Life Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

[Kevin EK]

Kevin EK

Life Blu-ray Review

Life screams in outer space, to see if anyone can hear it on Blu-ray.



[review]

 

[Tino]

I enjoyed it way more than you Kevin. I thought it was a fine genre film. Alien wasn't that original too remember.

The 4K disc looks and sounds awesome.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Alien was a “people go into space and encounter hostile alien” story but may be the best telling of this tale ever committed to film. It certainly surpassed previous efforts to tell this tale and nothing made after it has even come close to it. Why was it better than other “hostile alien in space” tales? Well, it was beautifully cast, acted, photographed, designed, featured a monster out of a nightmare people had not seen onscreen before, and put the focus on mystery and suspense. Plus the story, while not complex, was well written and created real characters that you liked and cared about…adding weight to the moments where their lives were put in danger.

Many films that have followed Alien, including Life, have failed miserably at executing this formula…why? Well, since Alien they have tried this story so many times that it is like a comedian that only has one joke and his entire show is telling that same joke again and again for two hours…it gets tired and he gets tired and only executes the joke well the first time. So, basically everything has been wrung out of this tale so attempting to show it to us again just does not work. We know the punchline.

Specifically, one of the big issues with these films is they just don’t care about characters anymore. Does not matter if we are talking about Life or Prometheus…they throw bland, empty characters at us that it seems the writers don’t care about because they are only going to kill them off. So, we have to watch characters we could not care less about meet their deaths…and often because the writers have no idea or just don’t care they don’t think at all about how they kill them off. Generally it involves them doing something incredibly dumb or that defies logic.

Then there are the sad attempts at creating a monster since Alien. The monster in Alien was pretty amazing. Each film that follows Alien now has to find a way to compete with that monster. It is tough to top. Not impossible but tough. Frankly, the fairly feeble attempts to do this make it seem Mr. Giger was the only man on the planet able to think up a nightmarish creature…but the truth is they likely do not want to go outside the box anymore to create a great monster. They just use the same set of CGI guys again and again and again and again. End result…we get bland CGI monsters.

So, we have bland monsters killing off bland characters in a story recycled so many times it barely holds together anymore.

Then once principal photography is completed and they go to edit these things…well…they slap these stories together following the same pattern and using the same tempo so that you just feel like you are watching the same film again and again and again. Once the first kill happens it is all about getting to the next gag quickly and who cares about logic or story or anything other than getting everybody killed off so we can get to the climax where the final two characters have to make a dire decision…and it looks like everybody is going to end up dead.

Of course in post Alien films the threat of “destruction of our planet and all mankind” is always in play…because we seem to have reached a point in film history where the only possible outcome of every film has to be either “everybody on our planet will be wiped out” or the good guys save the day by preventing the destruction of the planet and mankind by winning and/or sacrificing themselves in the process. In a superhero or action film the hero just saves the entire planet and goes on to the next film where they save the entire planet again and then the third film where they again save the entire planet. In a science fiction film they always have the “twist” in play where the entire planet and all mankind actually gets wiped out.

So, in science fiction pictures you have two options…in superhero films there is just the single option.

Same joke told over and over and over.

Today people often say “Well, we can’t expect something original because everything has been done before.” but that’s not the case. We don’t have more original films because nobody wants to make them. They just want to bolt the same old pieces together and show you the same thing, with the same outcome, with different actors.

So, what is Life about? It is about $20.00 so you can watch the same story with different actors. Everything looks really pretty though.

 

[Walter Kittel]

A simple 'like' to Reggie's post seems insufficient, but the first line of his post says it best. While not original, 1979's Alien completely revitalized the hybridization of SF and horror and served to introduce a generation of film viewers to the potential of that mashup.

I'm on the fence concerning Life and posts like Reggie's don't help.

- Walter.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Well, the truth really is, Walter, that if you have seen Alien...and then watched any of the many films that came after it in this genre...there really is not a real good reason for you to watch Life.

It looks nice but once they hit the first gag...you will know every single thing that is going to happen for the rest of the film and about the only thing you will get out of this is perhaps a new and greater appreciation of your watch...because you will start to look at it a lot as this wears on.

Is it a bad film? No, not really. I actually think it is a better version of, and possibly a reaction to, Prometheus. The scientists at least act and talk more like scientists. Many things they do in the film seem to be a reaction to how horribly dumb Prometheus was...they even use an "electrocution" bit as part of what gets things rolling. However, it is a better bit than the electrocution nonsense in Prometheus. At least in Life what the guy is electrocuting is possibly alive rather than the idiocy of electrocuting a 2000 year old decapitated head. I mean alien engineer on a crucifix did no one think about how dumb that was? So, it does not sink to that level of stupid but I don't think that can be taken as an endorsement of the film.

I will say this, I did like the final shot in Life it was fun and appeared to be leading to a major monster movie tie-in sequel type thing...not that I want to see that but I thought it was funny. Honestly, if you have nothing else to do watch Life but if you really want to watch a great hostile alien in space movie that is not just a time waster...go back and watch Alien again. There really was no reason to make Life and I think the only people that might find it intriguing are people that have not watched a hostile alien in space film in the last 40 years.

 

[Kevin EK]

I appreciate that many viewers have enjoyed Life, Tino included. He is correct to note that ALIEN draws from multiple other movies and stories.

I would just note that the creative team on ALIEN found a really interesting approach to their story, one that included a completely original idea of an alien lifecycle and incorporated some truly disturbing imagery from HR Giger.

The team on Life appears to have drawn their inspiration from watching ALIEN and Gravity and simply combining the notions. That's not necessarily a bad idea and Life does try to occasionally find something more than just the usual jump scares. But the movie becomes way too formulaic for me - and the constant tipping of the scales in Calvin's favor really gives away where things are going long before they happen.

Reggie is correct to note that many have speculated that the ending could set up a sequel - I just don't think the movie performed well enough for that to ever happen. On the other hand, I've been proven quite wrong on that score in the past. They did make a sequel to Dumb and Dumber, after all...

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Personally, I saw a lot more than "Alien rip-off" here, but YMMV. I saw a combination of Alien, Psycho, The Thing, Leviathan, Slither and even Planet of the Apes '68. I'm sure there are more I could mention, but I only saw Gravity as relevant for the zero-gravity elements. The things I found that really distinguished this from the better examples were (1) there really wasn't much of a political bent to the material; and (2) the nihilism was really played with a light touch, like a 50s B sci-fi/horror programmer.

Again, not really original, but even material hailed as original has a tendency to break down under close scrutiny. I read an opinion comparing Hunt for the Wilderpeople with Disney/Pixar's Up. It had a point, but the execution is what made Hunt for the Wilderpeople unique. While not particularly unique, Life was fun, and somewhat blackly comic, and I'm a sucker for black comedy.

 

[Tino]

Alien is by far the best of its ilk and one of my favorite films ever.

But I can still enjoy a similar film like Life which is a solid thriller in its own right.

 

[Kevin EK]

I agree with the notion of Life as a black comedy. The writing team certainly would lead me down that path in any case.
And there's another way to perceive the movie - if you take it along the lines of how Die Hard makes John McClane the actual antagonist of the storyline where Hans Gruber is actually more of a protagonist. By that extension, if you see the movie as Calvin's struggle for survival, there's an interesting exploration to be had.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Personally, I saw a lot more than "Alien rip-off" here, but YMMV. I saw a combination of Alien, Psycho, The Thing, Leviathan, Slither and even Planet of the Apes '68. I'm sure there are more I could mention, but I only saw Gravity as relevant for the zero-gravity elements.

If you want to get down to it really it is Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians in space...except they know who the killer is. As Kevin says they are strictly going by the formula here with a few humorous winks. I don't think anybody making the film thought they had something amazing or original...they knew they were reworking a very tired idea.

In all honesty my favorite thing about the picture is the ending...

Spoiler: SPOILER

With that shot of all the boats off the coast of an Asian country and we know Calvin grows when he eats and is getting bigger and bigger it would seem we are headed into Godzilla territory with the final shot...which takes me right out of the film but made me laugh because of the obvious tip of the hat. It also leaves the whole film feeling like it was just a tribute to other better films and that the filmmakers know this completely. Another movie about movies.

One thing that boggles my mind is Jake Gyllenhaal who can be riveting (see Nightcrawler, Zodiac, Prisoners, Source Code, or Enemy) but in this film (and I know his part is poorly written) is just nonexistent. I mean he brings nothing to the screen...a giant goose egg.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

On the Gravity side of things...

I don't think Life is at all like Gravity but it borrows a bunch of stuff from Gravity. Really, Life seems like they sat in a room watching other science fiction films and just said "OK, we'll use that from that picture and that from that picture and that from that picture and boom we're done. Instant script!"

As a film experience Gravity is a much better picture and I liked the characters. Life gives you a bunch of cliches and cardboard cuts outs for characters and then just goes through the motions of killing them all off.