Tedious retread of ideas much better explored in countless other films. I am at a loss as to why this even got made... this movie has nothing to bring -let alone add- to the quite significantly huge genre of 'dystopian future' films. It just dawdles along until it evaporates into a cloud of deeply sincere glances and vaguely semi-futuristic production design.
Been there , most definitely done that.
Yes there was not much new and very vague. The workstations/Spacefaring reminded me of Gattaca, but that was it. And then it was a little of The Island (only the white attire part), Equilibrium (throwing meds/emotion suppression), Never Let Me Go (running away to the Peninsular).
shareI really, really agree with you two. All the concepts are derivative, yet not nearly enough people seem to catch that.
shareReminds me of Equilibrium, but Equals is far less interesting.
Dystopian science fiction tends to look similar because dystopia is an of the antithesis of what the current culture's values are. We value emotion and individuality, hence most of the genre is tales of societies where emotion is suppressed and uniformity is enforced. It's mostly just treatises on our fear of collectivism.
Which means western culture really hasn't changed much since 1971 because this is basically THX 1138 for millennials.
It was very bad, yes. The beginning was not that silly, though. I liked the idea of showing how the body can hurt because of love (the scene with Stewart naked in the shower, etc.). But it was too quickly dealt. And then the rest was full of truisms. The characters are empy, their love is never developped and is too easy (it's not because their love is forbidden that it has meaning ! We don't understand WHY they are falling in love). For exemple, I would have liked that they find kissing or making love strange... but in front of all the themes that could have made something interesting, the film always take the easy way out. At the end, it just a rip-out of past influences and something like a children movie really (because it's so naive).
Hoult is not a bad actor but he should stop playing parts in bad rip-out movie like that. Killing Your Friends was very similar in that way. Fire your agent !
Tedious retread ....
Yes. your post most certainly is.