Annihilation - New movie from writer/director of Ex Machina, starring Natalie Portman

[Skipper]

And by the way, how is it possible that they did not know how much time had passed before they were struck by amnesia? They had wristwatches that seemed to work perfectly! And why didn't each of them have a GoPro on them or something like that recording continually the expedition?

 

[Skipper]

I just realized what would be the perfect vehicle for the Area X.

The Landmaster from Damnation Alley

Bring it on, mutated uber-bear. I double dare you!

 

[Makarov]

Not only do they show that no communication is possible from inside, they even explain why that's the case in the movie. So how would they possibly know what was going on in there? And where did you see that their wristwatches worked?

Some of those ideas we just have to assume they tried and failed for some reason, the movie can't jam all that in there. The book is smarter about all this since in the book the border has a small opening they have to crawl through to get inside which explains why they go on foot.

 

[Skipper]

Not only do they show that no communication is possible from inside, they even explain why that's the case in the movie. So how would they possibly know what was going on in there?

Like already I explained, using a vehicle half outside the zone, half inside?

And where did you see that their wristwatches worked?

When they used them to find the north, after they had found compass didn't work? It would be impossible without a working wristwatch?
Find True North with Just Your Watch

They made clear multiple times that law of physics are the same inside the zone. Gravity is working. Cameras, a quite complicate piece of technology, are working. Guns are working, so it seems chemical reactions are the same inside and outside the zone. The zone is "just" messing with your DNA and (like the psychologist said) causing some sort of premature senility.

So, why they didn't use any vehicle?

Why they didn't do any experiment inside the zone but in the proximity of the border?

Why in the movie everyone is so stupid (even before entering the Area)?

 

[Makarov]

They mention all the failed past expeditions so it follows that they tried all of those things before the events of the movie and it didn't work

 

[Skipper]

They mention all the failed past expeditions so it follows that they tried all of those things before the events of the movie and it didn't work

Ok, I try this again. Why, for example, wouldn't they already know about the mutations occurring? If they wanted, stick a few mice in cages tied to ropes right at the edge of the shimmer and allowing to it envelope them before pulling them out at different intervals would have quickly made clear to scientists there that something weird was going on with the mice cells. What exactly prevented them from doing something like that?

And nothing, I repeat, nothing in the context of the movie explained why they couldn't use a vehicle. No evidence or exposition. Nothing. In the movie universe cars exist. Inside the shimmer every piece of machinery we saw was working (even cameras, objects that even in real life can be unreliable).

 

[Makarov]

The evidence is the entire southern reach facility of scientists next to the border and they don't know anything after being there for so long, they say drones don't work, and on crossing the border they lose days. What is the point of any more exposition on things the audience can come to conclusions on their own? Cameras work inside, but we don't see if they work when taken back through the border.

If you want detailed explanations then I suggest the book which has the to answer these things,

Spoiler

the border entrance too narrow for vehicles, it takes hours to cross and they could not put instruments through it, and the border disintegrates vehicles approaching by the sea, and they carefully plan expeditions to avoid Area X reacting to them.

The book is smarter but a lot of that is kind of irrelevant to the movie's story in my opinion

 

[JD]

I finally got around to watching this today, and I enjoyed it. It didn't totally blow me away, but I liked it. It had great performances from the whole cast, and some interesting ideas. I was a little hesitant after hearing about it being pretty gory when it first came, but it wasn't really as bad as expected. There were a couple of gory scenes, but they were pretty quick, felt appropriate for what was going on.
As for the ending,

Spoiler: ending

I was a little confused by what happened with Ventress. So the thing that was responsible for The Shimmer infected her, and then killed her when it was released, and used Lena's blood to create a duplicate?
As for Lena and Kane, Lena was the original, she destroyed the duplicate, but we did see earlier that she had been effected by the mutations while she was inside The Shimmer, Kane on the other hand is the duplicate.

 

[Christopher]

I saw it on DVD back in April. I loved Garland’s Ex Machina, and I liked the idea of an all-female team exploring something complicatedly alien, but I'm afraid this one disappointed and bored me. I saw people talking about how “intellectual” it was, but I found it rather shallow — some ideas about biology and the nature of death and change were touched on but not really done much with. And even though they sent in several scientists to confront the unknown and alien, all they did when they encountered it was to shoot it or set it on fire — how is that cerebral? There were some really beautiful images toward the climax, but the concepts were too fanciful and too superficially developed, the pace was too slow, and the characters too unsympathetic and underdeveloped.

 

[Skipper]

And like I said, they were some of the stupidest scientists I've ever seen in a "serious" science fiction movie.

 

[Sci]

Y'all need to watch Folding Ideas's Dan Olson analyze the movie.

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[Richard Baker]

Interesting, I am going to rewatch the film now...

 

[Reverend]

The only real surprising insight I got from that video was the bit at the beginning where he shows clips of other youtubers making a strictly literal analyses of the movie. I mean, how could one not get that the whole thing is steeped in metaphor? It's hardly subtle about it.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If I were to be cynical, I'd posit that authority doesn't want critical thinkers; it needs uncritical consumers. However, I think this state of affairs is probably more by accident than design. There have always been those who are averse to semiotic analysis and prefer simplicity.

 

[crookeddy]

The only real surprising insight I got from that video was the bit at the beginning where he shows clips of other youtubers making a strictly literal analyses of the movie. I mean, how could one not get that the whole thing is steeped in metaphor? It's hardly subtle about it.

Movies described as "terrible" these days are often just movie not meant to take literally.

 

[Reverend]

If I were to be cynical, I'd posit that authority doesn't want critical thinkers; it needs uncritical consumers. However, I think this state of affairs is probably more by accident than design. There have always been those who are averse to semiotic analysis and prefer simplicity.

That's largely true, but then neither extreme is desirable. While there's been a definite and by now undeniable trend towards anti-intellectualism in the last few decades, there also never seems to be any shortage of quasi-intellectual, borderline apophenic auto flatus olfaction; genuinely reading nonsensical meaning where non exists in the hopes of seeming deep...both on the critical side and from the auteurs.
Though arguably that could be said to be part of the same movement, along with the increasing amount of credence given to pseudoscience and outright quackery.

Either way it generally appeals to those of the cogitatively challenged persuasion who paradoxically like to think they're the switched on, insightful ones.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

...there also never seems to be any shortage of quasi-intellectual, borderline apophenic auto flatus olfaction...

I approve of this turn of phrase.

Either way it generally appeals to those of the cogitatively challenged persuasion who paradoxically like to think they're the switched on, insightful ones.

Perhaps one motivation is to invent and propagate the Internet memes fittest to survive and thereby attract the most revenue -- though I must admit I haven't thought very deeply about this. I'm of an age now where I rarely if ever see anything that isn't obviously derivative of something else. I'm pretty much past expecting otherwise.