Thomas

I would love a refund and two hours of my life back. The trailers for this dystopian post-apocalyptic future of cities eating each other seemed so profoundly interesting and imaginative, especially with Peter Jackson producing and writing the screenplay, it seemed so promising! I lost interest about half an hour in, and let me warn you fellow movie goers that are looking for a well written, thought provoking, delightful adventure... this is not it. This belongs somewhere between twilight and the hunger games, and not in a good way. I say that because there's no character development, there's this awkward forced romance, moody teenagers, and cringy eye rolling one liners that are extremely annoying. The movie spends about 2 mins summarizing the backstory of a character or someone the main character knows, then when there's a death you couldn't care less because you only learned who this dead person was 5 mins ago. There's a very unnecessary and unbelievable romance that just kinda happens because the main guy follows the moody girl around and they both happen to be single. It's only established they're in love when a villian is about to kill the main guy but stops after understanding how much passion the moody girl has for someone that's been following her around for two days. Ah romance. The good guys or "rebel scum" are just attractive token characters with awful dialogue, who are ultimately vessels to keep the plot moving with no other use than to get easily angered, shoot stuff, and die. Again, people die and you don't care because you don't have time to know or like these characters. The symbolism is heavy handed, the plot is predictable especially when there's a timed countdown for the bad guys to win and the good guys just "barely" make it in time. I walked away from this movie not knowing what made the bad guys bad; were they trying too hard to survive? The world fell apart and cities eat each other to live, why is a bigger city considered evil vs smaller ones? The visuals are fantastic, they've come a long way with CGI, but some leaps and jumps are ridiculous especially when a character has a serious leg injury but is able to run from a villian. The final straw for me was **spoilers** when the moody teenager lays back and laughs to herself after watching the villian that was her father get run over. Laughs? You've spent your whole life hunting someone only to learn they were your father at the last minute, they just died before your eyes and you laugh? I have not read the book the movie is based on, but I am confident that reading this story would be more rewarding than watching this explosive mess.