The designed story stakes are huge -- the end of the world and all mankind. Great. But that's just a premise. The movie has to make us care about that and more importantly doubt that the mission will succeed.RockPusher wrote:I don't know what this means. The execution of book to film is nearly flawless in my opinion, and the stakes of the storyline are pretty much as massive as they get.epilogue wrote:It's a super flawed movie with very little stakes when you really look at it.
I'm talking about stakes in the sense of how the audience relates to/reacts to the main characters. That relationship is a big way to build tension. One way to increase and test that tension is to worry about a character, worry about their individual stakes, and doubt whether or not they will achieve what they want to achieve. Grace is always fine (we never worry that he won't make it and succeed) and Rocky can basically do anything. While I enjoy watching their journey and there are other reasons to be engaged, the tension and those character stakes are thin and pretty low.
The best part of the story, for me, is Grace on Earth. His "cowardice" and whether or not he'll take the mission. That's undercut, however, by the structure of the film. By the time we can doubt him we already know he's won. But again, it's nitpicky and subjective. There are a ton of other reasons to love the movie, and I do.
