Arrival and Passengers, both from 2016, over the weekend. The former was confusing but enjoyable, the latter was disturbing and a bummer. I might rewatch Arrival to see if it makes any more sense the 2nd time around. Passengers just kind of made me sad, not quite worked up enough to be angry.
I only watched Passengers an hour in.
But so far... I just HAD to respond.
Passengers was (so far) fantastic. So fantastic in such a crucial way. Yes it fisted what is right. To just fist - random animal. To fist for a good reason and to fist well - great art. Because that is the place where we can penetrate what it actually means to be human. Rather than what your constructed idea of BS tells you. Your moral code which makes you "disturbed". With the only real function so that we can applaud your conformity and your internal audience can applaud as well. Because social webbing is all, am I right? Well it may be all, but this dude got NONE. And facing that, your empathy falls into the pits of conformity. Into an echo chamber of right. Mine fell into a tunnel of real focus. Of what matters, fundamentally rather than socially. And those fundamentals AND their projections - that is exactly what great art is ALL about!
What would you do, given the same situation? Sci-Fi is, when it is goood, all about that. And passengers did it, like few movies before. I am utterly estranged by the at best mediocre reviews. Sure some things where not stellar, but as a whole, it is a great... not work. But try. And it tries well enough to be really good in the end. Because so few do try, what I laid out. To go where it hurts, where it tells, where it, fundamentally,
projects.
Interstellar tried that. And I am sure the author is very proud of himself. And all he gets are dumb bricks of fecal verbal exposure. Social drones uttering their program. Only able to measure the world in terms of who likes them and who should like them.
Just watch Soap Opera.