I tried but it failed, boringly

Rating: 3/10 (8 April 2015)

So much of this film is so mediocre on so many levels that even though my young film nut friends recommended it highly, I could not muster any enthusiasm for it. I had trouble just getting through it. Maybe it was the lack of originality. When you see lighting, camera setups and set pieces borrowed from other movies you could think homage, but this piece demands complete innovation. The acting was tedious. Maybe it was the casting of a big name Hollywood bore in the lead. Maybe it was because the music was so drab and ponderous. Hans Zimmer is over used but not particularly gifted. Maybe the visuals were OK, but I did notice a space ship or two that were a little too optically printed. This movie would have benefited greatly by being created exclusively in the digital realm. Christopher Nolan's pretentious use of dead pixel film grain make the image lose intensity at times. What made 2001 a marvel in its time (also the film that this film tries to elaborate on), was the extreme precision of its image. Stanley Kubrick used the then state of the art 70mm Super Panavision and the best lenses that he could borrow or steal. In this present era 8k imaging would have helped this film attain a much finer quality that would made its other faults almost bearable. If you want to see better "end of the world as we know it" films, there are a great number of them that are either ludicrously fun or serious and inventive. They are a pleasure to watch compared to this tedious mess of environmentalist propaganda. If Christopher Nolan wants to keep remaking other peoples films, great. I just don't think he deserves the bloated praise some people are giving him for his efforts. I love movies about science fiction, fantasy, outer space travel and special effects. I have enjoyed movies like Pacific Rim, Kickass, Star Trek and even Avatar with its bizarre messages. Call me a troll or a hater, but I was very disappointed with this thing.