directed by George Clooney
written by Mark L. Smith
This
marks my third review of a Netflix film on this channel and my fifth overall. Back in the pre-COVID-19 days, back when I
could still go to a nearby mall and enjoy movies the way they were meant to be
enjoyed, i.e. on the big screen, I used to read articles describing Netflix and
other streaming services as the future of cinema and laugh. Now, after having
lived with the reality of a global pandemic and its crippling even on
theatrical movie viewing, I inevitably find myself wondering if these pundits
weren’t right all along.
So the
movie I’m reviewing now is a sci-fi drama set during the apocalypse titled Midnight
Sky, directed by and starring George Clooney.
In the
year 2049, humankind has found that one of Jupiter’s moons, K-23, can actually
sustain human life. The team of astronauts who made this momentous discovery,
led by Sully (Felicity Jones) and Ade (David Oyelowo) are on their way back to
Earth aboard the spaceship Aether to tell everyone the good news,
unaware of the fact that the Earth has been rendered unlivable by a cataclysmic
event that has apparently irradiated the entire planet. As humanity frantically evacuates research
facilities across the world in the vain hope of finding somewhere safe, Dr.
August Lofthouse (Clooney), a world weary, terminally-ill scientist is left
behind to contemplate his fate. He soon
realizes, however, that the team of astronauts headed back to Earth in the Aether
is the only hope for the survival of the human race and that they must not,
under any circumstances return to Earth. Lofthouse finds himself in a race
against time to find a satellite array that reach the team in space so that he
can tell them to turn away from the uninhabitable wasteland that the Earth has
become and return to humanity’s new home. Accompanying him on his perilous mission is a mysterious
little girl named Iris (Caoilinn Springall) who was apparently left during the
evacuation.
I’m
generally a fan of apocalypse movies, so I clicked on this movie with some
optimism.
I was
therefore a little surprised and a little disappointed when the movie trotted
out one story trope after another. It’s hard to go into it in detail without
spoiling plot points, but I’m going to give it a try.
For
one thing, given that the movie’s plot hinges on whether Lofthouse makes
contact with the Aether, the film leans heavily on coincidence to throw
one obstacle after another into the characters’ way just to keep things
interesting. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I’ve enjoyed plenty of movies
with the dreaded deus ex machina or its negative counterpart, but
Clooney lays it on a bit too thickly here. There are too many things here that
happen not as a result of the characters’ choices but because the plot needs
them to happen, like ill-timed meteor showers and snow storms.
And
then, it infuriated me that I was able to entirely predict what was going to
happen to a character because of the color of their skin. That’s the kind of
trope that was cliché twenty years ago; for Clooney to use it now just feels unforgivable.
That’s
the problem when a movie has the thinnest of plots; the filmmakers often resort
to all kinds of contrivances to bloat the running time and keep people engaged.
This was the kind of nonsense I would have expected from some B-movie on cable,
not a big-budget Netflix movie with one of Hollywood’s A-listers at the
helm. Sure, the movie’s got great
production value, visual effects, yadda yadda yadda, but for the money they
spent on this, it damn well better have those things.
I have
to say, from where I’m sitting Clooney’s filmography as a director seems a lot
less illustrious than his resume as an actor and a producer. I mean, this guy
won an Oscar for producing Argo; it seems unthinkable that he was behind
this turkey. Now I’m wondering if he
hasn’t been a somewhat overrated director all this time.
5/10
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