Reviews

I went to this movie based on all the good reviews I read. I thought it would be an intelligent scenario making use of some scientific theories like Relativity, Theory of Everything, Time dilation, Gravity Waves, Black Holes, Worm Hole etc.

Was I let down beyond ridiculous ! So the world's population is on the brink of extinction due to climate change and some kind of fungus is destroying all the crops and lack of water turned everything into dust.

And we get to meet this farmer (Matthew McConaughey) who used to be a very successful Astronaut / Pilot who crashed his aircraft so he decided to become a farmer to raise corn instead. Good choice because the world needs more farmers than NASA pilots. And he gets called in to Parents- Teachers meeting to discuss his children's future and the teacher says "We faked the moon landing to bankrupt the Russians" and the books will need to be updated to reflect this ! Good ammunition for all the loonies who still believe this crap ! They tell the father their children should study agriculture because the world needs more of them. Of course our sensible father wants his children to become scientists and wont tell his children what the teacher said. On the way home they encounter a drone and the father has in his truck all the gear (a laptop !) necessary to take control of the drone while plowing his truck in three feet high corn crop. This was only the beginning of the ridiculousness that followed. Somehow his daughter who is brilliant, is getting some messages with the arrangement of the books in the library. She says it's like a bar code of binary information. During a dust storm they see the dust arranged such a way to give a message to the father. This advanced civilization does not have any other means to communicate but has control of gravity!. So the father gets the message which are coordinates and drives his truck to the location which turns out to be NASA operating underground because Government does not want to spend money on NASA while the world is starving. Yet they have this huge rocket built by whatever funds they acquired waiting to be sent to a worm hole conveniently waiting around Saturn for them to go through...They already sent scientists across the universe to some other galaxy and getting back some messages but only limited success. So they need someone to pilot their rocket because they only had pilots with simulator experience. Of course our hero pilot who crashed his last mission is the perfect match for this job. His job is to figure out which planet is suitable for life and come back to tell the people of the world to pack up and move to another Galaxy ! Oh yeah they can also communicate via video messages across light years of space..(Thank you Nolan for solving the biggest problem we have:Ultimate Speed of Light) *Spoilers ahead* I wont go into all the inconsistencies like going through a black hole (and surviving intact !) ending up back on Earth years before (!) he left, in his daughter's room behind a library where he can push and arrange the books but can't talk to her. Apparently he is in another dimension built by some super advanced civilization (who are actually us !). The only way to communicate with her is through time by moving the dials of a watch and gives her the solution to Theory of Everything, reconciling Quantum Theory with General Relativity ! So the daughter yells Eureka and all the problems of humanity are solved.

And, somehow he comes back to Earth crashing his craft and wakes up in the future, on a space station where all the people of Earth live now. But since the people of the Earth has aged more than him according to Einstein's Relativity, his daughter is now in death bed and tells him to go rescue Brand (Anne Hathaway) who is now in another galaxy waiting patiently...

I still don't get why people give 10 stars to this movie. 2001:A Space Odyssey made in the 60's was light years beyond this movie in scenario and scientific and technological accurateness.

OK, I must admit I did not have high expectations going into this movie since in general Turkish Cinema has been made cheaply with little regard to authenticity. My expectations were not totally unfounded. We are looking at a historical movie with very little congruence with factual history. ***Spoiler*** Not sure if Mohammad mentioned that Constantinopolis will be conquered some day by a "Blessed One". *** Why make that the opening scene, something that happened 800 or so years before the actual event. Throughout the movie seeing these religious tones make it look more like a Islamic Propaganda...Soldiers praying in the battlefield by thousands at the same time !...Yeah right ! I have to admit the director tried hard to make the battle scenes impressive albeit a bit too long and not realistic. On the acting side the actors were very amateurish, especially the one who played the Emperor Constantine. The "required" love story a la "Troy" did not look very convincing and was very badly placed. Byzantine folks speaking perfect modern Turkish really makes the whole movie looks amateurish. They could at least have them speak Greek or something with subtitles ! Most special effects looked very amateurish and obvious. Costumes were good but I question the authenticity. The fight between the hero and his nemesis just took too long and looked more like a training fight. There are other historical facts about the "Siege" that was just glossed over such as the chain across the Golden Horn and the moving of ships across land to reach the unprotected side of the city. In history books this is mentioned as the most important decision by Mehmet II that changed the outcome of the war. Special effects showing the ships being moved across land looked very fake. Why didn't they show those ships pounding the other side of the Constantinople which resulted in the falling of the city? I am not even going into the plot holes as there are always deviations from actual events and omissions in historical movies. As a conclusion it was a good attempt by Turkish Cinema to be in the Hollywood League. They should however try to make a film without being influenced by the political climate of the country. Who knows, it is very likely the government helped the production even though it's not mentioned in the rolling credits....