2036 Origin Unknown

Cheesy special effects, a story that doesn't make sense and a claustrophobic set make this direct-to-dumpster movie an utter waste of time. There is not one thing in this overwrought piece of trash that redeems it. One star seems much too generous.

Lot of complaints about the special effects, if you plannning on watching and expecting special effects to keep your attention, please don't waste your time and just rewatch Avatar or Tranformers. This movie is more about science rather than fiction, and is an exercise in thought, not in action. Fair warning when watching, pay attention.

What writer and director in 2017 would think it's a grand idea to resurrect the worst of so-called "science fiction" from the Seventies and Eighties, including the mind-numbing kaleidoscopic effects that were stand-ins for actual special effects? There is no science on display here, though it is certainly fictional. Fiction without science is just fantasy. Exploitation of a few trendy buzzwords and concepts from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) does not make it scientific. There is neither any deep thinking. The plot and concepts are incoherent, like the hallucinogenic "trip" of a career drug addict. The writer apparently had an extended trip himself and began to imagine himself as a philosophical genius who had wisdom to impart to the rest of us? He isn't and he didn't.

If humanity can produce a movie this stupid, perhaps we don't deserve to live.

It's a good movie with adventure and left me at the edge of my seat.

source: 2036 Origin Unknown

This movie is not good. Aside from the obvious no-budget cgi and vfx (let's be honest here, a high school kid with a copy of blender and after effects could do better), the script is poorly paced and filled with unimportant filler that lacks any connection to the end goal of the film. It takes itself very seriously, and you can tell it is trying as hard as it possibly can to be deep and meaningful like the various films it rips off (some WAY more obviously than others). Unfortunately, what you end up with in this movie is an hour and 10 minutes of irrelevant meandering dialog, so unaware of reality that it often becomes painful to listen to. Then 20 minutes of the film masturbating to its own cleverness. I go in depth as to how wrong the technical details are, or how the writer was obviously inspired by IFLS clickbait "science" headlines on facebook and did basically no actual research into any of it. But rather than harp on about something most people probably don't care about or won't even notice, I'll just leave it at that. Sackhoff turns in a typical performance. I get that a lot of people like her, but I have never found her performances much more than adequate. Every role I have seen her in has been the same basic character. Maybe she's just unlucky and is continually sucked into terribly written schlock. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt here. There is nothing offensive in her performance, it just lacks any depth or soul. The supporting cast is your average b sci fi fare. They have so little screen time that it's hard to even justify mentioning much about them. The overall story and writing is where this one falls hard on its face. Almost none of the character actions have any established reasoning. Everything each character does happens simply because the script says so, and the script never once bothers to question whether or not a character would have any reason to act in such a way. The ultimate conceit of the film is propped up on this illogical reasoning, as if the characters WANT terrible things to happen. This is most likely because the film was written in order to achieve the last 10 minutes of the movie, with little or no concern for whether or not that would create a plausible story. This ultimately results in a story that you just simply have no reason to be invested in. No character is written any deeper than what it takes to push the plot along, and you never have any reason to connect with them. I cannot recommend this movie, even as a "so bad it's good" because it's just not entertaining, and if you have any amount of pedantry in your for science and sci fi, you will actively dislike it. I, myself actually did a facepalm multiple times as just how terrible it was.

This film takes a lot for granted. Surely the audience will "get" this right? No, it's just pretentious. The closest one can liken this to is watching 2001: A Space Odyssey without reading the book first. Anyone who has done so understands that while that movie was a milestone in cinematography and had some great moments... it was some of the worst story-telling to ever hit the screen. Like 2001, this is a director's complete failure to connect with his audience. Katee must have been pretty desperate to agree to star in this self-absorbed scriptmess about a human and A.I. exploring Mars. Her character is one-dimensional emo, making the viewer wonder why this individual would ever be placed in such an extremely important Mission Control spot to begin with. Let's call out that the emperor has no clothes: the 2001-style ending was a sloppy venture into messy CGI and an voice-over very-quick-attempt at explaining what had just happened. That is never good film making, regardless of budget constraints. Then there's the elephant in the room: conceptually, let's discuss the idea of an animal rights activist protesting abuse of animals... by setting a zoo on fire. Yeah, it's like that. Just. that. stupid. I love cerebral sci fi. I'm not a fan of pure-action anything. But this isn't cerebral; it is simple failure of the writer/director to properly tell the story. Not that there's much to the story; it's been done before by far better films (and with more sensible conclusions). This film is simplistic in concept, sloppy in execution, with overall failed presentation. Yes, we get the story, duh. The whole concept could be summarized in one short sentence (which I won't do here to avoid spoilers, but was sooo tempted). This could have been done in a 15 minute short and achieved more than this drudgery of wasted screen time. I was going to give it 3 stars just to be generous but decided in this case that my time dumped in watching this drivel warrants no generosity. I encourage would-be viewers to believe the numerous negative reviews and realize this is a story-telling bomb that relies on the presence of "Starbuck" to even get off the ground. The glowing "reviews" present here? Be suspect. Be very suspect. Save yourself a couple of hours and avoid this painful cinematic dud with its ridiculous oh-my-goodness special-effects! ending. Don't be fooled by the sugar-coated reviews: this is by no means an intelligent nor well presented film.

This wasn't very good. Movies about AI always want to be thought-provoking, and at the same time they always reinvent the same wheels over and over. This movie is no different. If this had been made in the 80's, it would probably be considered a much better movie. But this is 2018 and you really have to bring something better to the table, especially if you want to preach a certain message. I'm guessing there was a clear lack of budget, because apart from the CGI quality that ranges from barely passable to outright terrible, they had to invent some "science" and background to the story to justify the lack of actors and sets; the movie takes place in one room, and it's 90% Katee Sackhoff you see on screen. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because with a great script and a great actor you can really create something wonderful (and CGI be damned). But the script overall is just so poor and Katee Sackhoff, who manages to pull off a decent performance (but no more than that), simply can't carry something like this and just drowns in the bad dialogue and overall story that unfolds around her in a largely illogical and mostly very unoriginal manner. The pacing overall is slow, but not too slow for me personally, and nearing the end it does try to offer some sort of resolvement, with a little twist. If the movie itself had been better up to that point, I probably could have appreciated that effort a bit more. It also didn't help that most of the bigger questions are actually never answered and that the last 15 or so minutes were apparently filmed through a kaleidoscope. All in all, not an unlikeable movie, but it's just not good at all. 4,5/10, rounding it up to a generous 5.

Yes, it's slow. It unfolds like a one-person play ("bottle format" - main scene: the control room). Katee Sackhoff is brilliant (reflect on how her character changed in response to ARTI over the course of the film, after you've watched it). Yes, it will cause you to think abut 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Yes, it's low-budget. Katee said principal photography took place over nine (9) days. When you don't have what seems like an hour of battle-scene special effects, when you don't have Big Name Movie Stars, you don't NEED big budgets. If you want to watch mindless shoot-em-ups-in-space, this is not the movie for you. On the other hand, if you are interested in an exploration of technological development, not just AI, and you're comfortable with dystopia, then this is the movie for you. Given current developments in AI and what appears to be firm resistance to public policy discussion of the ethics/legal ramifications, the movie is timely.