Tomorrowland-People Felt Brow-Beaten By Clooney's Performance
Even liberal critics are criticizing Clooney's character (not so different from real life character) over Global warming. How can it possibly be subtle then, as some have suggested. It's tanking at the box office. For those who saw the movie and loved it, what say you? from the article:
“Clooney seems to have been cast as much for his liberal credentials as for his star power, and it’s a choice that can’t help but leave a somewhat smug aftertaste,” writes Variety film critic Justin Chang. “He’s almost too fitting a spokesman for a movie that urges humanity to end all wars, take responsibility for the environment, and foster a greater, more alert engagement with the world around us.”
and THAT's the point
“Clooney seems to have been cast as much for his liberal credentials as for his star power, and it’s a choice that can’t help but leave a somewhat smug aftertaste,” writes Variety film critic Justin Chang. “He’s almost too fitting a spokesman for a movie that urges humanity to end all wars, take responsibility for the environment, and foster a greater, more alert engagement with the world around us.”
and THAT's the point
On the other hand, I've always felt a propaganda push from the Disney operation, even if it's for patriotism and all-American values. Disney's prime directive, however, is always to make money, and who can fault them for that? They may be betting on this film to have enough longevity to bring in a profit. One weekend hardly accounts for that.
The one show we absolutely banned in our house was Captain Planet. After just one episode of that Saturday morning cartoon, I saw what the societal planner had on their minds.
the name of one of their original theme parks! -- j
.
Do any of you recall Disney's ancient attempt at SciFi: The Black Hole? The one where a character says that her father was lost, "...searching for inhabitable life forms..."? That movie made it incredibly clear that Disney thinks, "This is SF, so it is all just make believe and doesn't have to make sense." This is the problem with Tomorrowland.
The basic premise is that all the optimistic high-IQ people go Galt into a splinter Earth, beginning with Edison and Eiffel and Turing. (You can move back and forth between worlds, so they did not have to actually disappear from our Earth in order to begin the other Earth.) Without the dead weight of regulations and stupidity, the new Earth becomes the flying-car, jetpack, interstellar exploration world of the future we dreamt of as kids.
So far, so good.
But the other main thread is a really good teenage girl in the modern world (capable; not whiny; good actress). By 'our time' something has gone horribly wrong in the other Earth and in our Earth and it is all very bad. But when you try to fit the 'what' went wrong and 'why' it is all bad and 'where' all of the geniuses went on Other Earth...well, I started to hear a tiny voice in the back of my brain saying, "...searching for inhabitable life forms..."
Not only did the plot arc not make sense, but it seemed to me that it emphatically did not matter to Disney that it did not make sense because it was 'just SF' and who would care. (You note that this is the same problem that Star Trek: Into Darkness had.)
So while there were some incredible individual scenes, there was no climax, no triumph, no resolution. The dystopian Warming scenes at the beginning were wonderfully overdone (whomever the prof was with the whites-alll-around-her-hysterical-eyes was great and she should have a permanent character role in the Industry), but they were completely implausible at the end and there was absolutely no refutation of them - though an opportunity existed for this.
Cloony (Frank Walker) was OK in parts, but where it would have meant most he totally fell through. Casey and Athena and the young Frank and some of the other characters sustained their parts. (The couple in the SF pawn shop were great.)
Jan
oh. . we may be there already!!! -- j
p.s. translation = SuperGoodReview and Thanks!!!
.
WooHoo. Another hobby/profession/whatever.
Jan
you gave credit to the fine supporting players and
even to the lead, where deserved. . good review!!! -- j
.
The images of the city and 'what they could do' were wonderful. I wanna!
Jan
and we can relish the genius optimists here -- like
you and Dr. Jim Brenner and others. . stick with it
and who knows what'll happen?!!! -- j
.
Jan
are a fine, calm, focused rational thinker with a slow
and steady rise to your emotions. . some "fly off the handle"
and you don't. . please keep it up!!! -- j
.
"Wasn't your father aboard the Cygnus?"
"Yes, its mission was the same as ours; to find habitable life".
As one movie critic put it, she made it sound like a shipload of fleas in search of a friendly dog.
The lack of respect for hard science fiction comes from the decades of merging SF with fantasy.
For example, the Alderson drive in the Falkenberg's Legion series and the Mote in God's Eye series of hard science fiction stories was actually named for a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who helped Pournelle work out the science behind the jump engines.
Right...(now watch your box office drop)
You'd'a thought that Disney would have learned, after 30 years of watching which SF productions were successful and which were not. SF, like Fantasy, must have meticulous and realistic plot and character development - because that is what grounds us to 'the people and the plan' in a hypothetical world full of the unexpected.
Jan
They have to get the idea eventually that Science MATTERS and a rational plot MATTERS and believable character interactions MATTER. They will get this idea, Hiraghm. Won't they? Tell me it is so, please.....?
Jan
.
As Michal J Fox said...we lie for a living and expect people to believe it for an hour and a half. Maybe the only honest member of show business.
Transformer movies bore me.
But I'd rather sit through one of those special effects action flicks than one that has a libtard propaganda timeouts.
I call all actors, save a few, cereal people, Flakes, Nuts, and Fruits, been saying this for 20 years. It's as true today as back then, maybe more so now. They are a bunch of people that make a living pretending to be something they ARE NOT. Then they expect everyone one to take them seriously because they pretended to be someone.
Insert quote from Issac Asimov, "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” This is "Clowny's" life plan. :--))
Is George Clooney related to Al Gore? Just wondering - after all not all correct parents are on the birth certificates.