"65", the movie, is TERRIBLE

from wikipedia

Yes, "65", the movie starring Adam Driver, is TERRIBLE. I wanted to like the movie so much but it wouldn't let me. It is a great concept for a movie that wastes it immediately even before you watch it. Considering it was on Netflix, I gave it a go, and the only thing for me to feel like I've recouped the time from watching it is to write about my disappointment afterwards, at least in that way, I've gained some productivity as a result.

"65" does introduce Mills, Adam Driver's character, well. He is depicted having a loving relationship with his wife and daughter torn by him having to leave for two years to pilot a ship through space in order to explore a different area. The movie cuts to his perspective in the spaceship that encounters a "non-reported" asteroid cluster. The ship is damaged and forced to crash land on the nearby planet, destroying the ship and killing the cargo of cryogenically sleeping human passengers, leaving Mills and Koa, played by Ariana Greenblatt, the only remaining survivors.

Somewhere between crash landing on the planet and Mills finding Koa is where the title appears to add the missing mystery of which planet they are on and the timeframe of when the movie takes place. It is so on the nose, just like the trailers about it, it insults the intelligence of the audience and at the same time, underutilizes the acting range of Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt. There are a handful of concepts in the movie that just don't work or are not believable to make the audience want to immerse themselves in the movie.

Before you read, this is a spoiler alert!

A key theme in the movie is the surrogate father/daughter relationship that Mills and Koa have throughout the movie. For the most part, this sort of works, despite being predictable. Where it doesn't work are the language barriers between both of them and the way that Koa seems more like a toddler than an adolescent, where it is so offputting that it breaks immersion in the movie. Let me explain...

Mills and Koa are both part of an advanced human civilization and their method of communication with each other, with not knowing each other's language is drawing a triangle and stick figures? I can't fathom that a family of explorers (those who perished in the crash) don't have any training for emergency scenarios or protocols for a mission. Koa's character is depicted as incompetent and younger than juvenile. She has glimpses of being clever in the movie, just like everything else, you already knew where they were going with when she saved the poisoned berries early in the journey. This sort of predictability is rampant throughout.

There are moment where Mills and Koa are interacting, it almost feels forced, more importantly you don't get a sense of Koa's trauma of losing family, which the movie could have explored throughout the story instead of leaving it for the end that left no impact or any reason for the audience to emphathize with her. Him acquiescing to wear the flower during the scene of them resting by the waterfall has no context so it doesn't carry any emotional weight other than maybe getting a chuckle. Understandably, the movie is in the perspective of Mills, the father figure, just like him the audience is not made known of what is going on inside Koa's mind, but they really could have made her more expressive of her emotional conflict.

What should have been done is have her struggle with loss mirroring that of Mills where Koa discovers one of her parents died shortly after she is awoken from cryosleep at the beginning of the movie. She is indignant and stays with deceased family member and Mills trying to prior her away so they can start their journey. She interprets him as being authoritarian thus starting and creating the character archs of them bonding throughout the journey with her being defiant and him being authoritarian but they both slowly lower their guard as the movie progresses. Instead, the movie uses whistling as cheap plot device to break their clashing relationship instead of the more important aspect of them understanding each other and empathizing with each other's losses. That would have been a better way for each of them to lower their guard. If you've played the game, "The Last of Us", you know the method I am talking about works well for the surrogate father/daughter relationship.

The other irksome part of the movie is the theme itself that the spaceship crash lands on earth during the prehistoric age. The trailer and title of the movie spoils this awesome concept. It is a great concept, wasted. I mean wasted! The timelapse sequence that they show at the end of the movie, where it shows different time periods, would have been an effective way to close the mystery of the setting. They probably could have even showed humans in these different settings. Instead, the trailer and introduction to the movie just shows the reveal, so you already know the mystery before the movie starts. The concept too, could also be unraveled throughout the movie by having less common dinosaurs in the beginnning to more common ones as the story progresses where ultimately, T-rex gets fully revealed at the end.

I can't tell if this movie intentionally wanted to rage bait by being on the nose and get free marketing from people trashing it, because that is what I feel like this movie intended and at the same time creating the conversation that the origins of humans are older than what has originally been theorized. There are actually way more stuff to say about this movie that didn't work but the alternate concepts I bring up are enough. I really wanted to like this movie. And upon completing my critique, I've come full circle, and accomplished my goal of productuctivity. Cheers!

This was NOT written with AI, this was done on a cloudy Sunday afternoon.