Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Proven Wrong

Ok, I'm the first to admit when I'm wrong, so it's funny that just one post ago I was complaining about a lack of good sci-fi movies coming out.

Then I watched Pandorum. This movie surprised me as I wasn't expecting much. It was actually really fun to watch and had some great twists at the end. Here is my short review and to be fair - Spoiler Alert! I will be going into some story plot details.

The movie tells the story of the passengers on a space-ship that is headed to a second Earth after the mother-planet is well on the way to ....die? explode? become very very unconfortable?

The main hero, played by Ben Foster, wakes up with a memory loss and finds himself on this ship that seems to have gone to hell. Most of the passengers are missing and he finds corpses that have been brutally gutted. Creatures begin to chase him that look like mutated barbarians. It's overall very confusing, but slowly, as his memory comes back, he is able to find clues and people that explain what happened on the ship.

Dennis Quaid plays another pilot who woke up, but stayed in the sleep chamber room while our hero (B. Foster) goes on his dangerous trip to gain control of the ship. Quaid has not been a brand for quality movies recently but did a good job of playing this deranged pilot who turns out to be the reason for all the havoc on the ship. Ben Foster was excellent and carried the story through some of the rough spots.

Fun fact - one other survivor that Fosters character meets is played by Cung Le, my favorite mixed martial arts fighter. If you go watch some of his fights on youtube - you'll see why. This guy is a f***ing killing machine. And I really dig his fighting style.

The idea behind the mutants I thought was pretty original and cool - the people on board the ship had been injected with a serum that would help their bodies adapt to the new environment on the planet they are heading to - but due to them waking up during the long trip, some of them mutated as an adaption to the space ship.

The other really cool idea was what had happened to the ship and where it had gone since everything had gone out of control. We don't find out until the very end when Dennis Quaid opens up the view of the cockpit and we see ....nothing. Pitch black. Ideas start flying through your head as to what that could mean...and then they see glowing creatures....and realize that they already landed on the planet a long time ago and are under-water.

Over-all the atmosphere, acting, story made this a really good original sci-fi movie. So - take that Geroge Lukas! :p


No comments:

Post a Comment