This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Can Do Generation
Plot Overview
In
2069 a.d. thirty child
colonists are sent in the spaceship HUMANITUS to populate
a distant world with their yet-to-be-born grandchildren. They're
all lab-produced children isolated since birth from planet Earth so
they won't ever miss it. Adult researcher and mentor Richard (Colin
Farrell) goes with them for protection. Ten years out—as the
kids all hit puberty at once—Richard gets fried doing an EVA to repair the LCS linking them
to Earth. Now they are really on their own without a clue.
They'd been drugged in their food to
keep them “dull and docile,” uninterested in sex, but
two of them, Christopher (Tye Sheridan) & Zac (Fionn Whitehead,)
got wise and “stopped drinking the blue.” Now they notice
girls. By-the-book Christopher gets elected—by a too-young-to-vote
electorate—their new chief officer. He's the alpha dog.
Free-spirited Zac is the beta dog who challenges Chris for leadership.
This conflict makes up most of the drama.
Theirs is a classless society all of
an age. They dress every one in solid black jumpsuits and all
have their hair trimmed straight, medium and neat. When the rebels
break into the weapons cache and start brandishing long guns,
the token colored girl among them speaks up to push for peace. Good
speech, that, but in a crowd spooked by rumors of inner aliens, if
you're the only one with kinky hair, black skin, and Negroid features,
it might be a better idea to lie low. True, they've never been exposed
to institutional racism, but some of it might be inherent. Take a
page from a Davis Bunn novel:
When we work with human subjects, we must accept that their responses are not always in line with their experiences. … We can control a subject's experience. That is what establishing protocols are all about. What we can't control is how the subject views the experience or what their reaction might be. Sometimes the way they emotionally respond to our experiment completely skews what they perceive. (241)
Ideology
Richard is the quintessential father figure and mother Earth—with her operating manual—the mother figure. Zac badmouths Richard big time and ignores the manual, frighteningly so for such a dependent society. One might consider, (Prov. 30:17) “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” The valley is the end point of a fall and the eaglets the next-generation beneficiaries of the treat. Losing body parts is gruesome enough on Earth. Here in outer space raw exposure to its vacuum will cause one's blood to boil, to say nothing of ejecting body parts. As for your next generation, if your semen leeches out, there won't be one, at least not from you. There's a precedent when biblical Ham shamed his father Noah whose resulting curse on Ham's offspring shows up as an archetype in other movies I've reviewed.
Production Values
“” (2021) was written and directed by Neil Burger. It stars Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Fionn Whitehead, and Colin Farrell. They all did a pretty good job of portraying initially dull characters who didn't exhibit much emotion. They were believable in their own context.
MPAA rated it PG–13—nearly an R—for violence, some strong sexuality, bloody images, a sexual assault and brief strong language. It was filmed in Bucharest, Romania. It has a runtime of 108 minutes. It boasts great set designs and visual effects. The sound effects are not overdone.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This sci-fi flick may disappoint someone with grand expectations for an action-adventure movie. The spaceship is so fragile it doesn't take much to jeopardize it, and the same can be said for the thirty teenage astronauts inside. I personally liked it a lot, but then I read sociology books for enjoyment. It's good for what it is, which some people will like and some won't. See it for something different.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software, Print.
Bunn, Davis. Burden of Proof. Grand Rapids: Revell, 2020. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org