Ozlin t1_j5cjwem wrote on January 22, 2023 at 12:33 AM

Reply to comment by yanbu in Looking for movies with a dramatically different director’s cut by pornthrowaway1421

I thought it was OK overall, but I also understand the criticism. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember the whole thing of him sneaking aboard that one ship to have issues. It also does feel a bit meandering and slowly paced. The ending too really relies on the audience being OK with the whole thing being a personal journey, which I'm not sure the film sells very well throughout. It feels a bit like a film that wanted to be one thing, but for whatever reason ended up getting pushed towards being another thing, but it never fully got to commit to either. I personally still enjoyed it overall because the visuals and concepts of the world were enough for me. But I definitely felt it a bit lacking in other ways. I do think people really laid the hate on it too thick.

ImpactNext1283 t1_j5fu4df wrote on January 22, 2023 at 6:38 PM

It’s meant to be a riff on Apocalypse Now, Pitt’s journey being a mirror for society’s. It does play fast and loose w a lot of the ‘hard’ sci-fi elements. The space travel, in particular, makes 0 sense.

That said, if you look at the whole thing as a metaphor, it’s quite brilliant imo. Grey is making a movie about fathers and sons, using the cinematic language of his ‘fathers’ - Kubrick and Coppola. Like other Gen X filmmakers, Grey is deeply indebted to these flawed men w insane, grand visions. It’s really sophisticated in that light.