Jack Blondie

I give it a B-. Its entertaining, visually appealing and it’s worth seeing but it’s a convoluted mess. It badly needed a screenwriter and an editor. These characters should be awestruck at the enormous responsibility of possibly discovering the origin of human life on an alien planet, but then they just jump on a ship and travel billions of light years and de-board acting like that’s no big deal and like they’ve all seen and been there before? (Grumbling and eye-rolling ala Aliens marines) They just stroll out like they own the place, but these are scientists, geologists, not soldiers. With that type of nonchalance 15 minutes in you already know you can’t take it seriously. I could easily accept it on the level of just good fun like, say, Starship Troopers. The trouble is, conceptually it wants us to take it seriously. But there’s no sense of wonder or gravity appropriate to the situation so it’s kind of at odds with itself. Most of the characters seemingly exist just to do dumb things to provide tension for the inevitable body count. It’s a substantial dramatic flaw. The steady stream of obvious references to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Alien and Aliens, etc are fun for buffs but it just underlines how nearly everything in this movie was borrowed from other movies. It’s not original or necessary. Just an entertaining 2-hour diversion.