Riverworld

A bunch of people get blown up. Then they resurrect. Or not. The film spins around on the alive/dead question so many times you get dizzy. The movie makes a habit of never being clear on anything, an apparent excuse to make up stuff as it goes along. This coyness act to maintain audience interest soon becomes annoying. Random stuff appears. For example, what was up with the TV dinner dispensary?

Making occasional visits are two beings with Avatar Blue Man Group faces and Obie Wan Kanobi style robes. These Jedi Ne'vi, or whoever they are, play hide and go seek, and make lame responses to inquiries. But they love to hang around and bug everybody; it reminded me of that whiny nitwit "Q," from Star Trek Next Gen. There's one fight after another, but the film's own dialog seems to be saying none of these events matter anyway. It carelessly hints at being a conglomeration of philosophy, science, and faith issues, but then never earnestly addresses any of these issues. Characters are drawn to illustrate differing people groups, personality types, and even historic eras; yet they still lack dimension.

It should be noted that the cast are the film's greatest strength, making the most of the weak scripting. Jeananne Goossen as the Xena-type Samurai made this over-the-top caricature believable, and Mark Deklin as Mark Twain was suitably amiable.

The ending? "We don't need no stinking ending!" No, just a deliberate set-up for a sci-fi/soap opera TV series. Sorry SyFy channel; one night of this was enough.

River World is an interesting movie to say the least. I never read the books, so I'm judging this movie on it's own merits.

The story line of this film is fairly unique, though reminiscent of Matrix in a way.

The plot line is confusing at times, but moves along at a decent pace. I hate all the random "plot conveniences" that happen, it just seems like it cheapens it.

Time it's self can pass oddly, the movie not telling us if days, weeks, months, or years pass in between scenes.

The acting is so - so, performances ranging from good, to deadpan. The characters them selves seem to have some continuity flaws, as certain actions do not fit with the established character.

This film also seems like it trying to compete with "Battle Royale" for the most pointless flashbacks.

Special effects are cheap. Staging and set design are minimalistic, bordering on barren.

The one thing that stuck out the most was the movie's lack of logic. There is 'suspension of disbelief' , and than there is throwing logic out the window.

As the movie progresses, this gets worse and worse. I perfectly well understand they are on an alien planet, and have folks from most time periods present, but that is far from explaining the black holes of thinking.

Our main characters run into the conquistadors, who, 2 years ago, finished building the prominently featured river boat, for Mark Twain. The encampment of the conquistadors seems like it's a in the middle ages, nothing much advanced, not even guns.

The river boat, on the other hand, has all kinds of modern items, including a small bore cannon.

What does Pizarro have? A ballista he incorrectly calls a catapult. Wouldn't he and his men have more modern stuff if they engineered and built the river boat ?

I'm sorry, but that river boat is one large continuity error. There is no way it could have been built the way it was shown, in the amount of time specified ( 3 years ). I was not intentionally looking for logic errors, this stuff just jumped out at me almost instantly.

With out more modern manufacturing facilities, the boat, and what comes later, could have not been made at all.

Some of the stuff the boat had that really bugged me is: 1 modern light bulb, the cannon, rolled steel, stamped steel, welded steel, pressurized pipe ( welded and screwed ) with modern valves, hydraulic hoses, modern nuts and bolts, ** a bench grinder **, plastics, modern dead bolt locks, and a pair of dial calipers.

Two other errors that jumped out at me on the boat were a modern thermostat, and the wrenches on the peg board, had the manufacturer's names stamped on them.

As the movie progresses, we are introduced to more out of place stuff, such as cartridge bullets, mass produced glass, chrome plating, braided steel wire, and RPGs.

If you can over look the sometimes insane character interactions / reactions, repetitive and useless flash backs of the same subject, and massive logic errors, this movie is fairly enjoyable to watch, though the movie store overcharged me for it.

A B-Movie in 2 parts. Both parts are bad. I only watched this a few weeks ago but I cannot seem to remember much. It did not leave any impression on me. There is a basic premise that seems good but the development is pretty terrible. Some of the acting was over the top hammy. Watching the film I could imagine the book being better.

There is not much to say. It's is reasonably well filmed, has some cgi, has annoying characters and a plot that moves sluggishly from A to B to predictable ending. The script does offer some excitement but it isn't carried off. It should have been better than it was. As it is it is just boring and as I say in 2 movie long parts.

I wonder would a fan edit be better. You could cut a lot of crap and make it 1.30 or 1.40 mins long and just try to keep it going and maybe kill of some of the hammier accents and actors. Ya I think a fan edit would be better. Couldn't be worse.

If at first you don't succeed ... well, in this case, perhaps the SyFy Channel should have just given up. This followup to 2003's atrocious adaptation of Philip Jose Farmer's classic "Riverworld" stories isn't all that much of an improvement. It just doesn't follow the stories all that well, and that's a shame. Farmer's "Riverworld" stories, which eventually were edited and collected in several books, are some of the most fascinating sci-fi ever written. Basically, everyone who has ever lived and died on Earth wakes up on the banks of an endless river on an alien planet. Clearly, someone or something is controlling all of this, but Farmer takes his time in revealing the ultimate puppet master and the purpose f the experiment. As the years go by, we follow the adventures of dozens of these folks, both famous and not so famous, as they strive to make sense of their new home. An interesting twist: when someone dies on Riverworld, they are resurrected along a different stretch of the river. Knowledge of this allows certain drastic actions to be taken, but I will say no more. This new version of the saga appears to be a pilot for a TV series, and was shot in Canada with a no-name cast. It loosely follows Farmer's plot, more so than the 2003 TV movie, and the acting is better. But again, this is not truly Farmer's Riverworld. If only someone had the cojones to faithfully adapt the stories, that would make a heckuva movie. It would also require a decent budget, which this TV effort lacks. Think of the recent SyFy Channel adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars," and how awful that was for want of a decent script and budget. This is only slightly better than that, and that's not saying much. Until someone (like the guy behind "Firefly" and "Serenity") decides to do a big-budget, theatrical version of "Riverworld," you will do better to stick with the books.

What they've done is to take a great story created by a great writer (Philip Jose Farmer) and turn it into an unbelievable mess. To top it off, they did it TWICE. I have to hand it to them, though--this pile of crap is even higher and smellier than the first effort back in 2003. Granted, they had a lot of help from directors and writers and production companies that know nothing about SF, but SyFy gets the bulk of the blame here.

Two of Farmer's short pieces, "The Day of the Great Shout" (1965) and "The Suicide Express" (1966), evolved into a truly wonderful story, published in novel form and entitled "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" (1971).

In Farmer's story, everyone who ever lived on Earth have found themselves resurrected as healthy, young, and naked people on the grassy banks of an enormous river. Given food, but with no clues to the meaning of their strange new afterlife, billions of people from every period of Earth's history--and prehistory--must start again.

Prior to the event that came to be known as "Resurrection Day," Sir Richard Francis Burton gains an unplanned glimpse behind the scenes and is the first to realize that the Riverworld is no traditional afterlife. This forbidden sight would spur the renowned 19th-century explorer to uncover the truth. Along with a remarkable group of compatriots, including Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the Victorian girl who was the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland), an English-speaking Neanderthal, a WWII Holocaust survivor, and a wise extraterrestrial. Burton sets sail on the magnificent river to learn the truth.

Giving the newly resurrected metal, technology, horses and all the rest spoils the whole concept by depriving the viewer of the experience of seeing human beings take the very little they start with and build something wonderful.

Go read the book--this movie is a waste of time.