huitzilipochtli

Good things: acting is okay, the action is okay, the demonstration of random and sometimes obscure knowledge is okay. There is some cleverness (like the sort of cleverness you see in comic books)

Bad things: there is no real engineering. Let me explain. There are engineering like problems used in weird situations, but there is no way in heck that a real engineering genius would contrive or actually use some of these ideas (if they would even work) because none of them are "performant". By performant, I mean, they don't account for precision or probability of failure. Using an oxygen tank as a reliable propulsion to go *up* a zip line? Yeah, right. Only in M:I movies, maybe. The Myth Busters would love this show. Actually, no maybe they wouldn't, because they like to doctor the disproven myths in order to make them work. Many of the solutions displayed here are beyond re-fabrication.

They wanted the genius of the team from House M. D. and got a bunch of vogue kids posing as cliché nerds. It's downright cringe for anyone that knows anything at all about technology or engineering and the sciences.

First, good stuff. The film is well done, the production quality high, the acting believable, the world immersive, the ambiance stunning, the music, well, good, but overly insistent, a rather pleasant overpowering sound that turns into a rather unpleasant tinnitus two hours later.

I forced myself to read the book first. I was excited to read the book. I didn't like it for a variety of reasons, but this is about the movie, and I tried my best to forget about the book and focus on the movie when watching it, I found I rather enjoyed it. But it definitely didn't make me feel like I had a great experience. Nothing to write home about and tell others they should see it. The characters, both in the book and in the movie are one dimensional. They were written that way on purpose. They have a drive, a reason for that drive, and that's about it. Though our main character Paul is supposed to be coming of age, there's much ado about nothing. He has powers, and he is honing them. He is finding his real purpose even though it is pretty clear exactly what that is from the get go. This movie obviously sets up Paul's destiny for a follow up film. The problem is, we already know what his destiny is even if we haven't read the book. I'm not giving anything away by saying he's considered a messiah because the movie tells us that possibility right in the beginning.

The movie is definitely good. It has some action, but really, the most important thing is it builds a world we want to know more about, and the characters are believable enough that we want to join them in their discovery of it. But the story itself is not mind blowing, and, in my humble opinion, never really was. In short, I walked away mildly happy having watched a well done production, albeit telling a lackluster story, and me with the chorus of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" replaying in my head for some reason.