I’m a big fan of Steven Spielberg and I love science fiction movies, so I was excited to see what could be regarded as the third of the director’s trilogy, following those wonderful offerings “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982). The theme of all three works is that humans are not alone in the universe and that other life forms, who have reached us, wish us well – an optimistic message at any time, but particularly when – as in this film – the world appears to be on the brink of nuclear war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two individuals hold the key: television weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and security expert turned whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), although they don’t seem to know each other. Two others know something about what’s going on: the head of a malicious defence company (Colin Firth) and some guy in a warehouse (Colman Domingo). It takes a while before the viewer can make any sense of it all – but enjoy the ride. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The acting here is good – especially from Blunt in her best performance to date – although it’s hard to picture our charming Colin Firth as such an evil\u200e character. And there are some exciting sequences – notably when a car holding the two heroes and a train speeding down the track come into the same space. But the film is too confused and over-long with some weak special effects. Most seriously, the plot is so full of black holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would take remarkable intelligence and technology for any aliens to reach Earth so, having gone to so much trouble: why do they keep crashing in remote areas of the USA? why do they reveal themselves to so few people (usually Americans) and in such oblique circumstances? and why don’t they give out more widely those wonderful gadgets that can do all sorts of magical things? If there is to be a big reveal to the global population, why don’t those clever aliens just take over any number of television channels? And, if this great revelation is to be left to a local tv station in the US, how come everyone instantly believes them (someone mentions that the government films might be AI) with no due diligence whatsoever?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, less a case of disclosure day and a more a matter of a disappointing two and a half hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m a big fan of Steven Spielberg and I love science fiction movies, so I was excited to see what could be regarded as the third of the director’s trilogy, following those wonderful offerings “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982). The theme of all three works is that humans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30212,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30209\/revisions\/30212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}