Reviews

This movie tries so hard to display the hardships of training to be a musician that the whole image shifts into simple physical and mental abuse of human beings, in this case teenagers. As another reviewer said: it is the boot camp of music. I did not believe what I was seeing. If there was a movie where some dog-whisperer is hitting the dog and yelling at it and this would prove to be working as a method to 'educate' the dog, then people would be upset. But treating a human like that is OK? this just sickens me. yes, you can get humans to do some things by pushing them with violence. Get them into an obedient state of mind, that is simply following orders. But there is a reason why this strategy of motivation has proved to be only effective in the military: There, human lives are indeed worthless. This treatment will make you 'harder', meaning it will make you less of a human being.

When it comes to music however it is impossible to achieve great results with these methods. It can only lead to a soul- and heartless disaster. A fitting result would have been an aggression build-up in the main character which would have prevented him from ever playing anything worth listening to again. This reaction has been seen in other movies where usually the people that are socially connected to the main character will have to suffer from the violent state of mind that this mistreatment is causing. The other possibility is a simple resignation, either by quitting music or by quitting life.

But what is displayed here is wrong on many levels, because it tells you that this abuse leads to something beautiful. That it is all worth it because it pushes you to your limits and then you will be a great musician. Whoever made up this story is either suffering from a severe psychosis or has the intent to justify abusive methods in education by presenting them as effective.

If you treat people with violence they will get violent too. Either towards others or towards themselves. This is the only result you will achieve. And in this case it would also completely destroy the main character's ability to be a musician. Music is not the military. You do need discipline and training, but this comes from mental strength. And you do not get stronger by being abused. It will only weaken you.

It makes me sad seeing that apparently this movie is entertaining to people. This can only be the case if they do not see the utter failure in judgment that is presented here. And if they do not see it then they are blind in a way that is worrying.

bad things first:

the main good character that is an environmentalist happens to be the daughter of the main evil character who is the head of a big oil company. that's so unbelievable. lets put some more conflict in it, shall we? why do they have to do this. and of course she has a son who she cant see because she's a criminal activist and also has no time for him due to her enthusiasm for environmental protection. oh, the conflict. many sad faces to be expected there. and of course many emotional scenes with her dad. great stuff. for women, i guess.

another thing that put me off was the soap-opera-style of many of the scenes. you know, when there is dialog and one character delivers a very well prepared line and then dramatically leaves the scene, and the camera focuses on a pondering face of the other guy? that happens like 10 times in the first part.

unfortunately the pacing is a little slow. it's not as annoying as in other series but a little less dialog and more action would be nice. no i don't mean Hollywood-action. i mean people doing things other than talking. this is probably only because of the introductory nature of the first part though. but the action scenes at the end of the first part have a big problem for me: the shaky camera again. it's too much. i cant see what's going on. stop that, please. i don't mind cheap special effects because i know it is not a movie and has a lot lower budget. but i do mind if i don't see what's going on. blurry shapes wont help with that.

aside from that, the story is not bad. it feels a little weak at the beginning but it's getting better. the protest scenes and the speech scene at the beginning were really not promising. but it makes up for that. it may not be scientifically accurate but i am not in a position to judge that. speaking of that, there is a scene where they happen to be a few meters away from an explosion and they don't react at all. 'what was that?' she asked with a an expression on her face that would make you think she's talking about some minor unusual sound she has just heard. and then they run to the crater as if there is no danger at all. why? that's not how you do it.

i did enjoy most of it though. i was focusing on the bad stuff. so keep that in mind. and i only have seen the first part. it's (probably) not a bad series. but those issues that i have described could have been avoided which is kind of sad because this could have been a much better series.

just one more thing: you should probably avoid this series if you don't like environmentalists. because in this series they are right. they are the good guys. i agree with that (not always and not entirely but mostly). but some of you might not.

edit: i've just watched the second part, and unfortunately it was worse than the first one. mostly for acting reasons. and it was very predictable.

this is where IMDb needs to react to all those obviously faked reviews. if they don't people will just ignore all 'blockbuster'-reviews. which would call for competition that will take action against this kind of manipulation.

this has never been so obvious than with the avengers. this movie does not deserve a rating above 4. the plot is uninspired and boring, has no twists and everyone knows where it's going. the dialog feels very scripted. characters in comic books for 5-year-olds maybe talk like that. superheroes don't. the acting is very unnatural, it feels very staged and no emotion is being transported to the audience. the characters aren't developed, they just get different punchlines to throw at the audience. the cgi is really bad, not worthy of a movie of 2012. i think even '2001 - A Space Odyssey' (1968) had better special effects.

it seems that they spent almost all their money on the actors, forgot about the story and just used the cheapest cgi they could get. the rest of the money they used for marketing and creating a hype (as i said, this is obvious here on IMDb).

the whole thing is just cheap. but we will see more of this if people continue to make this kind of movie profitable. and this will probably be the case, so expect more of these.

the only scary thing about this movie is the fact that there are people out there who like this kind of movie.

the story is really dumb. the elements do not have any connection. instead they are throwing 'cool looking' stuff in your face every few minutes. without explaining anything. you might enjoy this if you are used to turn off your brain when watching movies. otherwise it's just confusing. some say this is supposed to be a parody but i didn't see that. mostly because it just wasn't funny for me. also the plot is unbelievable in many ways. they could have got away with it if they cared to explain some basic elements. but they didn't. acting was OK. special effects were fine too. same for camera work.

but it's really a mess. and your head would probably be a mess too if you tried to actually put together what you are seeing. it's impossible. i don't know who thinks of a plot like this but they must've been on some really shitty drugs.

so i guess you can enjoy this movie if you like pointless horror-movies that forget about the plot and just try to impress with images and violence. but for me this does not work. i just get bored and offended by that kind of movies. it will also help if your attention span is no longer than 3 minutes. because then you won't notice how stupid the whole thing really is.

you really have to read the 'hated it'-reviews first nowadays. with all the 'stealth marketing' going on it seems that IMDb ratings aren't as reliable as they used to be.

OK a few people are dropped into an unknown environment and have to survive while they are being threatened by an evil force. this has been done hundreds of times and has been done a lot better than this.

so, as anyone can suspect, one by one gets killed until the main character remains. and the ending is a more of a cliffhanger, and stupid and boring.

in order to get into the movie it would have to be believable. this is not. the characters act unbelievably stupid, the wolves unbelievably unnatural. the dialog apparently was added after the script has been done, so it seems to be just pushing the story the way it's intended to go, and nothing else. even though that way is very stupid. so the dialog is too.

the wolves seem to be some kind of evil demons sent by the devil and have nothing to do with real wolves. that's where the movie lost me completely. i could think of a few ways that group out in the wilds could have survived. but they chose not to go there. they apparently wanted to give the camera some nice footage. it really seems that way. if you got any brains.

the movie is also often interrupted by some pointless scenes that show the main character with some lost love of his. this is totally misplaced and desperately reaching for emotions.

the acting is fine, it's also technically good, except for the wolves(!), and some shots are really impressive. but that's not helping much.

you don't miss out on much if you don't see this one.

please don't read this if you don't want spoilers. the movie is very dependent on the viewer not knowing what will happen.

it took me about 10 minutes to realize how the movie would end and what (very trivial) message it would be trying to send here. will he do it or not? will love and/or altruism win over the will to live? this is not a very interesting question. in reality everyone wants to survive. at the face of death more than 90 percent of the people will value their own lives higher than anyone else's. and that's exactly why i knew what will happen in this movie. in detail.

and because this is all such a cheesy and lame thought that would be the drive of this movie it really threw me off there. i just thought "if i'm right then the guy who wrote this should be forced to eat his own script" it made me a little angry that the conclusion is at the end and would put the whole movie in perspective, so i had to stay and watch.

the acting was decent, although the oh-so-innocent, shy, almost-whispering little liv tyler was really too much. but in that role she was OK. it's really the script's fault. and there you can add the cliché Christian fundamentalist as a husband and that cliché over-sensitive feminine loverboy, who happens to look like he's been taken out of a teenage girl's dream. and he acts this way. but it's all believable in their little stereotype way. it's just plain boring. and because of all the stereotype characters i didn't feel any connection to them.

this movie will be one that boyfriends get dragged into by their girlfriends. so the girlfriend gets a chance to say "isnt he sweet, it's so sad, what an emotional movie, i hope you would do the same for me.." and other crap. I'm still waiting for the movie where the girl dies for the boy in heroic selflessness. but i guess girls only want to dream about their personal hero as some kind of toy they could own, but would never do the same for him. (now that would be a movie by the way: girl just lets her love die to save herself. that's a message i would accept)

anyway, this movie is for girls. to keep them dreaming. in that way it will have negative effects on relationships. but that's of course not the movie's fault. it's the lack of brains in some chicks. which can easily be exploited and turned for the worse. that's what the movie really delivers.

i almost forgot: of course we do have a second hero character for the girls. the faithful husband who gets cheated on and for whatever reasons does nothing. he's living on like nothing happened. so, in conclusion, men should die for the woman, and if it doesn't come to that they should at least tolerate that their wives are cheating on them and that they're raising the kids of some dude who screwed their wife. that's what men do these days, it would seem. and the women are of course victimized. their actions don't matter in the movie. they get pushed around by circumstances or people, without showing some kind of own will or personality.

i just hate having to watch all of these clichés put in an uninspired script with a cheesy and stupid message.

avoid this if you are a man. and avoid this if you are a woman who is living in the real world.