Brian S.

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I can't believe how unoriginal this was. It was like someone cut-pasted other movies, especially Star Wars, and just changed some details. It was fun, but it has ridiculous plot holes, forced dialogue, and it's unbelievably derivative. Spoilers ahead. *** Where to even start? Movie starts with a huge ship flying by, an intro explanation of the rebellion in progress, then pans down to a planet: yeah, that's Star War, wait, no? It's this movie? Okay, how about a farm worker turned rebel hero: Luke Skywalker, right? No, this movie. Gets a ship in a shady bar from a greedy merchant that turns into a gunfight: Han Solo in Star Wars for sur- no, wait, this movie again. Dark, conquering evil empire led by a dude who uses blue lightning-like energy: Oh, it's a Sith Lord in Star W- no, no, this movie again. There's a million more: robot droid to help the rebels, check; laser swords of different colors, check; world-destroying ship, check; etc. I almost lost it when a shady merchant IN A PORT STATION IN THE FREAKIN' CLOUDS betrayed the good guys. I mean, if you're going to copy Lando at least don't do it in Cloud City. There are also silly plot holes. Oh no, a super army is coming to kill our village in 9 weeks? Should we just move somewhere else where they probably can't find us since, you know, it's a whole universe and we have 2+ months to flee? That'll be hard, have to find ships to get passage on, risky for sure, but no, instead it's more reasonable (a) to send 2 people off on an even crazier mission and everyone else just stays home and hopes they succeed but does nothing else to flee, (b) to expect those 2 people to get a ship AND an entire army to defeat a world-destroying warship, and (c) if it fails and the 2 lone villagers die halfway across the galaxy, there's no way to warn the village? Next up: how to ruin certain victory for no reason at all. We have a group of highly dangerous, very hard to capture bounties that we FINALLY captured. All we have to do is load them on the ship and get tremendous rewards. But instead, let's give a weapon to one of their comrades for no good reason because, I mean, what are the chances he will try to rescue his good friends instead of brutally paralyzing them? And the dialogue is so forced at times, especially the first 30 min or so. I get it is hard to quickly establish the backstory, but use a montage or something, or dreams, or visions, or something other than a random robot monologue to a stranger. And characters are rushed so badly. Are we really supposed to think any large scale army keeps a guy around who fires a weapon at a metal target the projectile will surely ricochet from FOR NO REASON when there are several of the same army's squad members just a few feet away? Don't get me wrong, the movie was okay. And it's really beautiful. But who is reading these scripts? It's so obvious there are all these issues, and those issues will both cost viewers and really hurt replay. For example, though I enjoyed it, I can't see myself sitting through this again. I'll go watch things where I didn't literally predict what was about to happen because it's that level of derivative. Solid C-, and the C is for Copying.

This is an amazing movie, and it's likely not what you think. I don't understand the low star rating here. For example, IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes both know this movie is stellar. When this came out, I wrote it off because I was tired of, well, movies about cabins in the woods. I thought it was a classic slasher flick. But then Halloween Horror Nights had a Cabin in the Woods haunted house, and once inside I realized I was totally wrong about this film (I can't explain why without spoilers). The movie does have the traditional slasher elements, but it also has a ton of incidental clever lines, the characters are all interesting, it is filled with cool moments, and the dark secret behind the monsters is itself filled with a separate and interesting cast. If you haven't seen this, stop reading these reviews and go watch it. It's well worth it, and it's great on additional viewings (you'll notice lots of great details the second time around).

Worth watching, but poorly written. Fun as a whole, but basic and major flaws of several types infect every episode. Some casting and characters are pretty fun. An impressively diverse cast and pretty good FX are the only other features. * The following contains spoilers. * This is good enough to watch and enjoy, but to do so you have to overlook unforgivably bad decisions by characters made over and over, unbelievably little emotional range by the main character as a kid (by script flaw; the actress herself did well), ridiculous plot conveniences, and no regard for truly basic science. International super company that specializes in R&D and weapon contracts with security that can be hacked repeatedly, in the most-secure facilities, by a teenager? Main part of the show. How does a stolen ID badge and a one-line voice recording get them access to a building full of key secrets and world-ending bioweapons? How does that super tech company let a pivotal employee use a 7 character alphanumeric password he apparently never changes for almost everything? How is there no security on site? How is the response time like 20 minutes? Main character who gets everyone around her killed, barely realizes it, is endlessly a jerk to others, and you want Tyrion to show up just to slap her a few times? Central thesis. I get the dad was a bad person, but the kids barely resist him offering to kill himself when there's another person who is basically a stranger right there offering to do it instead? The first like five episodes of teen Jade are full of frustrating, selfish moments without the natural emotional give and take other shows understand. And why would a parent who thought he had possibly only hours left before his kid became a world-ending patient zero not either spend more time with his child or, at the very least, not wait until the final hour in the countdown to double-check if she had become a plague-spreading monster? The show did try to address parts of this last one, but not very successfully. How about basic disregard for fundamental science at critical moments? Yep. Why does breaking a vial of scent-based attractant inside a structure instantly attract zombies from thousands of feet, maybe farther, away and outside that structure? This could have easily been addressed with a hacked drone dispersant or something, or a sound-based attractant (just make the zombies have lost smell instead of hearing). Plus the traditional zombie movie flaw: "getting bit infects you, but a gallon of blood sprayed on people, even on mucous membranes and people with open wounds, has no effect." There were other moments like these that I can't recall now but remember being frustrated with. Last, terrible foresight by a person being billed as having genius intelligence and amazing foresight? Yep. Why did Albert leave terribly incriminating things that would hurt and alienate his daughters in the same room he was directing them to go to at a time when he needed them to trust and listen to his advice so they would flee? Or let's look at Jade, a scientist who studies zombies alone for months, expecting them to evolve, but attracts them while barely hiding just feet away from them, and the only protection she has is maybe they won't smell her and maybe she can run away to her base defenses. All of these could have been easily fixed if someone was just checking the script for basic logical consistencies and flaws.