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Alex Garland is such a frustrating writer but an interesting director. Same problems as Ex Machina.
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Feb 24, 2018 04:01
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The edit of The bear grabbing the first woman out of no where was really strange didn't make much sense, otherwise I think the film was very interesting and left me feeling . . . empty? Dunno. I almost feel like some lines should have been cut, the entire conversation with Portman's co-worker in their bedroom was so on the nose for an otherwise ambiguous film.
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Feb 24, 2018 04:04
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Also was Oscar Issacs character suddenly talking in a deep southern accent when he burned himself with the grenade. Makes me think the absorption of traits from others must be a thing.
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Feb 24, 2018 04:16
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This thing was a serious mixed bag. The first half of the movie was trash up til the part with the hilarious lady bear, then it got extremely good and insane. also what was up with the affair? what was its purpose and how did Natalie Portman's character know Kane knew about it?
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Feb 24, 2018 04:18
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murked by dragon posted:This thing was a serious mixed bag. The first half of the movie was trash up til the part with the hilarious lady bear, then it got extremely good and insane. I thought the affair may have just been there to suggest her motivations for entering the Shimmer weren't wholly about saving her husband. In fact they may never have been that.
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Feb 24, 2018 04:23
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I really liked it, especially the nightmare bear with the screams of the damned. I do agree that the ending, uh... "fight" was a little overlong and perhaps too weird, but it was alright. Also it was strangely tone deaf at times, particularly with some musical choices, but whatever. As a whole I'd say it's only slightly less weird than the book which inspired it, which is a complement. My boyfriend slept through all of it, so I imagine it's gonna tank really hard at box office.
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Feb 24, 2018 04:42
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Alex Garland is such a frustrating writer but an interesting director. Same problems as Ex Machina. It didn't click that this is the same guy who wrote "The Coma" until I was reading reviews of this after seeing it. I remember thinking that book was kind of vague and bland, but it's been over a decade.
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Feb 24, 2018 06:59
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Le Saboteur posted:I thought the affair may have just been there to suggest her motivations for entering the Shimmer weren't wholly about saving her husband. In fact they may never have been that. Please expand. This is was one of the questions the gf and I were discussing: what is the significance of showing us this? Movie was fantastic, still digesting everything. Biggest nitpick is Natalie Portman spending 7 years in the Army and yet going on patrol with her backpack unfastened. Makes me know nothing was in that pack except a bunch of light stuffing 😡
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Feb 24, 2018 07:20
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Braincloud posted:Please expand. This is was one of the questions the gf and I were discussing: what is the significance of showing us this? Her tendencies lean towards the self destructiveness, which is referenced quite often in the movie. She admits she's having an affair that her husband knows about and continues on with it any ways. She actually drifts from the man she's having an affair when she realizes he's not doing it for the same reason as her, he's not trying to self destruct he's trying to create something with her. And in that moment she hates him. So its more in her self destructive nature to enter the Shimmer than anything else, she learns its basically a suicide mission from the start and doesn't even hesitate to join them using the cover that she might save her husband. But once she's in there she even refers to the whole thing as a suicide mission and goes out of her way to continue the mission even manipulating Anya into continuing on the self destructive path by telling her they'll probably find a way out on the coast when thats a pretty long shot as the Lighthouse is the epicenter of the event. The further you move towards the tower the further you move away from the border of the Shimmer. And the movie ends with her quite literally self destructing, well a mimic of her that acts our her self destruction for her. Thats my read on the whole thing at this moment any ways. Le Saboteur fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 07:29
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Le Saboteur posted:Her tendencies lean towards the self destructiveness, which is referenced quite often in the movie. She admits she's having an affair that her husband knows about and continues on with it any ways. She actually drifts from the man she's having an affair when she realizes he's not doing it for the same reason as her, he's not trying to self destruct he's trying to create something with her. And in that moment she hates him. Ooh, that actually makes sense to me especially since she explicitly talks about the defect in our dna that causes aging and decay and how, without that, we would be immortal. Also, JJL’s character mentions the tendency for people to be self destructive and that really, it’s a biological problem rather than psychological.
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Feb 24, 2018 07:39
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As far as adaptations go I'm pretty happy with it. As mentioned it carries a lot of the themes and imagery from the book but remixes them. There's a couple of things from the books that I would have liked to seen (the psychologist's interrogation and death with the biologist, the writings on the walls, the characters not being named, the reveal of what "annihilation" means) but I understand why those elements weren't kept since it's meant to be a self-contained movie and not lead directly into two more episodes like the first book was. I was pretty satisfied with it's interpretation of the Crawler, which I found hard to visualize in the book but after seeing it as the morphy anus thing, made a lot of sense. If I had to compare it to anything it would be Under the Skin, another case where I loved the book and the movie changed everything but the basic plot but still kept a lot of the weird mood and tone from the book. But I think this movie was maybe even more sinister than the book was.
Cacator fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 07:51
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warez posted:It didn't click that this is the same guy who wrote "The Coma" until I was reading reviews of this after seeing it. I remember thinking that book was kind of vague and bland, but it's been over a decade. He also wrote The Beach, (which I think is pretty good) a movie that was considered at the time so bad it erased all goodwill toward Leonardo DiCaprio.
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Feb 24, 2018 15:26
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So I loved the movie and want to know, are the books still worth reading if you saw the movie because it sounds like the books really flesh it out more and am currently looking for something to read.
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Feb 24, 2018 18:18
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:He also wrote The Beach, (which I think is pretty good) a movie that was considered at the time so bad it erased all goodwill toward Leonardo DiCaprio. To be clear he wrote the book upon which the movie was based. And yes the Annihilation/Southern Reach books are worth reading but in the end their reach exceeds their grasp.
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Feb 24, 2018 19:18
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:So I loved the movie and want to know, are the books still worth reading if you saw the movie because it sounds like the books really flesh it out more and am currently looking for something to read. The books are very different, with the second and third being completely separate and unaddressed in the movie. Also Authority is better than Annihilation for foreboding existential horror.
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Feb 24, 2018 22:46
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I bought the first book a few months ago but hadn’t had a chance to read it yet. Perhaps I should try to knock it out over the next few days so I can go catch this film.
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Feb 25, 2018 00:09
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Hoo boy I liked this movie
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Feb 25, 2018 00:21
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Just saw the movie, never read the book. Overall really enjoyed it! Regarding her affair, the flashback to her husband and the exchange "That's what you think I do when you're gone? Pine at the stars?" seemed so cute and funny, and then you find out later he knows about the affair and it really was her kinda rubbing it in his face (knowingly or unknowingly). Regarding the ending the implication is that both Lina and Kane are duplicants (with the eye shimmer), but I didn't understand why Kane getting toasty at the end didn't have the same effect as Lena's use of the grenade. Originally I thought, "Oh, the Original Kane died and the Original (albeit changed/mutated) Lena survived, killing the clone caused a chain reaction." but then the eye shimmer made me think that wasn't the case. Also undermined the ending a bit, too - the dual eye shimmer came off as deliberately sinister, not as the cancer-analogy that had been going on up until now. The real horror was not that it was out to get you, it didn't even really know or care about you, and you couldn't understand or communicate with it.
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Feb 25, 2018 04:17
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porfiria posted:To be clear he wrote the book upon which the movie was based. Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
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Feb 25, 2018 04:41
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Excellent movie. Props to the yokel who called it "the gayest poo poo he'd every seen" on the way out, though.
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Feb 25, 2018 05:08
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Was most disappointed they made the Area X phenomenon be something extraterrestrial that is defeated and order restored to an extent. Really felt like the general gist of the book was (among other things) Earth is taking back control of itself from humans, nothing meaningful can be done to stop it, and that eventually even the delineations that create perception itself will weaken and disappear; most of that carried over into the film, but then they topped it off with this incongruous it-came-from-outer-space BS. e: on second thought, I guess maybe they're evoking the hypothesis that life on earth was seeded by a meteorite, and that's just happening again? That's okay, maybe. I dunno. Maybe I am just being a tree-hugger here. e2: though it seems more like Garland or whoever made this decision was second-guessing themselves where they shouldn't have. "We have start by showing the audience how the Shimmer started, and wrap up with its probable destruction, otherwise the film's not engaging." The Time Dissolver fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Feb 25, 2018 |
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Feb 25, 2018 05:18
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Dienes posted:Regarding the ending the implication is that both Lina and Kane are duplicants (with the eye shimmer), but I didn't understand why Kane getting toasty at the end didn't have the same effect as Lena's use of the grenade. Originally I thought, "Oh, the Original Kane died and the Original (albeit changed/mutated) Lena survived, killing the clone caused a chain reaction." but then the eye shimmer made me think that wasn't the case. Also undermined the ending a bit, too - the dual eye shimmer came off as deliberately sinister, not as the cancer-analogy that had been going on up until now. The real horror was not that it was out to get you, it didn't even really know or care about you, and you couldn't understand or communicate with it. My read was -- -- the alien simply changed focus. It looked like we have no shared context with the alien and it's been trying to figure our environment out by playing Mr. Potatohead with patterns in the environment. And then after (1) one of the dominant life-forms tried to kill it and (2) it'd figured out how to duplicate said life-forms, it decided to tear down its operation and change strategy. I mean, it looked like it set the lighthouse on fire on purpose before that body poo poo the bed. And I'm assuming the original team was killed by screaming bears and we were watching replicants the whole time. nurabsal posted:Props to the yokel who called it "the gayest poo poo he'd every seen" on the way out, though. I love people getting angry at movies. When No Country for Old Men cut to black, someone yelled out, "What the gently caress?" The Time Dissolver posted:even the delineations that create perception itself will weaken and disappear This was sort of where I was at until the ending. Here's the geeky poo poo I was thinking about (before the ending): Everything is pattern. Biology is chemistry organized. Psychology is biology organized. There exists pattern which turns inanimate animate and which turns the animate conscious. Every level of our existence comes down to patterns in substrate. I was thinking, the exclusion zone looked like it's being hit with a white noise generator which is just shuffling around patterns which are 'functional' in that regard. Like aliens looked at Earth and were like, "this playlist isn't working. Reshuffle it." Then the ending happened.
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Feb 25, 2018 05:59
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The Time Dissolver posted:Was most disappointed they made the Area X phenomenon be something extraterrestrial that is defeated and order restored to an extent. Really felt like the general gist of the book was (among other things) Earth is taking back control of itself from humans, nothing meaningful can be done to stop it, and that eventually even the delineations that create perception itself will weaken and disappear; most of that carried over into the film, but then they topped it off with this incongruous it-came-from-outer-space BS. Did you read all of the books? The books make it fairly overt that “it came from outer space” was involved in what was going on. . It’s funny because apparently Garland never read past the first book, but the ending is completely in line with the idea that is ultimately presented in the third book.
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Feb 25, 2018 06:42
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I read the other books but was very bored by them especially Acceptance, definitely could have come across that and just forgot it immediately. My complaint still stands, I guess, it's a story with an obvious ecological bent and that undermines it IMO.
The Time Dissolver fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Feb 25, 2018 |
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Feb 25, 2018 06:49
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This movie made perfect sense to me. It reminds me a great deal of Blindsight by Peter Watts. The old chestnut of encountering the alien originator, the source of life, God. An alien God with the answer to that question about the meaning of it all. Except God is an entity that encapsulates life- mindless, existing to exist, a cancer that changes and spreads. God brings the rapture and that apocalypse is the mute horror of living. Consciousness and identity are mutations- meaningless offshoots that go nowhere. For all intents and purposes, the “new” Lena is Lena except her mind can’t come to grips with the fact that she believes she isn’t herself. curlys gold fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Feb 25, 2018 |
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Feb 25, 2018 07:00
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The Time Dissolver posted:I read the other books but was very bored by them especially Acceptance, definitely could have come across that and just forgot it immediately. My complaint still stands, I guess, it's a story with an obvious ecological bent and that undermines it IMO. The books have an ecological bent, but are more fundamentally dwelling on the impotence of science as a social construct to understand the world. The second book is definitely the standout in the trilogy and drastically expands that concern. I agree that Acceptance is pretty hohum and provides some concrete plot details that undermine the earlier books.
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Feb 25, 2018 07:14
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For a movie that has a reputation of not being audience friendly, I was kind of surprised at how neatly wrapped up everything was in the end. I don't really get it. I was expecting something a lot more obtuse and frustrating.
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Feb 25, 2018 09:57
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I liked it a lot. Made plenty of sense. Read all three of the books right before finding out a movie was happening. My take was a plain it's the same terraforming lifeseed from the books. It just does the job by creating a zone that mindlessly remixes all genetic life, whatever the reason, whether intended or glitched. Everyone inside the Shimmer, Area X, is under the 'prism' effect and has all their thoughts, emotions, DNA, everything mixed and amplified by the prism constantly splitting things apart and together in an undying life cycle where the dead becomes the new in aeternum. In the end, the Biologist does not have a cancer of the body like the Psychologist, but a cancer of the mind, a cancerous desire to self-destroy and self-terminate despite being 'healthy', a callback to her intense antisocial behavior of her other book self. So when she goes to the source, the Tower, and it tries to copy her, she self-terminates through it. And the act is so confusing, so extreme, that the copy is forced to die and watch it happen as she watches it happen to the world around her as it takes on her suicidal desires, and self-terminates. Then, in the end, she is a seed for Area X, her cells now rainbow with life eternal, and she gives herself to a life with her husband Area X clone. Basically becomes Book 3.
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Feb 25, 2018 11:22
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I thought for a while that the movie had a very environmentalist message for a while, but I’m not totally sure after the ending. My original read was that the alien landing on the planet was sort of like the dawn of man. As it spread, other living things were changed and forced to adapt around it. It was a higher form of life that indiscriminately wrecked things around it. But I couldn’t find any way to reconcile the ending with that take. Now I think that the entire movie as a metaphor for cancer makes a ton of sense after reading this link, which I will spoiler because the URL has a spoiler in it: http://collider.com/annihilation-movie-explained/#cancer That makes so much more sense to me.
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Feb 25, 2018 14:41
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air- posted:Another easter egg I just thought about I pointed this out to my friend and he was confused. I thought that was pretty obvious and creepy.
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Feb 25, 2018 16:05
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Observation of the visuals at the end Anyone else think that the aesthetics of everything below the hole in the lighthouse were distinctly vaginal? The shape of the entrance into the chamber and the look of the walls. Fits with the theme of birth and creation
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Feb 25, 2018 17:06
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Wait is this movie actually good?
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Feb 25, 2018 17:10
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It's aight.
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Feb 25, 2018 17:25
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Professor Shark posted:Wait is this movie actually good? yes
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Feb 25, 2018 17:31
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blue squares posted:Observation of the visuals at the end Yeah I definitely got the vibe of a return-to-the-womb sort of thing, reversing the birth process essentially being the same as the death process.
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Feb 25, 2018 17:32
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Professor Shark posted:Wait is this movie actually good? Extremely
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Feb 25, 2018 17:46
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Professor Shark posted:Wait is this movie actually good? Eh. If I didn't have movie pass I'd be very disappointed.
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Feb 25, 2018 18:49
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It's aight. From an earlier post you made, but I was curious as to what you find frustrating about Garland as a writer.
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Feb 25, 2018 19:25
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veni veni veni posted:From an earlier post you made, but I was curious as to what you find frustrating about Garland as a writer. He really loves expository dialog but doesn't seem to love making any of it interesting. All his directorial work is at its best when no one is talking.
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Feb 25, 2018 19:47
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:He really loves expository dialog but doesn't seem to love making any of it interesting. All his directorial work is at its best when no one is talking. I got that vibe, as well.
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Feb 25, 2018 21:04
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