Somnus

This film reminds me that Stanley Kubrick is overrated. Admittedly, I had trouble keeping my attention to the film. One trope is that human's humanity is a curse. The people on the spaceship are self-destructive because they are human. This humanist trope is backwards and an insult to humans everywhere. It has an Australian Mad Max feel to it.

The second trope is that a jelly fish can be a genius. They are pretty to look at, but where are the brains. This trope is based on the idea that mother nature is all seeing & all powerful. Ray Bradbury had his genius Martians, but I never quite understood why.

I am disappointed in the human race also, but to quote a football player: 'It is what it is'. The best of humanity is when President Kennedy set the goal of reaching the Moon in ten years & succeeded. He also started the Peace Corps. The worst of humanity was when Martin Luther King & the two Kennedys were assassinated.

I would rather watch the Tom Hanks version of space travel.

Reading and Owen give us a sci fi outer space drama that can easily be looked at as a "coherent rewrite of 2001".

"2001 A Space Odyssey" was an overrated bit of boredom that couldn't possibly make any sense as directed and written without a program to tell the viewer what was going on.

Like 2001, we have a computer gone wrong on a space ship, and a synopsis of a scenario for the existence of human beings.

Here, however, the team explains what is taking place.

The characters are more credible than the paper thin ones of 2001, which were just contrived to make a sermon.

That doesn't make this a great movie, but at least it is coherent.

Well, that's 1:22 that I just wasted. Half-way through I realized that it was too deep for me.

A bunch of derelict-type space-trash are on some type of a mission that get sidetracked to an old forgotten colony that is wonderfully verdant – except for some all the residents (perhaps the offspring of the original settlers? It was at this point that I decided that I simply did not care)

I'm sure that the movie will appeal to some. Just not to me. I've been blamed as being too shallow to appreciate fine art. It could be. I just do not think that this movie is an example of fine art.

Somnus the musical? Why not, it would make more sense than anything else in this film.

First, the dialogue is completely indecipherable -- the actors speak in a very thick accent, they talk just above a whisper, mumble, and often get drowned out by the rest of the soundtrack. Then there's the ship. Who knew that spaceships 300 years in the future would use an instrument panel from a 1955 B-52 bomber? Complete with analog dial indicators! And you'll never guess what the ship runs on... wait for it... Steam. Yes, steam! The mechanics who maintain all those stream pipes running through the spaceship wear overalls covered in grease and grime, like they're working on a railroad or a diesel tugboat. It would be alright if the film was trying to be campy, but it wasn't. It's meant to be a serious movie.

Then there's the plot. No, wait. There isn't one. Maybe a plot exists somewhere in the brains of the screenplay writers, but it never came close to showing up on the screen.

Top it off with lousy directing, lousy acting, horrible cinematography...

Yes, I gave it a one, and it doesn't even deserve that.

Triggers: strobe effects, graphic violence, gory anthropophagy, dismemberment, all-white cast, blackface (or was that green-face?)

Don't let the one ⭐ haters mislead you, this is not a terrible movie. It's great either, but it does have good production values and a decent soundtrack which fits the mood of the story.