Premise: People from the present are being drafted and sent into the future to fight a war against aliens in a desperate attempt to save the planet.
I watched this movie on Amazon Prime a couple of days ago and thought I would give a little feedback on what I thought as I watched the movie and some of the things that have bothered me about it since then. This is not my first attempt at a movie review but it is not something that I have done more than two or three times so I apologize if it is not as detailed and polished as a professional reviewer.
Technical details: This is a 2021 movie and it is rated PG-13. The film is 2 hours and 20 minutes long and is directed by Chris Mckay. It was written by Zach Dean and stars Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, and J.K. Simmons. The cast also includes Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge, Keith Powers, Mike Mitchell, Betty Gilpin, Jasmine Mathews, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Jared Shaw, Alexis Lauder, Seychelle Gabriel, Chibuikem Uche, Rose Bianco, Alan Trong, and David Maldonado.
Spoiler Alert
The movie opens with an action scene of the war from the future and then goes back in time to the present in order to establish the characters that will be drafted to go into the future to the year 2051, defeat the alien invasion, and save our future generations and the planet. But problems with this scenario began to plague me right away, at first I didn't know what was bothering me but later I realized the obvious answer. Why in the world would you take people from the past to fight a war that was being lost in the future? Wouldn't it make much more sense to bring intelligence reports, future technology, and useful lessons learned from the future back to the past so that the planet could prepare for a coming alien invasion? That way, maybe we could prevent the aliens from ever getting a foothold on our planet and ending the war before it ever really got underway. That just makes much more sense to me, how about you?
I'm just going to pretend that going into the future to fight really was the best option, obviously there is information that I'm not privy to that leads the people of the future to reach that conclusion. So our heroes, such as they are, assemble for their jump into the future. They have received no training, they have not received any uniforms or armor, they have not been told what to expect when they get to their destination, and they have no idea what their enemy looks like or what the alien's capabilities are. So we are led to believe that these people are being drafted, handed guns, and sent into the future with the cloths on their back with just 24 hours warning, who would do that? If these heroes survive for seven days they are told that they will automatically be sent back to the past, and if they don't survive then their loved ones will receive one million dollars in compensation for their loss. Awesome, where do I sign up!
Needless to say that the future is just as messed up and it is filled with one disaster after another. It is easy to see why we are losing the war, and thinking about it just now I can tell you why the people of the future thought the best plan was to take people from the past and throw them into the meat grinder. If you have ever watched the movie "Idiocracy" then you know what I'm talking about. Which begs the question, where did they acquire the technology for a time machine in the first place and who in the future is smart enough to operate it? You would think that anyone smart enough to build a time machine could handle a bunch of naked alien octopi type creatures that screamed out a lot of abusive alien obscenities when being shot at with our puny primitive weapons all while they themselves are spitting some kind of bony spikes at us from their tentacles/mouths. But who am I to judge?
I won't spoil the entire movie and give away the plot twists or expose all of the problems in logic that I noticed, which were many, instead I will just give my overall feeling about the movie.
Conclusion
Despite all of the problems that I have noted with this movie and the many that I have kept silent about so that you have something to discover if or when you watch it, I will say that most of you will want to watch it at least once. For one thing, it was full of action and all of you less intellectually discriminating action movie lovers should definitely give this movie a chance for that reason alone. It will also be fun for others to watch the movie and take notes so that you can try and count all of the inconsistencies, logic fails, and irrational decisions that were made by the various characters involved.
But don't be annoyed when they continually risk the world and all of humanity due to said irrational behavior or poor logic and instincts. Also don't be surprised when the least likely person, and an anti-hero, is the one who finally comes to a logical conclusion that allows our heroes one more opportunity to claim a victory of sorts. Of course all aliens aside, it may be very hard for anyone to save us from ourselves!
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