Be Excellent To Each Other

Ultimately, the main star acquires magical powers from out of nowhere. Or maybe she always had magic powers. Maybe we all have magic powers when we learn the space alien language. It was a bit daft.

Notwithstanding the silly premise, it has greater problems. It fails to explore the motivations of the rogue army folk who decide to explode the spaceship because, well, who knows because it doesn't, y'know... Not does it mention the attack after it happens. It's just an artificial action sequence in a film that's otherwise quite slow paced. The pacing was fine for me so why even include it.

And how come each-and-every-discovery made by the scientist woman is mirrored almost immediately by the Chinese government. The film sets her up as being super great and developing an understanding of the alien language when the rest of world is making no headway but, lo and behold, she's making identical progress with the Chinese. "I've just learned that this symbol meaning 'weapon.'" "Excuse me ma'am the Chinese scientist has been shot after this tape was leaked revealing that this symbol means weapon." "Oh noes!"

And whilst she's working on a program to decipher the alien language (which is said to be, like, several words, sentences and meanings in a ring pattern) she's suddenly fluent in alien ring language without the aid of her computer when she's sucked into the alien ship not long after, and all of a sudden alien language can be distilled into very short subtitles for the audience. I suppose the problem was that the timeline over which the film ran was unclear but it was never made clear whether they had been in contact with the aliens for weeks or months. Had they cut out the solider crap and given a realistic timeline for the contact I would have been assuaged but as it stands the last encounter with the aliens was deeply unsatisfying.

And some of the shots at the end of the film were insulting to the audience. In a reveal that lasts some 10 long minutes, miss scientist discovers she can see into the future and was married to...to...this blurry mess in the background, who only the most insipid among the audience hasn't already worked out is hawkeye. The shot lasts so long I was figgiting in my seat screaming "It's FUCKING hawkeye, just show FUCKING hawkeye." They really dragged it out beyond all comprehension.

And Amy Adams felt like she was a carbon copy of the Jodie Forster scientist from Contact. And hawkeye and substitute Matthew McWhatshisface, for better or worse. Hawkeye is the physicist but apparently does very little science when he's not acting as Amy Adams lapdog.

And Forest Whittaker? Man alive, this guy is a genius but he's given this godawful angry colonel role which requires him to be an arsehole to key science personnel. He rocks up in the dead of night in a helicopter to surprise lady science woman into offering her a job and gives her 10 minutes to get in the chopper for no reason than just to act like a cunt for the audience to think he's a hardass.

And some of the dialogue was trash. "Ask Dr Weneversee what the meaning of blah blah is?" It was yawnsome.

But anyway, it was ok but don't pretend it was a great film about what might happen if we really do meet aliens because the answer will probably not be "because Amy Adams has magic powers."

She supposedly gained this power of seeing time in a non linear fashion due to study of the alien language. The language allows you to look at whatever time you like, a rather Kurt Vonnegut like thing. Tralfamadorians.




It was showing how the media influence people in a negative way. And the fragility of human peace among humans. Right wing shock jocks are remarkably good at influencing people.




She seemed to get more fluent in the language after meeting directly with the aliens.



Yeah I'll give you that. Of course she gets married to him.




Yep I wondered what physics he was up to and what role he could possibly have in helping translate the language. And I'll delete the rest as I largely agree with you.

The man sexed up a turtle and had a hybrid turtle man baby that went to live with his turtle relatives. The man died.

Major Plot hole: Admiral Marcus wants to create military weapons because of his raging hard-on for war. Problem is – Star Fleet is more about peace and discovery than intergalactic conflicts so he decides to bring someone frozen from the past to lend his nasty mind to the plan. His choice? Khan – a super-human frozen for more than 300 years. But wait, if the movie takes place around 2260, that means Khan was frozen in the 1960s. What the fuck would this guy know about phasers and warp-drives and spaceships if he got frozen right around the time humanity sent its first human in space? One other thing: did I miss something or cryogenic technology doesn't exist right now and even less so in the 1960s? How could Khan be successfully frozen in an era where refrigerators were not always successful at keeping Cheez Whiz cold for more than a week?