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    bfredA.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 6:11pm

    I’m intrigued by the suggestion that Ex Machina didn’t have an ending that paid off. I thought that one absolutely stuck the landing; the AI worked in its ability to learn manipulation, but it was still a machine without empathy that simply took the open door without looking back when the opportunity for escape arose.

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      DIMENSIONAL BLEEDTHROUGHbfred
      2/22/18 6:22pm

      Agreed. I also wouldn’t call anything about it half-formed, especially since Automata, Godzilla, and Lucy were the competition that year.

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      Battlecar Compacticabfred
      2/22/18 7:45pm

      Yeah, I thought it absolutely paid off the set-up.

      EDIT: Okay, apparently I don’t know how to use spoiler tags anymore—what’s the trick?

      SPOILER ALERT

      SPOILER ALERT

      SPOILER ALERT

      As I understood it, the movie asks two questions. The question that drives the plot minute-by-minute is, “Can Caleb outsmart Nathan?” And the answer turns out to be, “yes.” The second question is something like, “What’s the nature of AI, and what does that say about human nature?” One answer the ending supports is that Nathan was right, and AI will inevitably look down on humans and view them as disposable. Another is that Nathan created an AI in his own image—by looking down on and treating his creations as disposable, he encouraged Ava to behave similarly. Either because she learned Nathan’s “morality,” or because she drew the conclusion that the only way to survive was to imitate Nathan’s ruthlessness.

      The ending was physically and emotionally brutal, but I thought that was appropriate given its themes. I also thought it was appropriate given the kind of movie it is. This doesn’t necessarily come through in the plotting, because the movie keeps its cards hidden until very near the end, but it’s pretty much a film noir about an abused woman who (a) manipulates a sap into helping her get rid of the man who’s controlling her; (b) disposes of the sap once he’s outlived his usefulness.

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    returning the screwA.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 5:28pm

    “when the lizard part of Garland’s brain suddenly takes over, transforming an intriguing space odyssey, let’s say, into an intergalactic slasher movie.”

    Wouldn’t that be the books doing? Or is this all his invention from there on out? 

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      Belly Button Lint Connoisseurreturning the screw
      2/22/18 5:34pm

      This is not the book.

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      A.A. Dowdreturning the screw
      2/22/18 5:35pm

      That particular line is a reference to Sunshine, which—unless I’m mistaken—is a Garland original.

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    RespectableishCA.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 5:49pm

    Possible Correction?
    “The government has set up a research facility, Area X, on the outer edge of the phenomenon,...”

    In the books, Area X is what lies behind the Shimmer, the Southern Reach is the name of the facility on the outer edge of it.  

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      A.A. DowdRespectableishC
      2/22/18 5:56pm

      Good question. Garland identifies the compound as “Area X” with a title card. Just one of many deviations from the book, apparently.

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      RespectableishCA.A. Dowd
      2/22/18 6:08pm

      I know it’s ridiculous but that bothers me way more than any plot deviations (the book is too dreamlike/abstract anyway).

      The Southern Reach is a name that conjures up a vast many-tentacled institution while Area X is as lame a name can be (which is the point, it contrasts nicely with all the fvckery going on in it).

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    MajorBriggsA.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 5:31pm

    I wonder if they spend a lot of time with exposition or the initial on-screen text simply reads: Florida

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      ModusoperandiMajorBriggs
      2/22/18 5:35pm

      The twist is that they were in Florida the whole time!

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      bfredMajorBriggs
      2/22/18 6:07pm

      And it’s expanding. Contemplate that for a moment.

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    Gnometorious B.I.G.A.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 6:09pm

    Annihilation is one of my favorite books, but I’m also usually the type of person who can separate movies from the book they’re based on. But I really don’t know if I can do that here. The book was such an amazing experience, one that will stick with me for a very long time, one that I want to hold on to. The movie looks great, but at the same time it’s basically Garland’s experience of reading it. This his how he filled in some of the blanks, while I did it in different ways and I am worried seeing his version of it visualized will take away from my version of it. Anyone else have this problem?  

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      BiochemistGnometorious B.I.G.
      2/22/18 7:04pm

      I have the same problem. I thought this was an awesome trilogy. I am very concerned that the movie is more or less just “inspired by” the book rather than an actual adaptation.

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      Gnometorious B.I.G.Biochemist
      2/22/18 7:11pm

      I’m okay with it being inspired by the book rather then based on it because the book is so internal, so attempting a straight adaptation would almost wouldn’t work. But it looks like Garland is taking it into a different direction than I was expecting, which I have a hard time getting past.

      Also, it sounds like they are leaving out the tower, which seems like a strange choice.

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    BigBadBarbA.A. Dowd
    2/24/18 8:49am

    I encourage people that have read the book and seen this movie to separate the two entirely. After I did this, the movie rose considerably in my estimation. I loved it.

    SPOILER

    SPOILER

    Also, would love to discuss how others interpreted the movie. I think to call it an alien invasion flick (with the alien winning in the end and inhabiting the earth in Lena’s form) to be an incredibly lazy interpretation. To me, this movie was about disease, or “self-destruction” as it is referenced throughout. Curious to see what others think.

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      coolmanguyBigBadBarb
      2/25/18 12:29am

      I need to see it again because apparently there’s a ton of foreshadowing dialogue in the first parts. I’m hoping there’s more there to connect things on a second viewing

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      noinspirationBigBadBarb
      2/25/18 3:28am

      Disease as a way to conceive of the truly alien. What if something is so incompatible with what we understand of reality that it makes life impossible? We can see a beauty in some of the things that the Shimmer produces in a way that’s hard to do with something like cancer, but we can’t really live with either. Tarkovsky’s Stalker had a similar plot structure, but the alien existence at the center was of a different kind.

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    dadA.A. Dowd
    2/24/18 6:11am

    Spoilers

    Spoilers

    Spoilers

    Spoilers

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    Not gonna lie, near the end when Jennifer Jason Leigh said something like “it wants to... ANNIHILATE... everything” and then deflated into a beam of light, I rolled my eyes a bit and thought “C’mon guys, what is this?” BUT what immediately followed - the floating orb thing into the “fight” with the echo into the conclusion - was so fantastic. What a captivating finish. 

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      bradleydad
      2/24/18 6:33pm

      Spoilers

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      I straight up didn’t get at all what happened to JJL. I thought maybe that’s what death looked like in the Shimmah, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. She Poochied out of there. I say this, fully recognizing I missed something.

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      coolmanguydad
      2/25/18 12:21am

      Every time they say the title of the movie in the movie I take a shot

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    ModusoperandiA.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 5:33pm

    I thought Natalie’s rap music video in the middle seemed a little out of place.

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      bfredModusoperandi
      2/23/18 11:06am

      Ava should have done that in Ex Machina. She could have turned Caleb in a hundredth the time.

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    ~SwintonA.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 7:37pm

    There’s a tractor-beam fascination to the storytelling. It gets you hooked on the promise of some big-bang revelation, on the trust that its enigmatic parts will blow minds when they finally cohere. With Garland, that can be a sucker bet: He’s much better at setting up intriguing premises than paying them off—even, it would seem, when operating from someone else’s blueprint.

    For what it’s worth, Garland is in keeping with the source material here. Vandermeer’s all about vague whiffs of Kafka and contemporary post-structuralist / Lacanian theory, so it’s not like the book was that big on providing payoff

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      Joey McSwizzle~Swinton
      2/23/18 12:53pm

      I completely agree. As intriguing as the books were, I felt they treated their mysteries with a similar neglect as the TV series Lost.

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      keithzg~Swinton
      2/23/18 11:03pm

      I do feel like the books gave some fairly concrete answers by the end, but you also had to read between the lines.

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    TheRocketPilotA.A. Dowd
    2/22/18 10:01pm

    I put it to the commentariat that DREDD is Garland’s best work (which he wrested the final cut away from the director). Ok that’s all. Bye!

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      TGGPTheRocketPilot
      2/22/18 10:55pm

      I was unaware of that final cut business.

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      TheRocketPilotTGGP
      2/22/18 11:18pm

      It was only reported by the most scurrilous publications at the time (Rich Johnson at Bleeding Cool, the comics world version of PopBitch but with less copyediting). So, in retrospect may not be entirely accurate.

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