So I got my repeat viewing in, and I do have to say that I liked it more the second time. The first thing I had to do was completely throw out any form of logical time-travel effects that I think about because if I kept getting caught up in that, I would never enjoy it. Second, something occurred to me that also effected some of my initial AoT viewings too: I was expecting too much. For both of those movies, I was going in planning on "Lost City" caliber material, which meant that they could be as good or great as they wanted, but they would have to be down-right phenominal to make me happy. So I had to throw that standard out too. So, once I stopped over thinking the time travel and stop expecting so much, it really was a quality movie. Definately worth a 4. A couple things I got from round two- some observations and some problems.
-I previously mentioned that the ending was weak and a cop out. Well, I was talking to one of my buddies the other day and he made a pretty decent case. Sometimes, the writers get the heros written into such an incredibly impossible corner that they have to settle for the simple solution because any incredible escape could very easily kill the suspension of disbelief. And it made sense. As much as I disliked the ending, how
were they supposed to get out of that?
-Some people have complained about a lot of the recent O'Neill behavior, and I definately noticed and agreed this movie. Real-O'Neill was never serious with the exception of when everybody started disappearing. It was literally one smart-assed comment after another. Don't get me wrong, I love O'Neill, and I love his humor, but that was over-kill.
-As much as some people tried accusing the character of Mitchell of being a wanna-be O'Neill, he definately brings his own flavor to everything. There are some lines that I literally can't see anyone else saying- "Carter!
That is a
terrible plan!" "Daniel, why would you go and do a thing like that?"
-I found it interesting that in both movies, they have to make moral decisions, pick what some might see as the "wrong" answer both times, and they never batted an eye. Sure, AoT had references to "We're not happy that we had to use the device", but they never hesitated to make these calls with sweeping ramifications.
-A minor note on Mitchell going back. Since they had Browder playing one guy back there all ready, they should have had him played by one person in the beginning and then played by Browder at the end. Have our Mitchell replace someone. I can understand two Mitchell's, but we didn't need two Mitchells both protrayed by Ben Browder.
-The writers and directors have put both of these movies together time-wise like they are being filmed for television. They need to stop that. If it's a matter of money limiting them to an hour and 20 or 30 minutes, then they can cut out the location filming. As much as I like those outdoors shots, a bigger story can help things feel epic just as much as big, expensive shots do. We've done two really great movies that were filmed for TV that had huge, beautiful shots, now lets have some great movies that get filmed for DVD that have huge stories.
