People have commented on the potential supernatural nature of the ending, the overly horror movie nature of the 3rd(?) act, the overt homage/ripoffs of other sci-fi movies, and they are all reasonable complaints, but ones that didn't particularly bother me.
What did bother me immensely is the fact that the middle third of the movie advances its plot almost entirely based on smart people doing stupid things. There are numerous instances of people sacrificing themselves for no reason at all. People make hurried decisions with no apparent time pressure.
The first instance is not too bad and I was willing to excuse, as they hung a lantern on it, but it's a clear indication of things to come. Trey makes a mistake. Making a mistake is not my favorite plot device, but, okay, let's go with it. (That said, no one is checking his work? We know that they're concerned about their psyches -- they have a psych officer -- and they let a single person make significant modifications without someone checking behind him? Free computer programs are written with better QA than that.)
The spinning tower gets destroyed because it will rotate into the unshielded Sun. They know this. Why not stop it rotating? It doesn't appear to be generating artificial gravity -- there's gravity everywhere, and even if it is, how about dealing without it for an hour or two? There could be an explanation for this, but there's none given.
Kanada sacrifices himself for no apparent reason. The shield was only minimally damaged by being misaligned, and apparently easily reparable. Why not retrieve Kanada and Capa -- they clearly had time -- put the ship back in a fully shielded position, deal with the fire, then try again. Failing that, why did Kanada not at least try to shield himself behind or under the shield fin he was repairing. (Okay, maybe he was "going to die anyway".)
After the docking connection with the Icarus I fails, they decide that they can't ferry spacesuits back and forth because once they open the hatch, the air will be gone. But later, they show Searle in a pressurized section of the ship as he gets burnt. They could have gotten at least one more crewmember off safely, assuming that there was only just the one remaining sealable compartment, which seems an odd assumption. Then they decide to carry over two other members in thermal blankets and hope for the best, but it apparently didn't occur to them to strap themselves together, or stand in single file. Then they decide that they have to leave someone behind to open the hatch. How about the guy in the spacesuit who can follow after the cabin has depressurized? All the while ignoring the fact that one of the reasons they're there is to gather oxygen and plants. Yes, maybe they were rushed because of the pressure leak, but they didn't seem to be losing oxygen too fast -- they got back and left with Searle still able to function apparently normally.
Then there are the two big plot holes, which I might otherwise be willing to ignore. None of these critical systems were redundant? I can go with the fact that the payload is not redundant, but no redundant computer? No redundant greenhouse? And then they say that the Icarus I's payload is useless because they can't pilot it because the computer is down. But then Capa successfully pilots the II's payload down without the computer functioning.
And the reason that this is all so frustrating and I didn't give it a lower rating is that the movie, generally, doesn't treat the audience like idiots. They don't feel the need to spell out every detail; they show, don't tell, which is far too infrequent in movies these days. They even tell jokes this way, with Searle's progressive sunburn. It had such a great chance of being an excellent, near perfect, sci-fi movie, and they blew it in that 2nd act with simply lazy writing.
What did bother me immensely is the fact that the middle third of the movie advances its plot almost entirely based on smart people doing stupid things. There are numerous instances of people sacrificing themselves for no reason at all. People make hurried decisions with no apparent time pressure.
The first instance is not too bad and I was willing to excuse, as they hung a lantern on it, but it's a clear indication of things to come. Trey makes a mistake. Making a mistake is not my favorite plot device, but, okay, let's go with it. (That said, no one is checking his work? We know that they're concerned about their psyches -- they have a psych officer -- and they let a single person make significant modifications without someone checking behind him? Free computer programs are written with better QA than that.)
The spinning tower gets destroyed because it will rotate into the unshielded Sun. They know this. Why not stop it rotating? It doesn't appear to be generating artificial gravity -- there's gravity everywhere, and even if it is, how about dealing without it for an hour or two? There could be an explanation for this, but there's none given.
Kanada sacrifices himself for no apparent reason. The shield was only minimally damaged by being misaligned, and apparently easily reparable. Why not retrieve Kanada and Capa -- they clearly had time -- put the ship back in a fully shielded position, deal with the fire, then try again. Failing that, why did Kanada not at least try to shield himself behind or under the shield fin he was repairing. (Okay, maybe he was "going to die anyway".)
After the docking connection with the Icarus I fails, they decide that they can't ferry spacesuits back and forth because once they open the hatch, the air will be gone. But later, they show Searle in a pressurized section of the ship as he gets burnt. They could have gotten at least one more crewmember off safely, assuming that there was only just the one remaining sealable compartment, which seems an odd assumption. Then they decide to carry over two other members in thermal blankets and hope for the best, but it apparently didn't occur to them to strap themselves together, or stand in single file. Then they decide that they have to leave someone behind to open the hatch. How about the guy in the spacesuit who can follow after the cabin has depressurized? All the while ignoring the fact that one of the reasons they're there is to gather oxygen and plants. Yes, maybe they were rushed because of the pressure leak, but they didn't seem to be losing oxygen too fast -- they got back and left with Searle still able to function apparently normally.
Then there are the two big plot holes, which I might otherwise be willing to ignore. None of these critical systems were redundant? I can go with the fact that the payload is not redundant, but no redundant computer? No redundant greenhouse? And then they say that the Icarus I's payload is useless because they can't pilot it because the computer is down. But then Capa successfully pilots the II's payload down without the computer functioning.
And the reason that this is all so frustrating and I didn't give it a lower rating is that the movie, generally, doesn't treat the audience like idiots. They don't feel the need to spell out every detail; they show, don't tell, which is far too infrequent in movies these days. They even tell jokes this way, with Searle's progressive sunburn. It had such a great chance of being an excellent, near perfect, sci-fi movie, and they blew it in that 2nd act with simply lazy writing.