Annihilation

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  • Annihilation

    Anyone seen this yet?

  • #2
    Re: Annihilation

    Originally posted by Darthclaw13 View Post
    Anyone seen this yet?
    I did. There was so much I didn't understand regarding the ending, or even the overall choices of the characters.

    What did you think?


    Massive SPOILERS. Highlight to view. I'm assuming that Portman's character in the end is also the fake her and the real her died in the firebomb thing. If so, what are we meant to imply now that she and her fake/altered husband (Oscar Isaac) are out in the world? Does that mean the Shimmer will happen again?

    Also... Fire simply ended it all? No one thought to launch a missile into the lighthouse? In three years of people dying and never coming back?

    And -- I'm guessing that the theme is that life (hardships, bad choices, unavoidable emotional pain) alters you over time, and turns you into a different person. The Shimmer was simply advancing that process, to extreme results. But WHY? To what end? To accomplish what? What was the point of the movie?

    I almost felt like Portman should have had to overcome the pain she caused her husband (by her affair) in order to conquer the Shimmer.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Annihilation

      Originally posted by figment View Post
      I did. There was so much I didn't understand regarding the ending, or even the overall choices of the characters.

      What did you think?


      Massive SPOILERS. Highlight to view. I'm assuming that Portman's character in the end is also the fake her and the real her died in the firebomb thing. If so, what are we meant to imply now that she and her fake/altered husband (Oscar Isaac) are out in the world? Does that mean the Shimmer will happen again?

      Also... Fire simply ended it all? No one thought to launch a missile into the lighthouse? In three years of people dying and never coming back?

      And -- I'm guessing that the theme is that life (hardships, bad choices, unavoidable emotional pain) alters you over time, and turns you into a different person. The Shimmer was simply advancing that process, to extreme results. But WHY? To what end? To accomplish what? What was the point of the movie?

      I almost felt like Portman should have had to overcome the pain she caused her husband (by her affair) in order to conquer the Shimmer.

      Recently saw this -- and with pretty high expectations based on the trailer (once again, the trailer pulls me in...) and was quite disappointed.

      I think Arrival has really set the bar quite high in terms of smart first contact science fiction (or just smart science fiction in general) -- and it's very hard not to draw comparisons -- all to the detriment of Annihilation.

      They advance this idea, both in the trailer and in the movie that there's really something ineffably mysterious and unknown and unknowable and inexplicable going on inside this "shimmer."

      Well -- this alien stuff came down in a meteor and hit a light house and whatever this gunk is it sort of refracts light but also "refracts" the DNA of living things within its range, which is sort of a gobble-de-good talk way of saying that all of the living things within its ever-growing range start to merge with everything else. So plants merge with animals. Animals merge with other animals. And ditto with people. All of the people that enter it become part of this combined living thing and start merging all over the place.

      Now -- how does this explain how the husband (who is actually some kind of alien clone thingy) pops up outside of the shimmer and shows up outside of Natalie Portman's bedroom having some kind of blood spasm attack? It doesn't. Not. At. All.

      Why does anyone think that getting to the lighthouse where this thing began will somehow stop the shimmer or solve the problem? I mean, they might find something there, but if it's something like a disease or some sort of biological growth, there's no reason to believe that there's anything at the lighthouse that's going to help them.

      This is what you call the "queen ant" notion that you see in mostly bad science fictions. It's the idea that you have some massive unstoppable whatever -- but if you only just find the "queen" whatever and kill that thing, then the whole thing -- the whole whatever will just fall down dead and stop.

      They did this in one of the Star Wars Prequels, don't know or care which. They had something similar fueling most of the action in World War Z -- where they spent the whole movie chasing after "Patient Zero" -- as if finding this guy was somehow going to be the key to anything at all

      And same bullshit deal here. Except of course, by some ludicrous deus ex my -ass, Natalie Portman somehow actually manages to destroy the entire shimmer with one incendiary grenade.

      And she escapes.

      But all of this begs so many freaking questions.

      First -- this team schleps its way through this incredibly deadly swamp for of mutant swamp monsters to the light house -- which is sitting right on the coast. At once point there's this big to-do between Portman and another team member who wants to go back because the whole thing is so dangerous and she says no -- they've gone so far in it's closer to go to the lighthouse and the coast and then they can just follow the coast out.

      Ehhh! You can just follow the coast out? Then why the **** did you go through deadly swamp land? Why didn't you follow the coast in? Or -- hmm, why did you take a ****ing boat in -- directly to the lighthouse, which happens to be around twenty feet from the freaking ocean, where you can see the perfectly clear blue sky with no sign of any shimmering?

      Again, not a hard problem to solve -- just have someone ask and have someone answer that they've tried to go in through the ocean, below the ocean -- nobody can even get close that way -- and show the shimmer coming down to sea level and it looks like a freaking hurricane, so it's obvious that nothing can get in that way.

      And as to this whole business of "nothing that goes in comes out."

      Really? I mean what if you just take one step in and then step right back out? That doesn't work? What if you put a canary in a cage on a stick and stuck it in a pulled it back out? What then? What if you put a man on a rope and had him walk in a few yards and then pulled him out?

      And as for the ending -- they chose to shape this thing as Natalie Portman in isolation recounting what happened to interrogators in doomsday suits.

      But if that's the case, did she or didn't she tell them some of the key things that we witnessed in flashback? Notably when she saw that her own blood was contaminated with the alien whatever. And most notably when she realized that her husband had killed himself and that whatever it was that showed up in her bedroom was a shimmer clone.

      Because certainly if she'd told them those things -- the first thing that I would do would be lock those two ******s in the tightest isolation that mankind had ever come up with -- and I'm not talking about that bullshit isolation that they used in 28 Days Later where that idiot left that infected woman alone in that room so that her guilty husband could just wander in and get bitten and then infect the entire ****ing world -- No, I mean real ****ing isolation where you don't even let air or light or electricity leak out.

      Or even better, just kill them, burn the ashes, and then reduce the ashes to ****ing plasma and then shoot the ****ing plasma into ****ing outer space -- and just to be on the safe side, drop a ****ing on the site where the shimmer burned itself out -- maybe a few nukes, again, just to be on the safe side.

      But, I guess that's just me.

      Again, maybe I'm just being silly, but it just seems that there are lots of unanswered questions about just how porous the shimmer is.

      I don't know to what extent the book went into all of this or to what extent the adapters felt that they had to jump over stuff to get the team into the shimmer, but I honestly don't think that getting down to details is necessarily boring.

      Sometimes I think that it shows that the storytellers have really thought things through -- that they're actually ahead of the audience in creating a realistic world.

      That's what makes a movie like Dr. Strangelove so great, because despite being a comedy, everything in it seems to terrifying credible, so well-thought out.

      It's what makes a movie like the original Flight of the Phoenix work so well (and the remake so bad) -- they were really willing to devote a lot of the movie to the details of just how a handful of men in a desert can take the wreck of one plane and turn it into a new plane that can actually fly.

      And because you see them do it, you believe it.

      And in a movie like this, where you're asking us to believe in something that's essentially absurd, the need to ground that absurdity in reality -- to make the people who are studying it do it right, is that much more essential.

      In the end, this is little more than a rehashing of the Colour Out of Space -- something mysterious falls from out of space, it spreads, it infects, a family torn apart is at the heart of it, it changes those that it touches. It finally leaves, but in the end, there's still a chilling suggestion that the infection has remained.

      Only Lovecraft did it way better.

      NMS

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Annihilation

        I was going to talk about nmstevens post, but then he started to talk about why all these details were not explained in this movie when stuff like that was so well explained in two other completely different movies. So what's the point? Annihilation is a mystery. I'm so glad they did not waste time on explaining why they didn't take a boat or talk about all the things they've tried to understand and experiment with the shimmer. In this kind of movie, that is the biggest mistake you can do.

        Doing that just destroys the mystery and suspense. Also, it just dumbs down the whole thing. I perfectly inferred that they've tried alot of things. Going in the shimmer was not only to get to the lighthouse, that was very obvious. They took samples for one. They clearly also wanted to follow the path of the previous expedition, as one of them was the first to actually come back.

        Why would the narrator explain to the other scientist that she was an alien? That does not make any sense what so ever. All the persons who went in were suicidal. the nature of the alien was splitting apart everything. The main character and her huspand had a broken relationship. The alien entity, shimmer or whatever it was was not destroyed by fire. Something changed when it discovered a connection between oscar isaac and nathalie portman's characters. Love maybe? A positive ending surely, a blank slate

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        • #5
          Re: Annihilation

          Originally posted by Bananos View Post
          I was going to talk about nmstevens post, but then he started to talk about why all these details were not explained in this movie when stuff like that was so well explained in two other completely different movies. So what's the point? Annihilation is a mystery. I'm so glad they did not waste time on explaining why they didn't take a boat or talk about all the things they've tried to understand and experiment with the shimmer. In this kind of movie, that is the biggest mistake you can do.
          I don't think nmstevens wanted it explained (which I hate). I think he was just stating that it's illogical.

          If your goal is to get to the lighthouse and it's just a matter of walking up the beach a mile or two to get there, then why go the dangerous way with a high likelihood of getting everybody killed before you get there?

          It's got to make logical sense, even in a SciFi or Fantasy setting. Which would have been simple to do in the case of the lighthouse. Maybe there's a monstrous Whateverthehellitis swallowing every ship or person who tries to get to the lighthouse from the sea or beach? It wouldn't have taken long to establish that.

          I read most of the "Ranger's Apprentice" books, because my kids kept bringing them home. Unfortunately, what happens in a lot of this kind of series of books, the writer gets bored and starts mailing in the stories. The money is still there, so I'm sure there's pressure on the author to write just "one more".

          In the last one I read they went to a fantasy version of Japan to aid the rightful leader (or something like that). They had to get to some remote fortress and and they basically had to fight their way in. Getting there for these guys, took weeks (if I remember right) the getting there took up over half the book -- maybe more.

          Then the author decided that a couple of other characters should also be there to help in the looming, climactic battle. They didn't have enough time to use the same route as the other characters took, so they just drove their ship to a different part of "Japan" (which was much closer to their destination) and easily convinced the people there that they needed to get to that fortress really fast. I think those people even helped them get there. Easy as pie.

          So obviously, everyone that read that book thought the same thing. "WTF -- why didn't everybody take the easy route?!"

          My two cents.
          Last edited by StoryWriter; 03-20-2018, 07:36 PM.
          "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Annihilation

            Originally posted by Bananos View Post
            I was going to talk about nmstevens post, but then he started to talk about why all these details were not explained in this movie when stuff like that was so well explained in two other completely different movies. So what's the point? Annihilation is a mystery. I'm so glad they did not waste time on explaining why they didn't take a boat or talk about all the things they've tried to understand and experiment with the shimmer. In this kind of movie, that is the biggest mistake you can do.

            Doing that just destroys the mystery and suspense. Also, it just dumbs down the whole thing. I perfectly inferred that they've tried alot of things. Going in the shimmer was not only to get to the lighthouse, that was very obvious. They took samples for one. They clearly also wanted to follow the path of the previous expedition, as one of them was the first to actually come back.

            Why would the narrator explain to the other scientist that she was an alien? That does not make any sense what so ever. All the persons who went in were suicidal. the nature of the alien was splitting apart everything. The main character and her huspand had a broken relationship. The alien entity, shimmer or whatever it was was not destroyed by fire. Something changed when it discovered a connection between oscar isaac and nathalie portman's characters. Love maybe? A positive ending surely, a blank slate

            Okay, so let me try to make this point clearly, because it seems to be something that a lot of screenwriters and a lot of filmmakers don't seem to understand.

            Text and subtext aren't the same thing.

            The story and theme aren't the same thing.

            The story and what the story is about aren't the same thing.

            Any story, whatever it might be, has to work on an internal, thematic level. The original Godzilla was about a giant radioactive monster attacking Japan. It was also, on a thematic level, about re-imagining the war between Japan and the west, with Godzilla standing in for the the West and an honorable Japanese scientist selflessly sacrificing himself to destroy this unstoppable invader, thus providing Japan with that honorable victory. Hurray, Japan wins!

            Yeah, that's what it was thematically. But it was also, literally, a movie about a giant monster attacking Japan, and for it to work, it had to work on that literal level.

            And it's fine to talk about the thematic underpinnings of Annihilation, but if the story doesn't make sense on the level of the "story" -- then whatever it's trying to accomplish on the thematic level isn't going to rescue it.

            If you've sent a dozen missions in and none of them have come back, what's the point of sending in yet another one -- with no particular difference other than it's led by a team leader who's both dying of cancer and suicidal -- going in exactly the same way that's led all the others to their deaths?

            Because you want them to collect samples? Or because it serves the thematic needs of the story?

            Here's the point. We know that the characters are in story -- and that what they do has a broader significance in which they and their actions represent ideas and concepts and themes.

            But they don't know that. They just think that they're people tasked to accomplish things in a real world with greater or lesser resemblance to our own.

            And in a real world confronted with something like the shimmer, we'd expect those tasked with dealing with it act in a certain way -- not to act like a bunch of jackasses.

            There are movies that handle these "what if" scenarios in a smart way -- and then there are movies like Annihilation. Far from "dumbing things down" -- working out in detail just how a scenario like this would have been handled in the real world creates a sense of verisimilitude that sorely lacking in this movie.

            And the notion that these folks are confronting some sort of vast "mystery" -- once again, apart from the fact that this alien stuff is both refracting the light and also "refracting" -- essential mixing up the genetic material of the things that get inside it -- what's the big mystery?

            If you like it, you like it. I don't want to get into a fight about it. I went in with great expectations and just found the whole thing very disappointing.

            NMS

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            • #7
              Re: Annihilation

              Originally posted by nmstevens View Post
              And it's fine to talk about the thematic underpinnings of Annihilation, but if the story doesn't make sense on the level of the "story" -- then whatever it's trying to accomplish on the thematic level isn't going to rescue it.

              If you've sent a dozen missions in and none of them have come back, what's the point of sending in yet another one -- with no particular difference other than it's led by a team leader who's both dying of cancer and suicidal -- going in exactly the same way that's led all the others to their deaths?

              And the notion that these folks are confronting some sort of vast "mystery" -- once again, apart from the fact that this alien stuff is both refracting the light and also "refracting" -- essential mixing up the genetic material of the things that get inside it -- what's the big mystery?

              NMS
              You are wrong and your logic is not sound.
              The story starts when one person actually comes back. This is the very concrete story reason they go in again. Secondly, that the persons going in are suicidal is not a minor difference. Going in is by choice, they want to die. That's two very logical reasons for going in, external and internal.

              None of what you have stated are logical flaws. In fact, finding people to enter such a thing if it was real would not be that difficult. I would do it and i'm not even suicidal.

              if you don't think the shimmer is a vast mystery then nothing is. it's death.

              There is a theme for example stated by a conversation where one character talks about how humans are programmed to die from birth, and also in the main character explaining how cells are programmed to grow old and die. Why and how cells suddenly allow for entropy is certainly a mystery.

              We are not supposed to understand what the shimmer is. It's a plot device. There's nothing illogical or unrealistic in how the characters approach this. In fact, everything we are shown happening in there might not even be real.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Annihilation

                Originally posted by nmstevens View Post


                The story and theme aren't the same thing.

                -and-

                They just think that they're people tasked to accomplish things in a real world with greater or lesser resemblance to our own.
                A thousand times yes!

                This should be the "How To Write" equivalency of the 4 word count diet book, Eat Less, Move More.

                I'm going to try and spice up the second truth with an MC Hammerism to couple characterization and motivation.

                "Characters should be legit. They should be too legit to quit."

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Annihilation

                  Saw this yesterday. I echo what everyone above says. A good premise that got lost trying to figure out what story it wanted to tell.
                  You know Jill you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month, he must have been a happy man.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Annihilation

                    I saw this recently. It was ok as far as science fiction goes, but I can understand everyone's confusion with it. It has many logical problems.

                    I looked up the book it is supposed to be an adaptation of and from what I have read the film is so far from the book that this may be why the film is not good.

                    I have always felt if you adapt something from an established novel (in this case the first book of a trilogy series) then you should try to stay as true to the original source material as possible. Otherwise you get something that is subpar and in this case rife with confusing storyline.

                    As far as the film goes, I had a big problem with the acting. Seems like they all just phoned it in. Additionally, I agree with many of the issues mentioned in this thread.

                    One thing I did like was the bear that ate the one girl and when it roared it screamed words in her voice. I thought that was pretty cool. Also the plants that grew into human shapes. Visually that was nice.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Annihilation

                      Originally posted by Bananos View Post
                      You are wrong and your logic is not sound.
                      The story starts when one person actually comes back. This is the very concrete story reason they go in again. Secondly, that the persons going in are suicidal is not a minor difference. Going in is by choice, they want to die. That's two very logical reasons for going in, external and internal.

                      None of what you have stated are logical flaws. In fact, finding people to enter such a thing if it was real would not be that difficult. I would do it and i'm not even suicidal.

                      if you don't think the shimmer is a vast mystery then nothing is. it's death.

                      There is a theme for example stated by a conversation where one character talks about how humans are programmed to die from birth, and also in the main character explaining how cells are programmed to grow old and die. Why and how cells suddenly allow for entropy is certainly a mystery.

                      We are not supposed to understand what the shimmer is. It's a plot device. There's nothing illogical or unrealistic in how the characters approach this. In fact, everything we are shown happening in there might not even be real.
                      What you say above is exactly my point. "It's a plot device."

                      Is your upcoming divorce a "plot device?" Is the civil war in Syria a "plot device?" Is the death of your child a "plot device?" Or are they real things that actually happened or are happening the real world?

                      Are you just some guy going about your business, with conflicts and needs and goals -- or are you the embodiment of some thematic conflict, or some allegorical statement? Maybe you actually represent fatherhood, or the earth, or who knows what?

                      Or maybe you're just some guy and you don't represent anything and you're not actually part of some larger story embodying some greater meaning.

                      And neither is your divorce or your child's illness or the war in Syria. Maybe they're just things that happen.

                      Things in the real world aren't plot devices.

                      And things that happen -- to the people within the world of a story may be plot devices to the god-authors who create them, but they can't be plot devices to the beings who exist within those created worlds, unless you're writing some meta-story in which your characters are aware or become aware of the fact that they're characters within a story.

                      That's clearly not the case in Annihilation. And that means that whatever happens within the realm of the story should make sense within the world of the story -- within the confines of a world in which those events, as described occurred, without recourse to the meta-realm of the themes of the story.

                      I can't tell you how many times I've raised some objection to something in a story and some jackass will reply -- well, if they didn't do (fill in the blank) then there wouldn't be a story.

                      If they didn't stay in the haunted house, there wouldn't be a story. If they called the police, there wouldn't be a story. If the protagonist didn't act like a complete idiot, there wouldn't be a story.

                      Or if they didn't send in the least qualified team led by the least qualified person following the worst possible course heading for this lighthouse -- well gee, then they wouldn't have a story.

                      And the group leader's little speech about suicide -- and the fact that she's dying of cancer -- would render her completely unqualified not only to be the head of this research organization studying an incredibly danger phenomenon, but doubly unqualified to lead an expedition after any number of other failed expeditions into the shimmer. The notion that she would have been left alone at the wheel in this situation, with nobody above her to answer to is ridiculous. And nobody above her would have signed off on her leading a team.

                      None of it is credible -- and if you're going to start excusing on the grounds that maybe it's really all just a dream or an allegory like Mother! or who the hell knows what - that it's okay if it breaks the rules of common sense because, hey, who knows -- maybe there aren't really any rules at all, maybe it's that kind of movie --

                      phooey.

                      If that's the kind of movie you want to make, great. Then it's the obligation of the filmmaker to give us a heads-up that we're watching that kind of movie.

                      If you're David Lynch and you're making a David Lynch movie, when you go into it -- you know you're watching a David Lynch movie. Like it or not, you know what you're getting pretty much from the get-go.

                      Annihilation is not that. There's no suggestion that we're in some kind of alternate reality or dream state or that we're in the midst of some kind of allegorical realm.

                      No. Everything suggests that this is some version of the real world and that, odd though it may be, what the characters are experiencing tracks to the real world.

                      And that just doesn't fly.

                      NMS

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Annihilation

                        I do not see films in theaters, only on TV, so I have not seen Annihilation. (For the curious: it is a long story about the theaters, but essentially it is nothing of great importance. I live in a small town, which has no movie theater, and then various social factors, which I will not delineate, play a big role, too.)

                        I just wanted to say that NMS gave a profound analysis of dramatic art in his comments in this thread.

                        Whenever he says something, it behooves people to open their ears and listen. The same for Bill Martell. The board is fortunate to have them as contributors here.

                        "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Annihilation

                          Originally posted by Darthclaw13 View Post
                          I looked up the book it is supposed to be an adaptation of and from what I have read the film is so far from the book that this may be why the film is not good.
                          I read the book and basically the only things that are the same is that there's the Area X, there's a "team" of all females (but only 4 instead of 5 as one left before they began) and the biologist's husband went in previously with a different team then showed up like a year later back at home mysteriously, changed with no emotion, no memory and died of cancer a year later.

                          There was no bear, no crocodile, etc. and all the other women in the expedition died fairly quickly in succession. One to a "thing" in the tunnel, one jumped from the lighthouse, one shot at the biologist who shot her back and killed her.

                          Basically there are flashbacks of the husband and biologist's life before this expedition but all the current action takes place in a base camp, a "tower" (tunnel into the ground) and the lighthouse and one abandoned town the biologist passes through on the way to the lighthouse.

                          The book isn't cinematic at all so they had to retell the story with all kinds of changes, new threats, etc.
                          You know Jill you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month, he must have been a happy man.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Annihilation

                            Originally posted by nmstevens View Post
                            And it's fine to talk about the thematic underpinnings of Annihilation, but if the story doesn't make sense on the level of the "story" -- then whatever it's trying to accomplish on the thematic level isn't going to rescue it.
                            J.R.R. Tolkien in his essay "Fairy Tales" ...

                            Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called "willing suspension of disbelief." But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful "sub-creator." He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is "true": it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
                            STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

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