One of the best sci fi monsters of this century. Chris Pratt’s furrowed brow and rippling abs. A premise that somehow survived years of studio rewrites, and manages with sheer audacious theatrical imagination to compensate for the fact that the time-travel stuff is perhaps the most plausible thing about this film, just on a guns-that-never-reload, bones-that-never-break, how-do-they-get-gas-in-an-alien-invasion level.
Hell yes, I recommend you watch this movie.
My brilliant and erudite fiancee proclaimed the creatures in this movie the “scariest monster I’ve ever seen”, and it really is an amazing antagonist. There’s a horror-movie vibe to them, implacable and inhuman and everywhere and nowhere at once. None of them ever speak, but somehow you get a sense of their own hero’s journey, overcoming the defenses of the stubborn human enemy by discovering new abilities and stretching themselves.
Despite the horror-type villain, this is every inch the sci fi movie, and it delivers on the tropes and then some. It gives me Interstellar/Chris Nolan vibes in its single-minded emotionality, but it gives me Thor/Taika Waititi vibes in its tension-breaking humor. It’s got enough Jaws DNA that they hold back the monsters until we’re salivating for them, and enough Matrix training-downloads that they just start the story and let the exposition flow without it ever getting clunky or forced, beyond an opening scene that’s cloying albeit effective.
Now to be clear, you have to enjoy movies that don’t really make sense. Time travel just doesn’t make sense, of course, and as with almost all post-apocalyptic stories, questions like the source of gasoline are not answered in any satisfying way, but also, as the movie goes along the “Why don’t they try…” questions pile up until Chris is forced—by the very hand of script-driven fate!—to literally fight an alien invasion with his hands and feet, having exhausted every other option, or at least as many as can be shown in two hours without too much talking losing focus on the abs.
And listen, Chris Pratt punching aliens and furrowing silently while J.K. Simmons acts with his beard and a cast of satisfyingly diverse supporting characters makes us feel like we’re progressive enough is really a pretty good time in the year of our lord 2021! The world this movie depicts is a total bummer, but the movie skips the most bummer parts and has heart and cool special effects and you should totally go watch it on Prime.
Enjoy, have a great week, and I’ll be back in your inbox next Sunday with another fantasy story for your reading pleasure. Also, as last week was the 4th of July, it seems a ton of people missed my story. If that’s you and you’d like to go back and read it, here’s a link to do that:
https://ogwiseman.substack.com/p/story-14-outside-the-wall
watched it last week on your rec, glad I did. The studio rewrites makes sense because it does have sniffs of many other movies that made money. Go Chris! GO Hawks!