Gatacca and In Time director uses his talents for a new Stephenie Meyer‘s book adaptation.
Director: Andrew Niccol | Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Diane Kruger, Max Irons
Budget: 40 million | Box office: 50 million
I wanted to watch the new movie by one of my hugely respected sci-fi directors Andrew Niccol knowing as little as possible about the film. So I somehow managed to not notice, that it‘s based on the novel by Twilight saga author Stephenie Meyer. I found out that just before watching the movie and first I was a bit angry that I won‘t be able to be unbiased, but quickly I changed my mind as it saved me from unpleasant surprise and explained why so much kissing and heartbreaking love struggles were involved.
It‘s basically the Twilight, but with aliens instead of vampires. Here the decades old topic of alien invasion and intrusion into humans is reused and painted in much prettier colors. So called the souls – shiny beings composed of pure energy, it seems – are of course much prettier than nasty creatures from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but the end result is the same – humanity is overruled by aliens, and surviving humans try to hide from them.
As it‘s easy to imagine, one such person, played by lovely Saoirse Rohan, manages to resist the total intrusion of the alien soul and with constant schizophrenic talks with herself tries to escape the regime and find the rest of the people and her loved one. And then of course people are not welcome to this new creature, but in the end they are destined to become friends and conquer the aliens. Well, not just yet, it‘s probably reserved for the later books, as Meyer plans to write a trilogy.
Although there are some nice moments, quite beautiful shots and in general the story is close to the „social sci-fi“ theme which Andrew Niccol likes to stress in his works, I still can‘t imagine why he took this movie. There‘s really nothing unique or even unusual here, so probably it was just to get some cash for his next ideas. But then again, the budget is quite modest. Hopefully the director will soon announce something worth waiting for. He was credited directing sci-fi drama about a future world fighting for water supply Paani, but now it seems the film was given to Elizabeth author Shekhar Kapur.
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