Props for this. I'll have to go check out your other stuff. It's hard to figure Alex Garland out. This. Sunshine. Ex Machina. Devs...they're all products of a really curious and smart mind. Film "Annihilation" compared to the book is especially a trip since Garland reconfigured a lot of it. It would have been fun seeing some of JV's wierder stuff in there, but I'm not complaining at what we got, which is a glimpse of a truly unfathomable alien intelligence and landscape. Loved the crystal trees. Very JG Ballardian. But he's also had a weak side in writing. He's got interesting ideas but the stories don't always hold together by the end. The Mad Captain in "Sunshine" is a terrible way to complicate the plot. "Ex Machina" has a ton of holes. "Devs" has a fascinating idea but pads it out and ends on a great premise it doesn't follow up on. I don't know what the hell he was doing with "Men" except maybe enjoying shooting in the English countryside. Haven't seen "Civil War" but it sounds like a mess too. Now Garland is saying he wants to quit directing. That would be a drag because he does come up with cool ideas. He doesn't seem like a screaming egomaniac in interviews, so I'm not sure why he isn't open to some help on his scripts. I mean, heck, even Stanley Kubrick worked with serious writers on his movies. Here's hoping...
I adore both this movie and the book. I latch onto anything that keeps me up at night thinking as much as they did. I have Authority on my shelf and still need to read it. I had heard it's detached from Annihilation, so I've been putting it off. The video is great, thank you. I'm hoping this is the push I needed to pick it up and continue the story.
In our hubris, we believe the small lump of matter between our ears is singular in its capacity to articulate existence despite constant evidence to the contrary all around us.
Thank you thank you thank you. This film (based on the books) seem often misunderstood and I think it was perfectly executed. It IS cosmic horror, like Solaris before it. Glad to see people dissecting it years later. Perception IS reality.
Part of the craziness and "breaking down" at the end is also because they are tumbling into the core of the Sun and the laws of Physics are getting pushed aside. Things are out of sync
I gave this show the benefit of the doubt until the very end, hoping and wishing beyond all the evidence I was seeing that the show would have a satisfying conclusion. But with each passing episode it became clearer how hard this would be for them to pull off. It became such a cluster of ridiculous themes and plot points that I knew it was doomed. The ending itself was just another example of patronizing women to make men look bad, a toxic idea that’s been spreading through popular culture for years and only works to degrade both sexes. This show is incomprehensible at best, and insulting at worst. I honestly can’t believe HBO allowed this train wreck to happen.
I loved the movie, books are awesome too.❤the soundtrack is awesome too. Also i agree, it is the original Lena, but she's not the same when she exits as when she enters so...does it even matter? Shes changed forever either way but I like that.
I don't get the gripes about a tonal shift. I think the film did a pretty good job of foreshadowing where the film is headed at the end. This has been one of my favorite films since I first saw it.
Reading the Southern Reach trilogy was, to me, akin to what The Biologist went through. I was never quite sure if I was understanding what I was reading, I didn't know if what I saw in my mind was accurate, or if I was just trying to fill in gaps I didn't comprehend. It was a hell of a read.
Brother, keep at it! You did a great job on the Firewatch video, I hope that this brings you the popularity you deserve, your videos are amazing. You're a great video essayist <3
What’s strange to me is as a child I remember sometimes staring into the sun and other bright lights until my eyes would water yet I’m pretty sure now at 21 I still have great eye sight I mean I can read the bottom of the eye test
The "personified alien" wasn't doing anything, it was just a focused aspect of the shimmer. The entire shimmer is alien, it's an area where laws of nature, chemistry, and even physics interact differently, act according to a totally alien directive.
Or maybe she knew the guy before he went in, and they had matching tattoos, As Natilie's character is only there because she also knew a prior expedition member.
this movie is one of the rare times where the adaptaion made me read the book as opposed to the other way around, but the southern reach trillogy went hard, the middle book is mostly a bridge and quite hard to get through but provides the much needed context to finish the third book. great stuff
The way I like to think about this game is the same way i think about what remains of edith finch. they are playable movies. you control a character bus you do so in a strictly linear way so that it plays out like a film.
even though you have seen a movie a hundred time before you still go back and watch it again. in the same way you go back to this game whenever you feel like being apart of a film
Honestly, the idea of an alien making something new or changing things into something new wasn't nearly as scary to me as the implication from early on that the shimmer was 'fixing things' and the shark-gator and bears and such were just part of its process trying to figure out how things were supposed to be. Also, the kind of indifference. Saying "the alien is doing X" felt misleading, like seeing a hammer or a robot and calling it the human. The idea that a terraforming engine would arrive on earth and begin to remove pollution levels and fix things... and that it would treat us as a kind of infection... made the novel an interesting piece of eco horror. We think of the health of the planet in reference to ourselves, to humanity. But the shimmer presented an option to fix the planet without humanity. I think this is in the first book, the idea that where the doppelgangers showed up, the pollution levels were starting to go down? When the pandemic hit and we saw clearer waters and nature healing in the oceans and other locations, it made me think back to the book Annihilation.
I would like to look at the idea of this being gendered horror as well- As a woman I have given birth - i have had a parasite living in me- taking over my body and changing it in ways I didn't agree to- I think women have a psychologically easier time with this idea than men because our bodies do this - and then in menopause our bodies change again in ways we can't control or consent to- When I read the books (I read all 3 before seeing the film) I found it interesting that the group of men seemed to have a much more traumatic time inside the shimmer compared to the women- I have not seen an exploration of this idea out there but I find it fascinating
Lol a tad bit ignorant to say "we know almost everything about the sun" because it's like saying I know almost everything about a place I've never been, just observed from a distance. I doubt that I would know more about another country than the country & its residents itself. The wisest know that the more you know the less you know. Nonetheless, me nitpicking can't ever take away from such a well presented video breakdown. You have now added another movie to my list of movies to watch, much appreciated. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos
Love this flick I can’t be the only one who thought of the doppelgänger puzzle from the first Tomb Raider when the alien mirrors Natalie Portman? That, or the scene with Graucho and Harpo in Duck Soup? Granted, that’s a very specific cross pollination of influences to someone of a particular age range and taste
Good cosmic horror reminds me a lot of hallucinogenic loops you get on lsd etc etc when one minute passes but feels like an hour, but without the d*ugs
I loved sunshine. It's a rare movie I felt the intent of and thus felt an emotional impact but never fully understood. To me it felt oddly profound in a deeply incomprehensible way. Which I found really appropriate.
I modded my skyrim with this exact camera view angle for the main character, it makes the game harder plus is somehow in the middle of third and first person
That movie sucked, it’s a shitty attempt at cosmic horror, it has a lazy and awful plot with some of the dumbest decisions made by supposedly intelligent women. Yea we lost several SF teams to the anomaly so let’s send in a poorly put together team of super women with no PPE and see what happens.
