Everyone makes the right moves on this (not so) Mysterious Planet/Survival story. Yet the film barely nudges the memorability needle to positive. More interest in figuring out why that is than in watching the film. Adam Driver, at his most stalwart (quel yeasty chest!), is the space pilot on a two-yr mission (wife & ill child left at home) who hits an uncharted meteor belt and crashes onto an unknown planet with cryogenic crew apparently lost. At this point (a reel & a half in), the title comes up, revealing the entire plot! It’s 65 million years ago on Earth. How much development debate went into this decision?* Presumably the writers or producers fought on whether audiences would be too far ahead of things. They’d never get away with a surprise ‘reveal’ as climax, a la PLANET OF THE APES/’68, since even to know a little is to know too much. Instead, Driver, and the little girl who survived with him, take on the usual Dino/Pterodactyl crowd while trying to reach a rescue vessel before the Big Meteor (the one that killed off all the dinos, natch) hits Earth. The CGI creatures are pretty good, the space obstacles (meteors & such) unaccountably feeble. More like what you’d see on a prestige Sci-Fi tv series decades ago.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: While it has problems of its own, THE MARTIAN/’15 has a setup that brings up similar issues in a more entertaining, and moderately more satisfying, way. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-martian-2015.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Second guessing shows in an unusually high number of deleted scenes on the DVD.
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