Beanbioca
As Good As It Gets
Comwayon
A Disappointing Continuation
ActuallyGlimmer
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
alabamakevin
While I understand that directors, foley artists and sound editors want to make scifi and military communications between ships sound authentic, most of the communication was so garbled and laced with special effects that you couldn't understand what actors and crew members were saying to each other. I'm not talking about background chatter, etc. I'm talking about communication that we are clearly supposed to hear and understand as an audience. If you have to keep rewinding a movie to try and understand what the cast is saying, it's a failure.I also agree with others that the acting was wooden. The Narration by the daughter and line delivery of her mother almost put me to sleep.
Xanatos1313
So imagine you have a great idea for a sci-fi movie. You wright down a rough concept. You start to flesh it out till you have a pretty solid concept, involving a story that spans generations and seeks to show a new concept on the whole state of humanity and reality. Then you sit down to write the script. Face with the challenge of including your concept into dialogue, things get difficult. So then, you just say "screw it," and haphazardly mesh your raw concept into the movie using the worst trick in the book: voice-over narration.This is how I feel this movie came about. The story seems like it would be interesting, but, honestly, I could write a better script in my sleep. The characters are shallow, static, and the acting... oh, the acting. I couldn't empathize with any of the characters because I was too busy laughing at their reactions (or lack there of) to events.The camera work at times made no sense and took me completely out of the story. For example: Why do we need a zoom out to see two planets, just to have the camera go back to Mara in the desert? Why couldn't we see her communing with the planet, and just cut that bit of narration? Oh yeah, because we'd rather just have more crappy special effects and narration than have an actor play the planet spirit.Also, just let me note that any given episode of Stargate SG-1 had a lower budget than this movie and still managed to pull off better effects. And the show started nine years before this was released. Hell, the PlayStation 1 title "Colony Wars" (also released in '97) has a more intriguing story AND better effects.The only reason I rated this so high is because I can see a pretty interesting concept in the narration. But this film is marred by horrid writing, unconvincing acting, odd camera work, weird scenes, useless characters, and almost no thought put into it's execution. I'd say watch it for a laugh, but it gets too boring to laugh at half way through, so just stay away all together.
genarch
I made it through half of this, but was not enough of a masochist to see it all. The first half of the film had next to no dialog ! Almost everything was voice over commentary to carry the story. The scriptwriter forgot that sometimes less is more and tried to explain several millennium of detailed history in the voice over. At the same time he forgot to do any character development. Most science fiction fans don't require huge amounts of character development, but it would be nice to know why the two main characters who survived the destruction of the space fleet together ended up fighting each other. There are some good things going on in the film. The soundtrack was well done. Some of the computer generated graphics are very good, but others were just mediocre.
billvalen1977
I get the impression that either the director or producer has a few enemies.I love Sci-Fi films and I have been avoiding this film like the plague because of the reviews here. I was looking at you tube and found a remarkable "making of" documentary that chronicles the making of this film.This convinced me to finally rent this from Blockbuster. The film really isn't that bad. It is not the greatest film ever made, but it is made with care, attention and a real passion. If you see what goes into this film, then you may not hate it so much.I enjoyed it a lot, but feel is suffered from a lack of budget. I feel there criticisms here are perhaps too harsh... I mean there are some real crap films out there. This film is not in the worst categories. Please make more films like this, but please spend more money next time. The universe this film creates is vast and deep, and really begs the question about our place in the universe.Ignore the bad reviews, viewers and decide for yourself. It is definitely better than the new Flash Gordon TV series that Sci-Fi channel has churned out.
