Dianna

I sat through this entire film purely for the little clever ideas imbedded here and there. For example, the opening of Pandora's Box theme. Quite literally the character Pandora (the main character's mom) found a box, and man (villain Thaddeus Valentine) opened it thereby unleashing hell on Earth in the most futuristic way. Pandora's box was a computer core/control box to a quantum energy machine of mass destruction. I found it clever, creative, and amusing. I really liked the futuristic re-telling of old myths. History does tend to repeat itself, so watching a film of history repeating itself with clever nods to Greek and Roman mythology was an overall enjoyable experience. I also really loved the POC main characters, and the fact that some of them even had regional accents. I thought it was really refreshing to see so much diversity on screen. However, I did not think London had enough diversity. Keeping true to reality, today's London is extremely diverse, and I would have liked to see that on screen. I don't think the setting being any number of centuries in the future is going to change London's demographics to all white people. Lastly, I think my favorite part of the film is that the two main characters, who were love interests for each other, did not share one on-screen kiss. Their relationship was actually very surprising for me at the end. I assumed Tom's love interest was Valentine's daughter. I clearly saw a mutual respect and understanding between Hester and Tom. I saw their friendship blossom as the movie progressed, and the big wide world expanded Tom's seemingly narrow mindset. I didn't necessarily feel a romantic connection at first, but it became clear after a couple fight scenes where I noticed them eyeing each other. But I really really enjoyed the fact that they didn't kiss or have a scene where they passionately expressed their love for each other. That was what set this movie apart from every other dystopian film. Because if you think about it, they really didn't know each other for that long so to fall in love with each other in such a short span of time seems extremely unrealistic to me. However, it seems as though every novel of this archetype has to have that kind of star-crossed, all-or-nothing love story embedded into it, but this one didn't. They had a naturally progressing love story that wasn't forced and didn't take any time away from saving the lives of millions of people. Humanity first, exploring their feelings for each other second. I loved that. It was refreshing and brilliant and realistic. Overall, good film. Yes, I would see the sequel, but I would not pay money to see it.