Creature Feature Genre Breacher

Rating: 2/10 (18 June 2017)

Science fiction movies of late have adopted a trend of pandering to the masses. Instead of creating a piece of art that has viewers pondering, debating and struggling to understand for several years to follow, the movies of this new genre are designed to have the shelf life of the popcorn eaten during its viewing. This cross-cutting and encompassing novel genre is Mediocre Crass.
The foundation of science fiction is making the plausible into possible and writing a What-If story based on this transmutation. The operative word here is plausibility. It stems from certain pattern of rules that govern the universe in which is story is set. The Fantasy genre relinquishes the limitations of our current universe and creates an alternate universe to facilitate a different pattern of rules, which in turn allows for different set of plausibilities. Highly regarded Fantasy works go to incredible lengths to meticulously create consistent and sensible alternate rules for their universe. The point being that even the Fantasy genre does not permit nonsensical random chaotic events.
Life (2017) is a science fiction story, set in our time on the International Space Station (ISS). The principal backdrop of this story is the ongoing Mars exploration, particularly search for life on Mars, which confers this movie its title.
Here is how science fiction works, the part about playing with plausibility. An average teenager, with no similarity to kids who actually end up being astronauts and scientists, can end up on the ISS. Very unlikely given any set of circumstances, but okay, I can buy into that, if the story provides even a tenuous plot. This teen can suddenly develop the knowledge and skills to operate the ISS. Pushing it, but sure, why not, brain implant or something, it is Sci-Fi after all. The story is pushing the limits of our suspension of disbelief but it is still in the realms of the plausible becoming possible.
Now consider the converse. Current ISS astronauts and specialists, who all have advanced degrees and advanced training and advanced intellect and advanced experience and advanced selection procedures, etc etc etc. suddenly become average teenagers. Not just regular average teenagers, but the Hollywood dumb teenager in a gore horror flick type. Now this is not plausible. This kind of nonsense would not be acceptable in even a Fantasy genre.
The way that most successful Sci-Fi movies have allowed for dumb teenagers to frolic with aliens in a gore fest in space is by placing the story well into the future and way far away from Earth. In this space and time, the crew of space vessels is not the creme de la creme of scientists but just your regular average folks. So a drunk abusive psychotic freight ship captain on Earth's seas is now a drunk abusive captain of a space freight ship. Now, the retarded behavior of people in the gore fest has become plausible. Highly annoying and unlikely, but plausible.
I can't help feeling that movies such as Life (2017) is like a revenge of the retards on the nerds. In the past, Sci-Fi provided much needed catharsis for nerds to have a laugh at the monumental stupidity of 'jocks' when placed in a new challenging environment. The gore fest was oddly satisfying, where the dumb jocks of this world finally got their just deserve for tormenting the nerds in real life. Movies like Life (2017), are made by the dumb jocks and for the dumb jocks to watch nerds being tormented on the big screen, as well.
You will either like this movie or feel deeply insulted by it. It depends on which group you identify with, jocks or nerds.