The disappointment you feel when you see a good movie that could've been great.

Rating: 7/10 (21 November 2016)

SPOILERS!!! Remember the Martian? Yeah, the book was way better than the movie (surprise surprise), but for the sake of comparison I'll use it as an example to kind of flush out what I found obviously, and some times painfully, missing in this film.
Remember when all of the scientists got together to figure out how to get one guy home? There was some cool "working the problem" scenes that pulled the viewer into the story and the technical problems they had to over come and surmount. You felt like you were ringside in solving a mystery.
There is none of that here. The entire U.S effort basically boils down to just two scientists working the problem, which I find highly improbable. Yeah, they introduced her team when she first got there, but that was pretty much it. You didn't see much of that "team" after that, batting the ball around and solving a mystery. Nope, it was pretty much a one person show. Implausible.
Remember in the Martian, when they showed government officials, and how this problem went all the way to the top. Not here. All you see is one Army Colonel running the show. So yeah... This is the biggest event in World history let alone U.S. history... maybe perhaps spend 5 minutes extra camera time in this film, on the how the higher up's are working the problem? Implausible.
And then there is the communication amongst world powers. Here's a really good question. Do you really think we're going to stop talking to our allies, comparing notes and working the problem, just because a few Nations went silent and cut off communications? The screen goes blank with the U.K. in solving this mystery, just because China and Russia's screens go blank? No way. This is way too big for this weird cut off of communication, especially from our allies.
Also, I don't buy for a second that those soldiers would have, let alone could have, sneaked a bomb on the spaceship. With something this big they would have had Navy Seals in place following orders to the letter. They explain this action because one of them sees an internet broadcaster--weak tea. And then they're going to bring guns and shoot their fellow soldiers. Right.
Outside of that this movie was great. It was just too bare bones. I can understand what they were doing here. They wanted to strip the story down, trim all of the fat, so you could just focus on the main character and the evolution and realizations that grew into learning how to communicate with the Aliens. Grew in fact into a great Sci-Fi twist. That part was awesome. But they threw too much overboard, stripped to much off and tried to shed to much weight, and the movie foundered because of it.
It's ironic because this film is intended to be a Sci-Fi thinkpiece. And yet any thinking person out there, who maybe figured out the twist a few minutes before their friends did, was also subjected to some fairly big believability holes that could have easily been filled out.
So... Good film, that should have been Awesome!