Really? I think all you have to do is go back through the lists of academy award nominees for each year, and compare them with the lists of movies released in each of those years, and you will quickly see how many future classics the critics miss on the first go-round.
To my understanding, academy award nominations have little to do with critical reception.
Alot of people missed the point in Pandorum. This write up mine will help explain. Spoiler fulled though.
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Thoughts on the suggest?
Welcome to the boards, HandBanana. Please don’t use the SDMB to direct traffic to your blog. You’re welcome to participate in discussions of the movie here, though (without reposting any blog entries).
I’m always confusing this movie with Sunshine which I watched on the same weekend.
Ah, I see.
Well, just start a discussion here. As anyone noticed the symbolic referrences in the film towards The Divine Comedy, Odyssey, and “Works and Days”?
No, hadn’t noticed. Can you give some examples?
For starters the name of the ship is from mythology which was the resting place for the souls of heroes in the realm of the dead. Shades of the dead would get the memories of their “earthly lives” erased by drinking the waters of the Lethe River so that their souls could be reincarnated as according to Virgil’s account of Elysium kinda like the characters in the film.
Works and Days is known for the stories about the degradation like the 5 ages of man and the story of Pandora(how evil was unleashed on the world) which happened when the lightning god Zeus became king.
The villian, Gallo, is said to be both a god and king with lightning blots over his head. Who was said to create an “evil” world.
The Divine Comedy is about a jounary through hell (rivers of blood and Gluttons laying on each other) into the “earthly paradise”
The ship is described as Hell at one point in the film, there is a blood pit and the gluttonous cannibals lay on each other. The earth-like planet Tanis is described as “paradise”. There are more shades as well…
I wasn’t expecting much when I saw this movie the first time, not being a big SF fan, but I thought it was a terrific movie - so much so I have since watched it again.
I have no problem with critics but I must say I find the notion of leaving the decision of whether a film is good or not ‘for the ages’ to them is quite bizarre. I use reviews as a guide only.
I didn’t see it mentioned, but the file is available on Netflix instant streaming. I saw it this weekend and I’m a bit torn. I admire the story it was telling, expecially on its $40 million budget, but, damn, it’s claustrophobic. I had to go outside and sit in the sun after watching it.
I realize I’m bumping a ten month old thread, but I just saw this thing on DVD last night, and quite enjoyed it. It was a lot different than the “rage zombies in space” movie I’d been expecting. There were a lot of elements that didn’t make sense, but I liked the atmosphere and mood, and trying to figure out what had happened. The monsters were just there to add danger and action to the voyage through the ship. It felt like a tense, vivid dream.
I figured that the monsters were mutated humans right away. I mean, I just assumed it. I also guessed that they’d been in space many many times longer than intended, though I didn’t guess that they were at the bottom of an ocean. It took me longer than it should have to figure out that Gallo and Payton were the same person.
So again, an SF film that you would enjoy if you like atmosphere and mood, but don’t mind things being implausible and full of fridge logic. As one of the few positive reviews said, it reminded me of Eden Log, another atmospheric European Science Fantasy movie
Pandorum is a pretty good movie if you like your sci-fi horror. i’d place it up there near Event Horizon, a B grade film that falls short of being a classic, but still enjoyable.
Just re-watched this and decided to post my analysis of the film.
[spoiler]Pandorum emphasizes on survival of the fittest, with cooperation vs competition as a major themes in the film. There are also lovecraftian horror elements, such as characters rarely if ever fully understand what is happening to them, and often go insane if they try as we see with Bower, Gallo, and the ancestors of the creatures. Gallo’s madness caused him to become what is best described as a social darwinist extremist. He doesn’t believe in order and morality have a place in society, but survival of the fittest/might equals might, where the strongest would survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit would be allowed to die like savage animals. We get an example of this game twice in the film with the descendants of the passengers, the Hunters. The first being the fight scene between Bower’s group and one of the hunters without a spear to even the odds, while the others watched at a distance and feed on the loser, giving the winners a chance to run. We see this happen again between the cannibal leader and Mahn, where he hands him a weapon. Its all a necessary game to these creatures, their ancestors, and Gallo to keep overpopulation from repeating itself. As in the wildness overpopulation is solved by predators.
Dehumanized socially, the passenger’s children’s children would be dehumanized physically. This is another meaning of survival of the fittest, evolution/adaptation, and the cannibals are not the only ones to adapt. As Leland put it, “Its survival of the fittest or maybe the brightest” who wouldn’t have survived for years if he had heart(aka morality) and became a cannibal like the creatures. Now there is truth put on that statement as the female lead (Nadia) survived months and her survival strategy is robbing other passengers of their supplies, leaving people behind when danger shows up, but is not nearly as savage as Leland. She also don’t trust anybody else because others could do the same and/or worse due to the fact that it is every man/woman for him/herself. Which becomes evident when Leland tried to eat the trio and she’s the first one to realize what’s going on. Then you have Mahn on the other hand who has more of a heart than both Leland and Nadia as he puts his life on the line for others. But his morality leads to his demise as he dies for showing mercy to a hunter child. In order to survive you have to adapt to your environment, Leland had to become like the cannibalistic heartless monsters to survive, but if they don’t adapt you die like Mahn did.
Gallo was both God and Devil. Creating a new world like a deity but is more like the Devil for getting people to abandon their morals. While Gallo is stands for one aspect of survival, competition, while Bower stands for cooperation which is another aspect of survival. In the end solidarity helped them accomplish their mission, the survival of the human race with Bower getting a chance to play God himself with making humanity start anew by sending a flood to wash away a wicked world like in Noah’s Ark.[/spoiler]
The creatures were were not really mutated human. They evolved from them. This explains it.
Good point about the Lovecraftian elements. That had not occurred to me, but I think it’s valid.
It starts good, gets really stupid in the middle and I almost turned it off but the end is fantastic. I can’t name another movie so uneven in quality.
That’s what I kinda thought during the first viewing with the fights. But on a second viewing I realized that the fighting just serves the theme of the film. I could see a remake of this is a couple of decades like Disney’s The Black Hole.
Caught it on Netflix a couple years ago or so. Great for a Netflix find. OK, overall.
It’s one of those movies I always look for on Netflix, good English language productions I’ve never heard of. You can find a good number of Australian, Canadian and Scandinavian movies like this. I’m not sure of the pedigree of Pandorum, I remember thinking it was a European production.