The price tag was huge but its up there on screen – a stunning looking film, especially in 3D, and it has an intriguing set up and plenty of action. It also has this sort of irritating separatist liberalism that you find from millionaire film directors (indeed, its similar in its simplistic attitudes to Strange Days, which resembles this in a lot of other ways – to wit, it deals with the redemption of a fallen warrior through the use of a new-fangled technology).
The alien society, which is meant to be great because it’s so in touch with the environment, is a monarchy where the rulers are warriors, women don’t have a say in who their husbands are, and the warriors tame birds by raping them.
Also the baddy human corporation is just plain evil without given any decent motivation (it wouldn’t have to be too hard, just something like Bill Hunter’s villain in Strictly Ballroom being motivated by a desire to be able to teach “official” ballroom dancing steps – something like the company is losing money). On another level, it lacks the pure narrative structure of something like Aliens (land on planet-try to get off planet) or Terminator (escape Terminator) and is choppy.
Okay, enough griping. On the sunny side it looks terrific, there are some decent performances (I especially liked Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saladana – Stephen Lang would have been good if he’d been given a character with a bit more complexity), Sam Worthington is fine as the hero (although his American accent slips at times, he may as well done the whole thing as an Aussie), there is lots of action.
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