I was really torn going into seeing this movie. I had to read the book in middle school one summer for summer reading. It was a dark time, where I wasn't too keen on reading, but for some reason, this book spoke to me. I think it was the Sci-fi concept, the weird shunned nerdy science based type characters. For some reason the whole concept of Christian themes were lost on my 12 year old brain. I was also lost on this concept with the Narnia books as well. Despite my strong liking for this book, I never reread it, and was hesitant going into the movie. Honestly, I probably would have opted out of it had I not had MoviePass.
One of the first issues that I had with the movie, was the fact that the director for the movie, does not have much of a science fiction background. While in some circumstances, this may not matter, but it leaves a lot to be desired. While it wasn't a complete flop like Dune, it just did not seem to live up to the current standings of the genre. Ex Machina had set the bar of recent scify thrillers for me, so the family type approach to sci-fy wasn't as well developed as I would have liked.
I like the concept of wanting to take the whole idea of an absent father movie, I just don't think that this story classic was the time or the place. While it can be nice to have a refresher of a classic book, I don't know how these two could have melded as much on two different planes than this movie. This movie is just so different than the book, that I am almost wonder if they would have been better to do something with titles and character names.
I appreciated the whole concept of the sibling relationships and the family dynamic of the movie. I also really enjoyed the idea of creating a movie around the idea self worth and development. I just don't know if I like the alterations of approach or refresher for this book in particular. I don't know if I was too keen on the Mean Girls type approach to this movie and middle school drama, as it wasn't much of a developed theme in the book.
There were some scenes that were worth seeing on the big screen. Mainly the best scene on the big screen was the fields of flowers and the flying scenes, but some of the CGI was just a bit overly done, that it became distracting. This was also true with some of the costumes, mostly with Oprah's. I'm torn with the movie, mostly because it was trying too hard in many areas, but had some smaller noteworthy concepts. I think I would have enjoyed the movie more, had they selected a director that had a scify background. I think I would have enjoyed it more, if the visuals had matched most well done scify movies as well. I'd be interested in seeing more of what she does in the non-sci-fy movie sector
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