Quick and dirty movie review of LIFE 2017

[Gingerbread Demon]

6/10 but mainly for the production and look. The movie was good but nothing special.

This review might contain spoilers so you have been warned.

This is one of those movies I really like on a cold rainy night. It was for the most part fun but geez it's full of stupid people who are supposed to be the brightest and best minds. Really I kid you not.

So here we go they recover a soil sample from Mars that is on its way to Earth in a capsule, they manage to recover that and analyze the sample to find a single cell life form of some kind but it's in a dormant state and needs reawakening.

Now I can't really complain about that because well that seems like a thing most scientists might consider doing under controlled conditions. Try to revive the organism they found. So I gave them a pass on this.

But later on as it is seen moving and then growing they do dumb things like play with it and pet it.

It's an alien of undetermined origin and possibly very dangerous. Did this thought not occur to these supposed smart people? They could have left it in the box and not played with it and maybe things would have been better, but then we'd have a very boring movie on our hands.

However having said that I wonder how the movie might have played out had they done this and followed Calvin's adventure on Earth and what mayhem he'd cause on the planets surface. That would have perhaps been a tiny bit more interesting then what we got which was great production wise but slightly predictable.

Anyway I had fun with this but your mileage may very. You might like it too or not.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. All their interaction with the "Calvin" organism was within the isolation box using gloves and tools, and it wasn't "playing," it was scientific research, observing its response to stimuli, growth patterns, and so forth. Once it unexpectedly broke its way free from the box, the crew did everything they could to institute quarantine protocols and recapture it, but it kept proving resourceful enough to circumvent the safety systems. If anything was implausible, it was how superintelligent and adaptable Calvin was in its ability to beat everything they threw at it.

I liked the film up until its ending, which felt very contrived and unconvincing in the way it forced a cliched horror-movie ending that I felt was contrary to the spirit of the rest of the film. Here's my blog review: https://christopherlbennett.wordpre...know-the-general-state-of-existence-spoilers/

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I meant that first guy petting and stroking it when it was wee small. That isn't a rational or sensible thing to do under any circumstance.

Potential planet killer organism and you are petting it?

Although at the time they had no idea about that but still alien organism, but then we'd have a very short movie. I would have rather had them not do that and the organism had remained somewhat benign and the chaos had happened on Earth once its sent down.

 

[Christopher]

I meant that first guy petting and stroking it when it was wee small. That isn't a rational or sensible thing to do under any circumstance.

It was in containment at the time, so I don't see what difference it makes.

Besides, the whole point of science is to put curiosity and wonder toward the new above fear toward the new. If the only way we responded to any new thing was to fear and hate it, we'd never learn anything. As I said in my review, what I liked about this movie was that, up until the end, it felt less like a standard horror movie and more like a movie about people doing science, recognizing the hazards a new discovery posed but still responding rationally to it as something to be learned about and understood, rather than some evil to react to with superstitious dread.

I would have rather had them not do that and the organism had remained somewhat benign and the chaos had happened on Earth once its sent down.

That wouldn't have happened. The risk assessment for an alien life form has nothing to do with whether it acts cuddly or not; it has to do with whether its biochemistry poses a risk of toxicity or infection, whether it might reproduce out of control, things like that. An alien microbe or disease organism is a far more likely threat to Earth than a huge rampaging monster. No matter how the creature behaved, it would've remained fully quarantined from Earth's environment -- for its own safety as much as humanity's, since there was no way of knowing if Earth's environment would kill it.

I mean, this was the whole point of Rebecca Ferguson's character in the film. Her specific job was to enforce the anti-contamination protocols at all costs.

You might be interested in picking up the current (Sept/Oct 2018) issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It's got a story by Adam-Troy Castro, "The Unnecessary Parts of the Story," that offers an interesting twist on the tropes of alien-monster movies. (Plus it incidentally contains a new story by me.)

 

[USS Firefly]

I think the movie was great and like Christopher I don't think the ending was fitting