And, to me… precisely because of the 18 hours and the deviation from the books ending… it’s worse than the book. It pandered to the anti-intellectualism of the American audience by giving them a flip one-liner “well, I guess you have to take me on faith” and completely ignored the books closing sequence, where evidence of God’s existence was found.
I go into more detail here:
[quote=JohnT] It pandered to the anti-intellectualism of the American audience by giving them a flip one-liner “well, I guess you have to take me on faith” and completely ignored the books closing sequence, where evidence of God’s existence was found.
[/quote]
Just curious cause I didn’t read the book.
What evidence for god did book version of Jodie Foster find?
Looking up an earlier post I wrote about this and I found that I HAVE BEEN COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS MOVIE ON THIS BOARD FOR 23 YEARS!!!
… from 2001:
Book: While talking to the alien made up as her father, Ellie asks him if they believe in a God, to which the alien replies “Yes, and we have found his writing etched into the fabric of the Universe, in mathematical constants such as Pi, e, etc” (but not in so many words). Ellie then gets back to Earth and nobody believes that she made the trip because the subjective time of the trip for the people on Earth was 0, all the cameras were erased, etc (just like the movie). Ellie then programs her home computer to dig deep into the numbers of Pi, analyze them for any anomalies, and then tell her. A few weeks/months later the computer finds that if you render a particular sequence of Pi into an 11X11 grid, you have a circle made up of 0’s and 1’s:
00000100000
00001010000
00010001000
00100000100
01000000010
10000000001
01000000010
00100000100
00010001000
00001010000
00000100000
And that basically concludes the novel.
Movie: Ellie visits Pop, he says little about God and nothing about the “fabric of the Universe,” she arrives to a disbelieving Earth, gets hauled into Congress and says “Take me on faith.”
The book ending was logically, thematically, and characteristically (am I using that right?) correct, while the movie ending was an insult to Carl Sagan, an insult to the story and even more importantly, an insult to the audience. Since I like lists, I’ll just lay out my objections to the conclusion(s) of the movie:
In short, the movie was very modern in its setting but very medieval in its lessons. I like it, its a good-looking movie, but I can never watch the ending again.
Thanks for that, JohnT. You make a good point.
I think, though, that her character arc in the movie is meant to show that she’s no longer dogmatically, even blindly, committed to science alone as an explanation for the wonders of the Universe. The book just gets her there by a different route. I understand and appreciate your objections to the movie’s plot, but it does lead to a similar outcome to the book’s, more or less.
I watched Gran Turismo and then Ford vs Ferrari on the flight home on Sunday. I really enjoyed them both and the racing footage in both was amazingly filmed. I enjoyed GT a little more than FvF because of the redemption story and the fact that pretty much everyone in FvF other than Shelby and Miles was a complete prick. Plus, Miles dies… I did find out it was not by immolation (which the movie strongly implies) but instantly by impact. So that’s nice.
You might enjoy Ferrari (2023), still in theaters, but streaming at the end of this month. It focuses on Enzo Ferrari and his efforts to save his struggling company and establish Ferrari as a pre-eminent racing marque in the mid-50’s (my god, you had to be suicidal in those days to be a race car driver).
To be exact, Carl Sagan and (his third wife) Ann Druyan wrote a treatment (i.e., a full description of the story without being quite in movie form) in 1979. Sagan then wrote a novel based on that treatment which was published in 1985. The movie came out in 1997.
I watched The Creator last night. The plot holes were bigger than the ones in half the characters’ heads but it was a fun ride. Just don’t think too much about the premise.
Watched Oppenheimer on Prime. Excellent film that follows the book closely.
I just watch The Flash. Geez, what a hot mess.
First of all the good- many cameos, like Wonder Woman, many Batmans, Supermans, etc. Nicely done.
Now the bad. Its Flash so of course 
it has to be a Time Travel story. The Flash really wasnt about time travel in the comics or animated shows.
But anyway, Flash goes back in time to prevent his Mother from being killed. Fine, And it goes wrong- of course. Now, we all know about the butterfly effect, but how that can reach into the past and many star systems away is such a huge stretch my eyes hurt from all the rolling.
There are battle scenes- which of course are actually - due to more time traveling- entirely pointless. So, a good half of the film is thus rendered totally “it was all a dream” pointless.
Well there is a cool coda, and like I said the alt-universe/timeline superheroes that show up for a second or two is entertaining.
No wonder it bombed.
On another note- there were not many hit films in 2023. of the top ten highest grossing films
Of them, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was a box office bomb.
Elemental was a 'sleeper hit".
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One- lost money.
and The Little Mermaid seems to have made a profit. Maybe.
So many bombs last year. People were just not going to the theatres.
My theory is that basic theater maintenance has been so neglected since the start of the pandemic people are just turned off by the experience. The theaters lost so much business that they just don’t have the funds for any kind of refurbishment. I don’t want to pay $14 to sit in a musty, cracked recliner in an auditorium that smells of vintage 2019 popcorn butter.
My local multiplex, owned by Cinemark, upgrade the seating to “luxury loungers” from conventional theater seats. They can recline and have a back heater, though that feature seems to lull me to sleep.
I’m not sure that’s right.
It will be profitable, but not in the theaters.
Same as the Dungeons & Dragon film. Toys and such for that one.
Wiki has it grossing $567.5 million in theaters on a net $219 million budget, which AFAICT puts it $20 million past the 2.5x mark.
Saltburn - I found it enthralling, mostly due to Barry Keoghan’s haunting portrayal. Rosamund Pike was very entertaining as well. As many reviews have mentioned, it has a huge Talented Mr. Ripley vibe (but I love that one too).
For the record, the bathtub scene that everyones’ fretting about isn’t visually that gross (it’s not as if you see pearly drops of semen floating in the water), though it is disturbing and rather said. Ditto the menstrual cunnilingus. Gross concept, but you don’t see anything. The only thing that really offended me was the lingering closeup of the vomit covered sink and mirror
I can see how it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s not body horror, or even porn. The outrageous acts by Keoghan’s character are appropriate to his character.
Did you ever read the book Jaws? It was a formulaic summer potboiler, with the obligatory sex scene between, well, I won’t spoil it in case someone does want to try it. The movie and the book have only a few things in common. The title, the names of some of the characters, and the major plot point of a big shark killing people. The movie was much, much MUCH better. And Spielberg was only 26 at the time.
One trivia factoid, in the beach scene with the reporter talking about what’s going on, that’s the book’s author Peter Benchley.
Very cool!
Murray Hamilton played Mayor Vaughn in Jaws. He was still the Mayor in Jaws II. It’s important to vote, people!