Enjoyable. But just OK.

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2014)

So as I told my fiancé. I love Sci-Fi movies. But I am NOT a huge Tom Cruise fan. I just don't think he is that good of an actor (he is ALWAYS Tom Cruise, you know - and what is with the motorcycle riding scene in EVERY movie). If you compare his early career to now he took a lot more chances. No silly crazy sci fi / action films. Seriously. Go look at his filmography. You will be surprised. Then for some reason - just like Will Smith - they entered the by the number automatic summer action flick movie machine. I get it. It is what it is. But over time it just gets a little boring. Like comic books. It is like the film industry finally realized there is a whole gigantic universe of ready made content prepped for movie consumption. It seems that no one has realized there is 100+ years of awesome mind bending sci-fi just waiting out there for movie consumption/awesomeness. But instead we keep getting movies like Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrrow starring Tom Cruise. Recycled dreck and tropes. So my fiancé asks why do you keep seeing these movies. Well. First b/c Tom Cruise picks scripts that would also be interesting to me. We seem to like the same stuff. I am just always disappointed in the final product. Just Eh. Poorly written. I posit the movie may have been better by having Cruise and Blunt switch characters. As if Cruise would ever let that happen... Blunt was so one dimensional. Think about it. If you took her out of the movie NOTHING changes. She was a cardboard cutout. You can see there was a cut out love story in there. Which was the appropriate decision. But when they cut those scenes there was nothing left for her. Oh well. Then plot holes galore. Creature design lifted right form the Matrix. Deus Ex Machina stuck in towards the end b/c huh we don't know how to end this. So lets make a device he stabs into his thigh. Really? They also lose the exo-suits (the coolest thing about the movie) a little after half way through-dead batteries. Huh. Really? It occurred to me the next day that all they had to do was to find the Blue Alpha again on the beach. 1. Killing it would save everyone on the beach and make weeks (months?) of the worst rails video game trial and error unnecessary and 2. could have splashed blunt with its blood also to remain immortal. Sigh. The end was literally lifted right out of Pacific Rim. Why is every alien race a hive mind. Seriously? it all gets a little tired over time (get it - over time - ugh). Oh well. It was dumb. But enjoyable. More ninja exosuit scenes and I would have been happier. Oh well. You can't have everything :-)