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Author Topic: Annihilation  (Read 17596 times)
Ruvaldt
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Reply #35 on: April 13, 2018, 10:26:18 AM

It's a movie almost entirely about self-destruction.  Considering that, I think Annihilation is a pretty fitting title.

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Samwise
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Reply #36 on: April 13, 2018, 10:56:28 AM

I saw this movie last night and didn't hate it.  Not gonna bother spoilering, it's almost out of theaters.

Dr. Jennifer Jason Leigh says it at the end when she's under the lighthouse and talking to Dr. Biologist about how the shimmer is going to break everything down to its atoms.  "Annihilation."  And then she annihilates.

So, I didn't read the book, and gather that the plot of the movie is pretty different in a lot of ways.  My takeaway from the movie is that the shimmer is like the Dark Side cave in Star Wars.  If you think it's scary, then scary things happen, like getting eaten by a bear.  If you think it's pretty and you decide you want to be a plant, then it turns you into a plant.  And there's some sort of intelligence behind it whose ultimate goal is to be able to integrate with life here in some way (e.g. by learning enough about humans to make independent copies of them).

It's not genius science-fiction, but it made a hell of a lot more sense than Interstellar.   awesome, for real

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Reply #37 on: April 13, 2018, 07:32:47 PM

interstellar was watchable though

this was like, really fucking bad
Samwise
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Reply #38 on: April 14, 2018, 07:55:53 AM

Strong disagree there.  I nearly walked out of Interstellar.

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calapine
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Reply #39 on: April 14, 2018, 06:06:36 PM

Just watching this. 40 minutes in.

And so so far its a lame-ass version of Tarkowski's Stalker


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kaid
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Reply #40 on: April 20, 2018, 06:46:44 AM

I saw this movie last night and didn't hate it.  Not gonna bother spoilering, it's almost out of theaters.

Dr. Jennifer Jason Leigh says it at the end when she's under the lighthouse and talking to Dr. Biologist about how the shimmer is going to break everything down to its atoms.  "Annihilation."  And then she annihilates.

So, I didn't read the book, and gather that the plot of the movie is pretty different in a lot of ways.  My takeaway from the movie is that the shimmer is like the Dark Side cave in Star Wars.  If you think it's scary, then scary things happen, like getting eaten by a bear.  If you think it's pretty and you decide you want to be a plant, then it turns you into a plant.  And there's some sort of intelligence behind it whose ultimate goal is to be able to integrate with life here in some way (e.g. by learning enough about humans to make independent copies of them).

It's not genius science-fiction, but it made a hell of a lot more sense than Interstellar.   awesome, for real

Samwise
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Reply #41 on: April 20, 2018, 10:48:59 AM

I mostly don't buy that because of the person who turned into a plant and how that scene played out.  She gives a speech about how it's going to change her into something beautiful and she's not going to fight it, and then instantly starts sprouting flowers and turns into one of the plant sculptures.

The one who's freaking out and paranoid and terrified gets eaten by a monster.

The one who's talking about annihilation spontaneously combusts.

The one who's trying to diagnose and understand it encounters a mirror of herself that's trying to diagnose and understand her.

If it's all supposed to be totally random and indifferent to what the people themselves think or do, the movie did a very poor job of conveying that concept.   awesome, for real  It certainly starts off feeling that way but the plant-sprouting scene introduced a tone of mysticism into it that was pretty consistent after that.

There was also the whole everything burning up part -- it made no sense for the grenade itself to cause that much damage, so I interpreted it as an expression of Dr. Biologist's intent (it was more about her wanting it to burn than then actual grenade), and/or the shimmer-being having accomplished that phase of its mission.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2018, 10:52:38 AM by Samwise »

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jgsugden
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Reply #42 on: April 20, 2018, 11:48:26 AM

....the movie did a very poor job....
Isn't this all we need to say?  I keep seeing this thread grow, and it seems like everyone is pretty much agreeing that it is maybe worth watching in the background late at night when you're working on something else or playing a game...

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Reply #43 on: April 20, 2018, 04:11:28 PM

It's the second best sort of movie to talk about: A mediocre film that implies a better one. There's a lot of meat there to chew on. That it's bland, unpleasant meat just makes us want a real meal.

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Reply #44 on: October 17, 2018, 03:48:24 AM

I watched this at last, and I liked it. It's a good sci-fi movie and it worked for me. Don't know anything about the books.
Signe
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Reply #45 on: October 18, 2018, 08:56:35 PM

I almost never go to the theater anymore but I did go and see this because the man who wrote the book is a good friend of my brother in law.  Does that even make sense?  We also had to be somewhere else while people were looking at our house that was for sale.  I am not a big fan of this sort of Science Fiction generally.  After seeing this film, I am still not a big fan of this sort of Science Fiction.  I found the dialog kind of stilted and I didn't like any of the characters and the interaction between them felt awkward.  And movie theaters are so fucking loud it makes me want to scream!  Although I really like the fungi flowers.  They were very pretty.

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Reply #46 on: October 19, 2018, 03:02:01 AM

From what I remember of the book, the Dialogue is supposed to be somewhat stilted, and most of the character interactions are intended to be somewhat awkward.  The people they sent into the quarantine zone are basically hand picked by the suits who send them in to fill a specific role, and are psychologically conditioned beforehand to try to suppress their personalities.   They are basically supposed to be treated like a control group with respects to whatever unknown forces are acting on the zone, mostly due to the suits knowing that the first group that went in exploring went stark raving nuts for no apparent reason.  So when the second team is sent in, they are sent in as "The Biologist" and "The Botanist" and "The Geologist", instead of "Jane", "Bob" and "Daniel".

It's supposed to be a story about encountering something so utterly alien that you can't even really begin to comprehend it, and the first book pretty much ends without having really answered much of anything, leaving you with more questions than you started with.  You pretty much need to read the second book to actually get a decent kind of closure on what kind of contact the author was going for.

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Sir T
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Reply #47 on: October 19, 2018, 03:32:56 AM

Is it a decent read? I'm kind of looking for a good story to read as I haven't actually sat down and read a good story for a while.

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Khaldun
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Reply #48 on: October 19, 2018, 08:42:20 AM

I would say not really. If you really like Lovecraft, you might like it--it's going for the same sense of dread via mood and vague descriptions of body and mind horror.
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Reply #49 on: October 19, 2018, 10:29:57 AM

I really like lovecraft, but this is bad.
SurfD
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Reply #50 on: October 19, 2018, 09:54:21 PM

I don't know if I would call it bad, but it is definitely more along the lines of "Lovecraft-lite".   It does a fairly decent job of building up tension and existential dread sort of vibes, but it lacks the teeth of proper Lovecraft.  The "other" in this one is built up to be more along the lines of incomprehensible alien, where the thing is just something we don't understand, doing something we don't understand, but isn't, on the face, inherently "evil", just "other".  Lovecraft on the other hand usually puts pretty heavy emphasis on the idea that the "other" is usually just so fucking out there that simply trying to understand it can drive you insane, and that a significant portion of the "other" are pretty close to evil incarnate.

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Reply #51 on: January 11, 2019, 08:33:33 AM

I finally watched this because I love watching stuff that is almost universally regarded as shit. It's a sickness.

Yep, this was shit. Well-filmed shit with great effects but utterly wasted. Character development was 1-2 lines about something and then move on. Watching Natalie Portman get shimmered by floating space butthole was pretty but utterly stupid. The whole mirror body snatcher scene was just goddamn awful, like a middle school interpretative dance class recital being held in a warehouse in Soho awful. The movie felt like it was being clever when it was really just being pretentious and lazy and incomprehensible. The ending "twist" was telegraphed from the fucking beginning so I'm not sure why they seemed to think it would be clever.

But goddamn, that bear.

Der Helm
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Reply #52 on: January 17, 2019, 08:16:15 PM

But goddamn, that bear.
The only memorable thing from the movie. Fuck that bear. ACK!

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schild
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Reply #53 on: January 17, 2019, 09:01:39 PM

yea horror and sci-fi needs more of The Wrong Sound Coming Out Of Things
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