steve cobb

Not enough story, plot stretched way too thin, run time was too long, and pacing was slow to the point of distraction. As many others have noted, the production value, cast, acting, effects and locations are all top notch. But the writing is just so bad... Less than minimal background is given. --Spoiler Alert-- World is becoming uninhabitable for some reason that no one cares about. Protagonist is dying by something that no one needs to mention and is only surviving by "transfusions" that do not appear to be transfusions at all because you see one hose leaving the body, but nothing to replace the extracted blood and no supply of said new blood. Ok, he's dead in a week if he stops using the blood McGuffin. Only he loses it later and it has zero impact to the story. There are plenty of examples like that that just drag the story. Something is setup, and even the payoff is plodding and pointless. But the infuriating thing are all the "positive" reviews that imply you have to watch closely and think about the subtle hints. The problem with that mindset is they are dismissing the people who did pay attention and are pointing out plot holes that are ruining the film. Think about this shot about how a mute child can exist and not exist, but ignore that if you are submerged 6+ feet in arctic water and sleep in a hole in the snow, you are never waking up again If there is a manned mission to Jupiter, then there will be as much contact with the vessel and ground control as NASA has with the Votager probes has the day this movie was released. And a weather station in a lake bed will not be able to reach any deeper than any other dish. (Weather stations only need to communicate with low orbit satellite, not deep space.) Don't get me started on how a space ship coasting for millions of miles can get off course without human intervention and find itself in "unmapped" space. What even is that? It's an excuse to kill a character... For no other reason than the writers heard that is how you add drama. Plenty of other reviews point out many of other points that are nonsense and if you do "think about it" you see how the story is both annoying and depressing. If you want the audience to leap to deduce elements of the very plot the story is being subtle about, then the writing team needs to get thier ducks in a row and make sure they thought things out before the audience points things as simple as people immerssed in water in the Arctic are dead in minutes. It boils down to the fact that you can't solve a writing problem with great acting, great cinematography, established names, or big budgets. But in the effort of fairness, I will say maybe the movie that was written was great and it's just this edit that kills the movie. In that case, the editing rewrote the script for whatever reason which is effectively the same thing as bad writing.