foxtografo

I didn't heard of this film anywhere, somehow it went well under the radar, and I work at a cinema, being aware of new releases all the time.. what happened with it?

Found it searching for post apocalyptic setting here on the website and I'm pleasantly surprised!

The performances, character writing and cinematography (nothing exceptional but very polished and correct) are the strong points.

The story line is quite simple, a family have to defend their land and they keep their training strict to military level. It's good to see characters making sense in their decisions (in the majority of the time, there are some exceptions, it's not perfect..) and the action is solid, something that's very overlooked in action films, the consistency is important. Again, it's not perfect, but it's very decent.

Something that bothered me is the "all white men are evil and stupid" kind of take from the director. I understand the references and the background of the story, but since this isn't a historical movie and it's set in the present/future, I find quite unnecessary and a bit offensive. I'd understand if facts from the past are being portraited but this isn't the case.

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the film, besides that particular creative choice of the director, I found the film well done and I was able to overlook the binarity of the factions..

This movie interested me by the post apocalyptic premise, I really was in the mood for something on the style, so I gave it a go without realising it was really a romance.. The cinematography is really good, and I found a restored version which looks super sharp, so the visual aspect is incredible. I don't know how they achieved the empty NY scenes, but they look fantastic!

In terms of the story, I just couldn't care less about the characters, to be honest. I found everyone absolutely obnoxious and childish. It's really incredible, even for the time this film was released, specially because the setting of the story actually breaks any taboos the characters may have from the society they were living in. I understand that's what they're trying to portrait, but the dialogs are incredibly dull, redundant and ridiculous.

The performances, specially Belafonte felt very overacted for me, I couldn't connect with him at any point of the film.

I didn't know Stevens, she has a very beautiful energy on screen, but her character wasn't strong enough to make me root for her.. (strangely, apparently the actress committed suicide as she was secretly married with a black man and it wasn't well seen.. a very sad story) Ferrer I think makes a better job in a shorter time in the story, but his character quickly turns in to a very unreasonable idiot!

I really understand what the story was trying to tell, I just found the characters very shallow and unintelligent, so I couldn't enjoy the movie, I struggled to go through it.

Still, the images of the city will stay in my memory for sure (by the way, I'm a photographer) as some of the best in the genre.

Recommended only for the looks, I'm afraid..

Pretty much resumed everything there, but let's detail more.

They show actually starts quite interesting, with three factions, synths, cyborgs and hybrids being explained. Enter a spaceship full of different alien creatures. Not bad.

Good atmosphere, some more interesting characters, the cyborg, some problematic human crew (some are really inexplicably stupid, who would hire someone like that for a job as complex and dangerous as this? Doesn't make sense..), which I think it's a poor and lazy excuse for trouble to happen. I'm sure a script can be written where characters are intelligent and still have problems. Just lazy, cliché writing.

Enter the worst of the show, the hybrids. Not conceptually which is an android body with a transplanted human consciousness, but because they use kids' minds. And not clever kids, just any random kid that's about to die. Unfortunately they're all idiots. The excuse is that adult minds wont adapt to the new bodies, but instantly we see how these kids fail to adapt and struggle to do the simplest tasks. Besides their effectiveness, they're very uninteresting, stupid and obnoxious, so it's really annoying to see that the show is entirely based on them and the Alien is pretty much a back thing appearing here and there.

Would have been WAY more interesting to se these hybrids as geniuses about to die, of any age, which would be more interesting as per their interaction between a mature mind, an open mind on its learning stage, a brave young adult, and so.. would make sense too that if you invested billions in these bodies, you'd use a clever mind, which is literally the reason, as the owner says, to have someone clever to talk to. He just wishes these random childish minds will be come geniuses, but he doesn't even try to teach them things or nurse their intellect in any way. It's absolute nonsense, specially coming from someone who calls himself "the boy genius" and doesn't do anything remotely clever in the whole show, quite a pathetic character.

The main character, one of these hybrids, even though apparently smarter and with leader capabilities, becomes a poorly excused demi god and an obnoxious excuse to introduce philosophy where it's not needed. Absolutely unbearable, I couldn't stop rolling my eyes through the las whole three episodes.

The Alien, the one we came to see, is barely an important character in the series, and definitely the worst version of I've seen so far, it's a mere dog pet for one of the characters, as stupid as a cold minded predator (so the character has been for so many instances) can be when hunting, and shown in plain day light completely ruining the way we always seen and felt the character so far. In these scenes, you can tell how much of a guy in a suit it is, and the movement of the Alien looks clunky and slow, nothing threatening at all.

Then, the fact that is called Alien Earth, many fans prefer seeing Alien in a space setting, I actually found the earth, city environment a very interesting setting, I actually thought this many years ago, thinking of Predator 2, always wondered about the possibilities. Finally I get to see it, and a series was so exciting, since it gives lots of time to develop the atmosphere, characters and situation, but the settings are actually a spaceship and a laboratory in an island in the middle of the sea, so.. not much of what I expected.. huge disappointment.

Some interesting points were the atmosphere on the first half of the season, the cyborg, the synth and the introduction of more alien species to the lab, but these at any point actually interact with the Alien, so quite a wasted opportunity and a pointless addition.. As it ends, I doubt I'll be seeing how this advances, since it just opens to more about the most annoying characters just being what they are but in a bigger scale.. hard pass.

Overall, a terrible script with some good production value, some enormously annoying selection of main characters and very few interesting ones to hold on to.

A terribly huge disappointment, I'd rate it lower as I feel so bad about this show, but I guess there are some good things I enjoyed in there.