klingons by having them blow up the terrorist on a planet in Klingon territory with the nukes filled with frozen people that aforementioned terrorist had somehow put them inside and the Admiral never noticed. We have the Admiral’s plans and the terrorist’s plans being thrown around in some convoluted plot but honestly all these plot threads were just a shallow excuse to shoehorn in more action scenes opposed to trying to the action being used to tell the story. The movie is just so transparent in the way its fumbling around to give us mroe action scenes. Action scenes are fun and entertaining but they cannot be all that is to the movie. The action scenes were mostly good (though a few just fell flat on their face), I won’t deny that but the movie just lacked any sort of substance. It was all flash, pretty lights to impress the audience, a team of CGI designers masturbating onto the silver screen. That’s all it amounted to. There was just no real story and it’s just incredible to me how much it feels like the producers didn’t care about putting in a story.

The movie is trying REALLY hard in this to be dramatic and dark. To its detriment. Whereas the first one, although I didn’t like it, had a fun factor I could appreciate. This one was just constant angst and forced drama. Likable characters having constant bitch cat fights with each other. Literally the first act of this movie was bitch fight, action scene, bitch fight, action scene, lather, rinse, repeat. The actors themselves are pretty great but the characters they were given to work with could not be saved. I love Simon Pegg, he was funny in this movie and damn near stole the whole show yet I didn’t laugh once at his jokes even though they’re legitimately funny because the combination of bad writing and angsty drama took me that much out of the movie. This is more true than most with the terrorist played by Benedict Cumberbatch…which gets to one of my biggest gripes with the film.

So big spoilers alert. The terrorist is Khan. Khan is a major big deal in the Trek universe. Even non-Trekkies recognize him as a very, very big villain. When you use Khan in your movie, you’re living up to a very, very high standard because Khan is one of the most interesting, complex. well-written characters in not only the show but in the history of media. Yes, those are very big words and I mean them, he is that iconic and great a character. And of course, they fuck him up. All credit to Benedict Cumberbatch, he is a great actor, he was really giving it his absolute best in his performance, but the character he was given was just so cliche. I guess he was a better villain than the first one, sort of, though that was a very low bar to raise. I was actually interested in his character at first, there was something so seething and menacing about his performance hinting at more complexity to the character. I was also interested at how they were depicting him in a more anti-hero like role making me think they were going to do something really ballsy and have Khan be on the side of the good guys. But nope, all that was just thrown away. He kills the Admiral and then goes on a monologue on how he is the superior race and he will rule the galaxy or what not, yadda yadda. Generic, boring villain stuff. And then they had him snarl a lot when he did his betrayal sthick. It was like a parody at that point. When you compare to the complexity of the original khan, it’s just an insult.

And then there’s the issue of race which I have to bring up because apart from being a valid argument, it personally pisses me off too. Gene Rodenberry, the original creator of Star Trek said that if you combined all the genes of humanity into a perfect being, he would not be a white guy. That’s the reason the original khan was played by a Hispanic. Gene Rodenberry, in the 60’s was fighting for racial equality by including a multiracial cast, something that was never before seen on television. And here in 2013, we’re casting a white guy to play Khan. It’s whitewashing, pure and simple. I don’t want to her shit like how Benedict was the perfect guy for the job. This is supposed to be alternative universe Khan. Studios cast him because they didn’t think white audiences would sit well with a non-white villain.It’s racism, pure and simple.

That J.J Abrams couldn’t respect the original wishes of the creator of the franchise goes to show just how much he cares about the spirit of the show. Anyone with such a lack of respect for the source material has absolutely no right using Khan. This is a problem I had with the first film. Now I said I wasn’t a Trekkie, but Star Trek is such an influential show that is absolutely engrained in our popcultural subconscious to the point that we all know the tone of the series. It was supposed to be a more intelligent, philosophical show that explored many interesting sci-fi elements in a smart way as well as the human condition. And J.J. Abrams turned the franchise into action movies. Now I am aware that the franchise has had many spin-offs that missed the point of the series and tried to actionify it up but not to the shameless extent of J.J Abrams in my opinion. The man has absolutely no respect for Star Trek, he even admitted as much in interviews how he never got the show as a kid when all his friends were talking about it and how he found it boring (but he quickly said after that he loves it now though, uh huh). J.J. Abrams is just exploiting Star Trek, taking it, remanufacturing it into something that completely betrays the original spirit of the show, all for the sake of mass marketing it into something more palatable for the dumb audiences (and I’m no saying you’re dumb for liking it, I’m saying it’s being remade to be as simple and unchallenging as possible). I think the whole issue is aptly described with this metaphor written on this link

http://raktajino-hot.tumblr.com/post/50460496375/baking-with-jj-abrams

(all credit goes to the writer of the post)

Me personally, I’ll clarify my distaste of his exploitation by describing THAT scene. My god, that scene. I have never, ever been so angry at a movie. I was throwing my popcorn at the screen by that point, I never knew a movie could actually drive a person to do that, I thought it was the stuff of fiction. That scene…

Spoilers of spoilers, they remake Spock’s death frame for frame except they do it in reverse with Kirk being the one dying. They had the temerity to do that…Ripping off Wrath of Khan is one thing, hell the first movie was pretty much a rip off of Wrath of Khan story wise, even Star Trek nemesis. But for them to be so shameless to do it scene for scene right down to damn near identical dialogue and the scene of the two of them touching hands through the glass? I dare anyone who says this is a love letter to the franchise to see that scene and tell me it’s not just simple exploitation. I’m not a Trekkie, I only saw that one movie and I am offended, let alone how a dedicated fan must feel. Because Wrath of Khan, on its own is a fantastic movie with one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in cinema and they rip it off scene for scene. But wait, it gets WORSE. Because you’re probably thinking to yourselves, wait, they killed Kirk. He’s the main character. Well you’re exactly right. Because right after they shamelessly rip off one of the most beautiful death scenes in cinema, they shamelessly revive him with a obscenely telegraphed plot point with Khan’s cells being able to revive a Tribble.They just shamelessly rip off one of the best death scenes ever made and just completely invalidate it. I was disgusted by the movie at that point. Oh and cherry on the cake, they make Spock scream Khaaaaaaan after Kirk died…Just fuck this movie. I’m not a Trekkie but I respect the show and its influence and what it was trying to accomplish. J.J. Abrams and his crack team of writers and producers clearly did not.

I guess if you just want some pretty action sequences, the movie delivers. By all means watch the movie if you want. I’m not being condescending, it has great acting and visual effects, some good comedy. But for me personally, the writing was so bad, the manufactured just to get a profit feeling the first one game me was so prevalent, the characters were so unlikable, the action scenes felt so much like the point of the movie rather than a way to tell the story and the feeling of exploitation of such an influential show stuck out so much for me, too much for me, way too much. For me, this movie gives sci-fi movies a bad name, it gives Blockbusters a bad name and it gives Star Trek a bad name. Just no.

raktajino-hot:

Person: JJ, I want you to make some chocolate chip cookies.

JJ: [Returns several hours later with an apple pie mashed into a cookie box]

Person: … this is an apple pie mashed into a cookie box.

JJ: No, it’s chocolate chip cookies. Made for people like me, who hate chocolate!

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airspaniel:

If people are staying spoiler-free, that’s fine, and I won’t harsh your buzz. However, I will not be seeing the movie in theaters, I will not be giving it any of my money, and I am not particularly interested in discussing it.

That said, I’m gonna discuss it.

Read More

Iron Man 3: You know that feeling when you’re really hyped up for a movie and then it ends up not as being good as you thought it’d be? It wasn’t bad per se. Just didn’t meet your really high expectations. We call that hype disillusionment and it really sucks when tat happens because you’re spoiling your experience of a perfectly good movie. Well, it didn’t fucking happen here because this movie was amazing.

Best Marvel movie next to Avengers, hands down. I was actually surprised at the number of people who said that it wasn’t as good as the first one. I thought it was way better than the first one. Grander scale, funnier jokes, fantastic action choreography, a climax to die for. Yes, story-wise there seemed to be some flaws here and there but fuck it if I care, that was a fantastic ride.

My biggest fear going into this movie was that it was going to be Dark Knight with Robert Downey Jr. The film seemed to have had a darker tone given the trailers and I was worried it’ll go against the spirit of the franchise just to cash in with the Nolan lovers. Fortunately, that was definitely not the case here. It was darker than the other two sure (there were some really grisly deaths in this one) but it was still Iron Man, it was still the wise-cracking, snarky Robert Downey Jr. that we love. And some of the jokes in this movie were just gut bustingly funny especially a certain twist that I won’t spoil that was practically the punchline of the movie. Although, since we’re talking about comedy, I must admit there were a couple of jokes that may have been dragged out a tad too much.

Again, the action choreography was just phenomenal. I have always loved what the marvel movies do with action scenes because they do such a fantastic job translating comic book style action scenes into real life without it feeling out of place. It’s well directed, easy to follow and very clever.

The directing of the film was very well done, great camera work, really dynamic with some great angles at key scenes. The shots of people in the sky were really well done, you really got a sense of a vastness of the sky and what people were going through falling 20,000 feet, I was actually pretty uncomfortable during that scene, it was very vertigo-inducing.

Story-wise, though there were some glaring plotholes here and there and some far-fetched story twists, the movie was very well done especially regarding the characterization. The movie was much more personal than the other two exploring Tony’s inner demons making for an interesting exploration of Tony’s character. The villain was good, threatening, entertaining (and surprisingly very snarky but not in a way that we couldn’t take him seriously), I wish I could talk more about him but that’d be spoiling the best twist in the movie.There were also some really well done side-characters. Pepper was great, a great example of a female character done right. There was also an awesome kid that has to be one of the best done kids I’ve ever seen in a movie. He wasn’t obnoxious, he didn’t get in the way but was actually very useful and was very funny (in fact he had one of the funniest scenes in the film)

The climax of the movie, again, was just to die for. When I saw all those multiple suits in the trailer, I thought, wouldn’t be awesome like if he switches between suits in battle to suit different purposes? Well that’s what happened and it’s only a small part of the awesome stuff that happened in that climax.

What else can I say? If you’re a lover of the Marvel Movie franchise, this movie is your wet dream. Watch as soon as possible!

Oblivion: I love Sci-fi movies when they’re done right. They allow for interesting explorations for complex ethical issues and can give some of the most fascinating worlds moreso than even fantasy movies because these worlds would have more grounded and scientific explanations to support them making them more interesting, intricate and well thought out opposed to MAGIC. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bias towards Sci-fi films in today’s audiences, they’re not as marketable so studios avoid making them as risky ventures. most sci-films made aren’t really sci-fi but more action or horror films with sci-fi elements. I love Iron Man as a movie but it’s not really a sci-fi film as much as an action film with sci-fi elements. Same with Star Wars, I like the original trilogy as a whole (not the prequels obviously) but they’re not really sci-fi movies in the same vein Star Trek was, they’re more action movies just set in a more futuristic world. Certainly not the kind of sci-fi films I really love that explores complex ethical or political issues, where the story is propagated by events logically tied into the world built up in the story. In most sci-fi films, the world is just a gimmick to throw some crazy elaborate obstacle for the hero to overcome, glorified action movies. Not to say sci-fi movies shouldn’t have action, but if you’re going to have action, there should be a balance between that and exploring the scientific aspects of the show

Here are a list of good sci-fi movies that I personally just really love: Back to the Future, District 9, Alien and Aliens, Total recall (the original), 12 Monkeys, Matrix 1 and 2, Looper, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Terminator 1 and 2, Blade Runner, Dredd (the new one not the Stallone version), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Minority Report.

All with varying degrees of action to sci-fi ratios but all entertaining movies that explore the world they set up to some extent.

Now for fun, bad sci-fi movies: Prometheus, Total Recall (the reboot), Star Trek (the reboot), Battlefield Earth, I Robot, War of the Worlds (The Tom Cruise version), Avatar, Matrix 3, Southland Tales, Planet of the Apes (the Tim Burton reboot), Independence Day.

Now with that said, where does this new movie Oblivion fall under in my lists? Good movie. Very good movie in fact.

What I really liked about Oblivion is that it falls under one of those sci-fi movies that goes through great pains to set up and explore the world it creates, explores some interesting concepts and issues, balances the action scenes with scenes of exploration of the world it created, has quiet moments where Tom Cruise is just relaxing and listening to some records in one of the last forests still left in the world.

The story starts in post apocalyptic earth where the moon was destroyed by a race known as Scavengers and where a giant war had taken place between humans and the Scavengers where the humans won but the planet was ruined in the process. Humans have migrated to a moon in Saturn’s orbit while Tom Cruise and his companion are tasked to maintain drones that act as a security system against any surviving Scavengers while a terraforming process is going on in order to try and restore the Earth. Already, we have a very interesting premise, explained in the first five minutes of the movie in a clear and well-explained manner. This is how the movie started however as it progressed, there are story twists that completely change your perception of this world. However they’re done well, it’s a very logical progression built on things already explained by the movie and made sense in the context of what we already knew. This a sign of a good sci-fi movie opposed to those bad ones that would just give badly paced exposition that would drag down the movie.

Not to say that the story of this movie was perfect. Oh far from it, it had its fair share of plot holes, you could easily spend a lot of time to pick apart this movie with all its flaws and inconsistencies. But this is par for the course for any sci-fi movie. However at least there is a story based on this world, it’s not just a set piece for elaborate action scenes, there was an effort to write this story and a good one overall with a clear direction and that explored interesting issues regarding memories and what is a human soul and how do you react when everything you know about your world is a lie. Which is more than can be said for shitty sci-fi flicks like Prometheus which was just a pretentious creature feature flick or the Star Trek: Reboot which was just a more soulless version of Star Wars (so I guess kinda like the prequels). I was interested and engaged in this world and the writers did a good job writing a story that was dictated by the world they set up rather than a story that was completely irrelevant of it.

Visually, this movie was stunning. One of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. Avatar, I was never a fan of the visuals because it always came off so cartoonish to me especially with its giant blue cat people. This movie’s cinematography was just stunning. The things it did with clouds was just gorgeous. The action scenes were also well choreographed, cleverly written and gorgeously presented.

Acting was great all around. Tom Cruise was his awesome, intense self. Morgan Freeman gave one of his most interesting and entertaining performances to date.

The music in this film was amazing. The kind of epic music you just don’t hear anymore in movies but not so overpowering that it distracted from the scenes but enhanced them to great effect.

The ending of this film was one of the most awesome endings I’ve ever seen (not the ending ending with the cabin in the woods, that kinda sucked, the climactic ending against the bad guy). Just no words. I don’t want to spoil it.

It’s hard to talk about the flaws of this movie without spoiling it and this isn’t a film that should be spoiled as my main problems with the film are story issues. There were some pacing issues here and there. Moments where you are confused by the actions of characters though they made sense in retrospect. If I had to discuss a “flaw”, I’d agree the movie is very derivative. It borrows heavily from other sci-fi films like Terminator, the Matrix, Total Recall, Independence day and even some 2001 mixed there too. But honestly, I wouldn’t hold it against the film. Lots of films borrow from other films especially sci-fi flicks. It is derivative in a sense however the final product melded from these other films was entertaining, interesting and gave a good albeit flawed story. It’s certainly not a walking mass of cliches and bland story-telling like movies like most badly done sci-fi movie are.

Overall a highly entertaining and very interesting flick to me. If you’re not a fan of sci-fi, it may not be your cup of tea but sci-fi lovers should definitely check it out at least once.