I didn’t take that away. Remember, Frank said that they were about to share Tomorrowland with the world before it all went to pot, so one would assume that with Tomorrowland back on track, those plans would also be back on track. All the talk at the end was about making the world, OUR world, a better place, not escaping it.
Generally, I rather liked it. I really like the message that both hope and despair are self-fulfilling prophecies–which wolf do you feed? It’s a shame that a movie with a message like that (and, ironically, an “enough-with-the-dystopias-already” message) has to struggle while the dystopias and disaster flicks are thriving.
But there was one change I’d have made:
[SPOILER] Maybe it’s my affection for Hugh Laurie talking, or a desire to have seen him stretch his considerable talents more here, but I’d have made him less overtly villainous–taking the blood from his hands, perhaps, by having his androids memory-wipe rather than kill cops and guards. There are those who saw Nix as more tragic and misguided and thought that if the point of the movie was hope, it should have included him as well.
More to the point–it’s clear the audience (before the reveal about Athena’s nature) was meant to think she was Nix’s daughter. Well, what if the movie had taken that and run with it? Have her call him “Daddy” from the get-go, and have him show her real love and affection even though he’s stern and dismissive with Frank. Then, after Frank’s snuck into Tomorrowland, Nix is still reluctant to have Frank there, until his daughter’s pleading turns him around. It’s clear that he can deny her nothing, and we see evidence of his love for her throughout–he’s relieved and overjoyed to have her home safely again. He’d have some expository dialogue later in the film about how he designed this first android with a mixture of his own features and his late wife’s, in her memory, so as to make her the child they longed for but could never have. That he considers her his beloved daughter, robot or no robot–a contrast to Frank’s attitude.
If they’d done this, established this, built on this idea instead of letting it drop–then, at the end, when Athena takes the shot Nix meant for Frank (his extremism driving him to murder, as well as the belief that Frank turned her against him) then it would have been DEVASTATING. And would have led to an EPIC My God What Have I Done moment for Nix, as he realized, too late, that “feeding the wrong wolf” had led him to destroy the one person in the world that he loved. Athena, in her last speeches, would have expressed forgiveness for her father and told him “it’s not too late.”
So that could have meant his redemption, as he takes part in the speech at the end and tells the recruits never to give up hope, since his doing so “cost me more than I will ever be able to say.” That way, the negativity that is the movie’s REAL villain is still personified in Nix, but even for someone as far gone as him, it’s not too late. [/SPOILER]
—input from me, but I saw it last week, and I rather enjoyed it. Quite charming. There are a few dents I’d probably try and hammer out, if it were up to me, but that’s true of anything.
