I don't understand why people hate this movie so much. I haven't seen such scathing reviews since Gigli. It sure seems like people (both the pros on rottentomatos and the amateurs here) are just trying to outdo each other in how nasty they can be.
Let me hit the major objections:
The time waves. Oh boy, people hated the time waves. Too complicated and it was different than the previous movies they'd seen, they said. I would point out that the time-wave theory most recently appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who series, and it made sense on its own terms. The movie took care to explain why the time waves could not be passed through, and why the alternate travel at the end eliminated them. What else could you ask for? Would people prefer the lousy, nonsensical "fade-away" theory of Back to the Future? Or the Terminator style of just ignoring the paradox altogether? I for one like to see new sci-fi ideas when I watch sci-fi movies. The griping about the central plot innovation reminds of how people hated the original Ring movie for the idea of the enchanted videotape.
The SFX. Granted, they weren't at the level of Lord of the Rings, but the movie did not cost as much as Lord of the Rings. For a movie that had so little money left over for post after the Czech floods destroyed the sets during shooting, it's rather unfair to point out that there were only a handful of vehicle models and one of the street textures came from 3D Studio Max. The effects on the whole were far better than most of what we saw in the 1990s, and they were considered adequate then. To say the SFX looked like cardboard cut-outs? Give me a break. That kind of frothing at the mouth is not helpful in a review. Moreover, the SFX always advance the plot, which is something that can't be said for the Star Wars podrace or the Harry Potter Quidditch (also known as the George Lucas et al. Bathroom Break).
The acting. One of the previous comments glowingly referred to Ben Kingsley's work in Sexy Beast. Now that movie had the worst camera-work since Blair Witch and the most turgid, obvious plot, and the tardiest pacing of any movie I saw that year. If that person likes movies like Sexy Beast (I believe the polite word for that kind of movie is "dialogue-driven"), then it's their own damn fault for going to see a monster sci-fi movie. I believe the acting could be fairly described as "competent" -- easily better than the Star Wars movies, for example. Nobody is going to win an Oscar, but on the other hand it doesn't star Russell Crowe.
The script. I agree it could have used some editing, but at no point do the characters act like complete idiots. I would have liked to have seen an explanation of why the expeditions never ran into each other until the end, and why the main character just disappears at the end. But most, if not all, of the minor plot holes could have been resolved with better dialogue. For instance, instead of wasting time saying roughly "It will hurt, when you're pulled twice," the female scientist could have said "when this machine shuts down, this version of you will die." When they're going into the subway, the main character could have said "there are monsters up here and we would die; there may not be monsters down there" instead of whatever frivolous comment he made. In other movies (much of the Matrix 2 and 3, or the ending of AI), the plots simply made no sense on a first watching. It is better, in my opinion, to have a script that could use a little editing instead of one that completely bamboozles the moviegoer. Also, the repetitiveness of the movie (such as the ape-lizards which seemed to be everywhere) seemed to be because of SFX short-budgeting -- they had a limited creature budget. As I said above I think it's a little unfair to criticize the movie for being low-budget, when on the whole it looks pretty good.
I was glad to see a B-style sci-fi movie, since its been months since the 2005 Doctor Who series finished. It had big sets, famous second-tier actors, and lots of SFX. The plot was miles better than the last four or five Star Trek movies, to say nothing of Alien v. Predator, and it's a shame that it will do so much more poorly just because it doesn't have a "franchise" attached to it.
Let me hit the major objections:
The time waves. Oh boy, people hated the time waves. Too complicated and it was different than the previous movies they'd seen, they said. I would point out that the time-wave theory most recently appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who series, and it made sense on its own terms. The movie took care to explain why the time waves could not be passed through, and why the alternate travel at the end eliminated them. What else could you ask for? Would people prefer the lousy, nonsensical "fade-away" theory of Back to the Future? Or the Terminator style of just ignoring the paradox altogether? I for one like to see new sci-fi ideas when I watch sci-fi movies. The griping about the central plot innovation reminds of how people hated the original Ring movie for the idea of the enchanted videotape.
The SFX. Granted, they weren't at the level of Lord of the Rings, but the movie did not cost as much as Lord of the Rings. For a movie that had so little money left over for post after the Czech floods destroyed the sets during shooting, it's rather unfair to point out that there were only a handful of vehicle models and one of the street textures came from 3D Studio Max. The effects on the whole were far better than most of what we saw in the 1990s, and they were considered adequate then. To say the SFX looked like cardboard cut-outs? Give me a break. That kind of frothing at the mouth is not helpful in a review. Moreover, the SFX always advance the plot, which is something that can't be said for the Star Wars podrace or the Harry Potter Quidditch (also known as the George Lucas et al. Bathroom Break).
The acting. One of the previous comments glowingly referred to Ben Kingsley's work in Sexy Beast. Now that movie had the worst camera-work since Blair Witch and the most turgid, obvious plot, and the tardiest pacing of any movie I saw that year. If that person likes movies like Sexy Beast (I believe the polite word for that kind of movie is "dialogue-driven"), then it's their own damn fault for going to see a monster sci-fi movie. I believe the acting could be fairly described as "competent" -- easily better than the Star Wars movies, for example. Nobody is going to win an Oscar, but on the other hand it doesn't star Russell Crowe.
The script. I agree it could have used some editing, but at no point do the characters act like complete idiots. I would have liked to have seen an explanation of why the expeditions never ran into each other until the end, and why the main character just disappears at the end. But most, if not all, of the minor plot holes could have been resolved with better dialogue. For instance, instead of wasting time saying roughly "It will hurt, when you're pulled twice," the female scientist could have said "when this machine shuts down, this version of you will die." When they're going into the subway, the main character could have said "there are monsters up here and we would die; there may not be monsters down there" instead of whatever frivolous comment he made. In other movies (much of the Matrix 2 and 3, or the ending of AI), the plots simply made no sense on a first watching. It is better, in my opinion, to have a script that could use a little editing instead of one that completely bamboozles the moviegoer. Also, the repetitiveness of the movie (such as the ape-lizards which seemed to be everywhere) seemed to be because of SFX short-budgeting -- they had a limited creature budget. As I said above I think it's a little unfair to criticize the movie for being low-budget, when on the whole it looks pretty good.
I was glad to see a B-style sci-fi movie, since its been months since the 2005 Doctor Who series finished. It had big sets, famous second-tier actors, and lots of SFX. The plot was miles better than the last four or five Star Trek movies, to say nothing of Alien v. Predator, and it's a shame that it will do so much more poorly just because it doesn't have a "franchise" attached to it.