My Thoughts on "Reminiscence"
Foreword:
This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on Thursday September 16, 2021. This was one wasn't saved on either my Drafts app or my Notes app, so I'm pulling it directly from DeviantART. I don't exactly know why I decided to repost my review of Reminiscence now. I think it was because I mentioned it in one of my previous reviews, I think it was my Mars Express review, when I was talking about the aesthetic of the movie and the look of the future cities in that movie that I said, "BTW, speaking of reminiscent, Reminiscence (talk about wasted potential with that movie) is another movie that I reviewed back in 2021 that I should probably repost on here sometime."
And so now I'm here doing it. I guess I wrote that line, I just started thinking about that movie again after three years, and I felt like I should repost it here on my blog if only to write a foreword talking about how my feelings on the movie may have changed and evolved since I originally saw it back in 2021. But first, I should clarify that I haven't actually watched this movie since 2021. It was a one-time watch for me, I was disappointed and underwhelmed by what I had saw, and I felt at the time that watching it once enough for me. I had no desire to rewatch it afterwards, even if I had the means to. I watched the movie on HBO Max, which has since changed its name to just Max. So, I could conceivably watch that movie again if I wanted to, but I don't really feel like it.
So, I just watched it once, wrote my review, posted it on DeviantART, and then never thought about it again, until now. I'm sure it was kind of the same thing for a lot of people because no body talks about Reminiscence three years later. And there's probably a lot of people out there who have never seen it or heard of it because it kind of just faded into obscurity. So, what exactly is it about? Well, Reminiscence is basically a dystopian sci-fi detective movie, kind of.
I say kind of because the main character isn't a detective, nor is he even a PI (private investigator). It's not in his job description. The "investigation" he goes on is more of a search and rescue operation as he's looking for a missing person, and it's a personal crusade more than anything else since it was not sanctioned by any law enforcement agency. He's kind of like a vigilante operating entirely outside of the law, and he even gets in trouble with the law at the end of the movie. But, more on that later.
To be fair though, law enforcement in this movie's world is portrayed as being corrupt, ineffective, and callous, like they just don't care about solving actual crimes. They just care about protecting the rich and powerful 🤑 while lining their own pockets with bribes 🤑. So, it's no wonder Nick decides to go about this investigation himself without the police, or the FBI, or the US Marshals 🇺🇸 or any other law enforcement agency's help, even if he does end up paying the price for doing so.
It's set in a future dystopian world ravaged by climate change, which is mostly shown through coastal cities being partially underwater 💦. Like this movie takes place in the Southern United States 🇺🇸, and all of the major coastal cities in that region like Miami, New Orleans, Mobile are just permanently flooded with no hope of further human habitation. And their only sinking further and further into the ocean as sea levels continue to rise.
In Miami's case, the only thing that's keeping the entire city from flooding is a massive sea wall, which was constructed to keep the water 💦 out, leaving a percentage of the city dry and still able to support human life. But, it's strongly implied throughout the film that the sea wall won't last forever. It will burst, and all that water 💦 will flow through and flood the remaining dry parts of the city, and indeed that does happen at the end of the film.
We never see anything outside of the South, but we can assume that other cities were not as lucky as Miami and were flooded even more. People who once lived in these cities will never be able to go back home, and their children and their grandchildren will never get to know what it was like to live in these cities before they were submerged, as people were forced to move further in-land.
If that wasn't bad enough, large percentages of the land were bought up by the top 1%, millionaires and billionaires. The wealthy land owners who bought up nearly all of the land in the country as sea levels rose to catastrophic and irreversible levels were dubbed, "Land Barons." And these Land Barons make it difficult for the poor and working class to survive in this hellish landscape ravaged by climate change due to them hording all of the dry land for themselves, and leaving none for the poor and working class to live on or work off of. An apocalypse by our own making.
In addition to that, the country is full of racism and oppression (even more than there is today), as it is heavily implied throughout the film that the US 🇺🇸 has been taking over by a right-wing authoritarian government that threw ethnic and racial minorities into concentration camps at one point in time. The US 🇺🇸 also got into a war with Mexico 🇲🇽 at some point before the events of the film called "the Border War," as many of key characters are veterans of that war, including the main character.
Those concentration camps that the government rounded up into were created during the war, and were justified by the government saying that they suspecting these minorities of being spies or traitors to the enemy, and they didn't want them to jeopardize the war effort on the American side 🇺🇸. Kind of like the Japanese internment camps 🇯🇵 during World War II, where Japanese-Americans 🇯🇵🇺🇸 around the country were rounded up by the military and forced to live in these internment camps for the entire duration of the war.
The government and the American public 🇺🇸 as a whole were pretty racist and were pretty distrustful of Japanese-Americans 🇯🇵🇺🇸 because they suspected them of secretly working with the enemy, and didn't see them as "real Americans 🇺🇸." Their real country was Japan 🇯🇵, and their loyalties to Japan 🇯🇵 would always come before their loyalties to America 🇺🇸.
That's what white Americans 🇺🇸 really thought of Japanese immigrants 🇯🇵, they assumed the worst in them simply because of their ethnicity, and were more than happy to throw them into internment camps. A lot of Americans 🇺🇸 at the time approved of the internment camps. It wasn't until the true conditions of those camps was revealed, and the true hypocrisy of the whole policy was highlighted, that more people started turning against them.
That's kind of what the concentration camps in this movie's lore were described as by the characters, except unlike with the internment camps, many other races and ethnicities were imprisoned in these camps. Not just Mexican-Americans 🇲🇽🇺🇸 or even Latin Americans 🇺🇸 in general. This is just me speculating, but it could be that they started out imprisoning just Mexican-Americans 🇲🇽🇺🇸, and other Latino groups, but the government just expanded it to imprison other racial and ethnic groups. Like, they just used these camps as an excuse to get rid of all the minorities, in order to make America 🇺🇸 a "white country." They were using the war and these concentration camps to try to ethnically cleanse the United States 🇺🇸.
And given how corrupt authoritarian governments tend to be, it’s also very likely that the US government 🇺🇸 is very corrupt in this movie’s world. There seems to be a lot of government corruption in this movie’s world, as well as high levels of police corruption, which is why the police doesn’t do shit, and crime seems to rampant, with a lot of criminals getting away with it simply because of their wealth and connections.
The US 🇺🇸 in the Reminiscence world is pretty much a kleptocracy on the level of something like South Africa 🇿🇦, Venezuela 🇻🇪, Syria 🇸🇾, Ba’athist Iraq 🇮🇶, Egypt 🇪🇬, Pakistan 🇵🇰, Bangladesh 🇧🇩, Myanmar 🇲🇲, Thailand 🇹🇭, Malaysia 🇲🇾, Cambodia 🇰🇭, and Russia 🇷🇺, which is what inevitably inevitably happens to authoritarian or fascist dictatorships. Though, South Africa 🇿🇦, Thailand 🇹🇭, Malaysia 🇲🇾, and Pakistan 🇵🇰 are technically democracies and not full-on dictatorships, but they still have unforgivable amounts of corruption.
Malaysia 🇲🇾 was at the center of one of the biggest corruption scandals in the last decade, as the then prime minister, Najib Razak allegedly siphoned $700 million 💵 worth of stolen funds from the 1MDB (1 Malaysian Development Berhad 🇲🇾) sovereign wealth fund into his personal bank account as a part of a larger money laundering scheme 💵 that was masterminded by a mysterious Malaysian billionaire 🇲🇾 named Jho Low, who is currently on the run from the authorities.
Over $4.5 billion 💵 were stolen from 1MDB, and stored in various shell companies and off-shore accounts owned by Jho, in order to enrich himself and his other corrupt buddies who were involved in the money laundering scandal 💵 🤑. But, once the plot was exposed in 2013, and he was implicated as the mastermind of it, Jho went into hiding, where he remains to this day. If he's caught, he'll face charges for money laundering 💵 and bribery.
There's a Netflix documentary about this scandal and about Jho Low called Man on the Run, if you want to learn more about it. I personally learned about it from watching Media Pastime's review of Dumb & Dumber To. Why was it mentioned in a review of Dumb & Dumber To? Because Dumb & Dumber To was made by a now defunct production and distribution company called Red Granite Pictures which was part of the 1MBD scandal because of Prime Minster Najib's stepson, Riza Aziz, who co-founded the company along with a guy ♂︎ named Joey McFarland. McFarland was forced to relinquish $14 million 💵 worth of profits and gifts that were made and purchased with some of the stolen money 💵 from 1MDB after the scandal came to light and Aziz was apprehended by the authorities and put on trial for his involvement in the scandal. McFarland wasn’t directly implicated in the scandal and he wasn’t arrested or charged with anything. But he did benefit from it, knowingly or unknowingly, and he’s still working in the film industry to this day. He started a new production company called McFarland Productions after Red Granite Pictures went under.
Aziz was one of the key figures in the plot as he was close friends with Jho Low. He had known him since they met in college, and Aziz is probably how Najib came into contact with Jho, and how he got wrapped up in the scheme, and directly and knowingly benefited from it by siphoning $700 million 💵 worth of stolen money 💵 into his own bank account.
Red Granite Picture also funded and distributed The Wolf of Wall Street movie that Martin Scorsese made, which many have pointed out the irony of since Red Granite used stolen money 💵 to fund a movie about a guy ♂︎ who stole money 💵. But, it's been alleged that Dumb & Dumber To specifically had about $50 million 💵 worth of stolen money 💵 linked to its production. So, if you want to Pastime's video about this, you can watch it here.
Of those four countries I listed, Thailand 🇹🇭 is probably the least democratic, as it had been under the rule of a military dictatorship for 10 years since 2014, and only just barely got a mostly civilian government again this year, and its second ever female prime minister ♀︎, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who also happens to be the country’s youngest prime minister.
Though, the military still has a lot of influence over the government to this day, and Paetongtarn herself is very pro-monarchy and is against any reform of the monarchy. So, she was not on the side of the protesters 🪧 in the 2020-2021 Thai protests 🇹🇭🪧, which demanded that the monarchy be reformed. Anyway, back to what I was saying about why authoritarian and totalitarian governments are so susceptible to corruption.
The same happened to Fascist Italy 🇮🇹, Nazi Germany, and the Empire of Japan 🇯🇵, they became kleptocratic as a result of their fascism, and militarism in the case of Japan 🇯🇵, though Imperial Japan 🇯🇵 was kind of a bit fascist too. It’s also happened to communist governments ☭ like the Soviet Union ☭, the Eastern Bloc countries, Cuba 🇨🇺, the Democratic Kampuchea, North Vietnam 🇻🇳, the unified Vietnam 🇻🇳, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Laos 🇱🇦, China 🇨🇳, and of course, North Korea 🇰🇵. Though, given how secretive and opaque it is, we don’t know the true extent of corruption within the North Korean government 🇰🇵, but I’m pretty sure that it’s pretty damn high. Like, duh, of course North Korea 🇰🇵 has a lot of corruption.
This even happened to other dictatorships and even some democracies in the past like South Vietnam, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 🇦🇫, the Kingdom of Laos, South Korea 🇰🇷 (under the Park Chung Lee regime), the Philippines 🇵🇭 (under the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. regime), the Republic of China 🇹🇼 (under the Chiang Kai-shek regime), the Khmer Republic, Georgia 🇬🇪 (pre-Rose revolution), Ukraine 🇺🇦 (pre-Maidan revolution), Serbia 🇷🇸 (under the Milošević regime), Panama 🇵🇦 (under the Noriega regime), Chile 🇨🇱 (under the Pinochet regime), and Argentina 🇦🇷 (under the Galtieri regime). And the biggest reason why a lot of governments, especially authoritarian and totalitarian ones, are so susceptible to corruption besides just greed 🤑 is the lack of accountable, or knowing that you'll never be held accountable.
When you hold the highest office in the power, when your party is in power, and there's no opposition, or anything that can rival you or challenge your rule, you start feeling as if you can get away with anything. So, you start engaging in criminal activity, because hey, who's going to stop you? It's not like the people can just vote you out, since you either don't hold elections at all or you rig the elections so that you and your party will always come on on top. And you could always convince yourself and the people who still genuinely support you that it was for the "good of the country," even if it's clearly not. Anyone with common sense can see that corruption is not good for any country, or at least any country that wants to function properly.
And if some of the people protest 🪧, you could always just violently suppress them. You're a dictator, and you run a one-party state, so you can do whatever you want. Sure, there'll be consequences to your actions, like weakening your country's economy, political system, and military, but hey, why do you care? All you care about is enriching yourself and your corrupt buddies 🤑. And clearly, this is what happens to the United States 🇺🇸 in the Reminiscence world.
Speaking of the main character, the main story of this film is about this guy ♂︎ named Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) who runs a small business in the dry parts of Miami with his friend, Emily "Watts" Sanders (Thandiwe Newton), and the two of them are both veterans of that Border War I mentioned a few sentences ago. They operate this machine which was created during the war that allows the user to retrieve and relive memories. They call this process, "reminiscence," which is where the movie gets its title from.
While, they do mostly use this machine for public consumer purposes, like they offer their services to anyone who's willing to pay to use their machine to relive their own memories, they do occasionally work with law enforcement and use it for the purposes of interrogation and conviction. Like, they help prosecutors retrieve the memories of suspects to prove their guilt or innocence. In fact, during the war that they mention multiple times throughout this movie, that's what the machine was mainly used for. It was only used for interrogations, likely to figure what the enemy was planning, or where certain targets were by extracting and examining their memories.
One night, this woman ♀︎ named Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) shows up at Nick and Watts' establishment, wanted to use their machine to relive some memories. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary about that, they've likely dealt with customers in the past coming in for similar reasons. The world is so F'ed up that of course people would want to use a machine like this, and relive their memories to remember a better, more prosperous time, when there wasn't so much suffering and everyone who wasn't rich wasn't just hanging by a thread and holding on for dear life. And while they allow this woman ♀︎ to use their machine and while she's using it, Nick falls in love with her ❤️ after looking at some of her memories, and the two hit it off, and form a relationship with each other.
And then, months later, when she mysteriously disappears, Nick becomes obsessed with her, reliving the same memories of being with her over and over again. It's getting to the point where Watts is starting to worry about her longtime friend, and his mental health. But rather than simply relive the memories of being with her, Nick decides to go search for her himself, especially after he gets a tip about her potential whereabouts and what exactly happened to her. In doing so, by launching this private investigation to find out where Mae is and what happened to her, Nick ends up uncovering a conspiracy, much more vast than he could've ever have imagined. This goes all the way to the top, to the upper echelons of their society, and could potentially bring the whole crashing down.
Except not really because nothing really changes, the people behind all this, the people actually committed the crime and killed Mae get away with it, and Nick ends up being arrested and placed under house arrest (since he actually lives in that building that they work in) for the crime of "burning somebody's memories." That is an actual crime in this movie's world because memories are a tangible thing that can be extracted and stored like computer data thanks to that memory machine. And nothing is more precious to a human than their memories, even if they can be extracted, stored, and commoditized in this movie's world.
Though, the authorities allow Nick to serve his sentence hooked up to the machine, reliving his memories of Mae over and over again, which is all he can do since Mae is dead, and his little investigation/missing person's search was all for nothing. The sea wall breaks, and all that built up water 💦 comes rushing in, flooding the remainder of Miami, and killing all who still remained in the dry parts of the city behind that wall.
Nick just grows old and dies sad and defeated, only able to see the woman ♀︎ he loved ❤️ in his memories, being hooked up to this machine for the rest of his life, probably past his own prison sentence. I don't remember how long his prison sentence was since it's been so long since I've seen this movie, and a lot of this plot summary comes from me reading the synopsis on the Wikipedia page, and being refreshed on what it was actually about beyond the things that actually stuck with me, like the worldbuilding and the music.
But, the Wikipedia page doesn't say long his prison sentence was, so I can only guess based on what I remember, which isn't much. The point is, Nick spends the rest of life living a sad and pathetic existence being hooked up this machine 24/7, reliving the same memories of Mae over and over again until he grows old and dies from the city being flooded. Even Watts gives up on him, leaving his ass behind in that building as she leaves to go live with the rest of her family elsewhere as living in Miami is no longer safe, and she's an old lady ♀︎ now. But, not before giving a tearful goodbye 👋🥲. That would be the last time she would ever see her wartime buddy before Miami is reclaimed by the ocean.
Of course, we get some really pretentious narration at the end of the movie from Nick himself talking about how the world is sinful, and the flooding is just God's way of washing it all away or something like that. He's quoting the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice when talking about his relationship with Mae, which was tragic one just as the relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice. I don't know his monologue about the world being full of sin and decadence and the rising sea levels washing it all away came in that part, but he definitely said something to that effect at some point during the end.
The ending of this movie is actually really similar to the ending of The Batman (2021), even down to the fact that it's a sea wall bursting that causes the city to flood. Although, in The Batman (2021)'s case, the sea wall was destroyed intentionally by a bunch of crazed terrorists who were led by a serial killer who also was a terrorist since he planned the whole thing out. Whereas in Reminiscence, the sea wall was destroyed naturally by the integrity giving out due to the weight and volume of water 💦 that had accumulated over the years by it all being blocked off by that sea wall and having no where else to go.
It just kept rising and rising until the wall could no longer hold it, and it just burst. Another key difference is that unlike The Batman (2021), Reminiscence doesn't end with a message of hope or perseverance. It just ends with hopelessness and depression. It kind of makes me wonder if Matt Reeves and the co-writer, Peter Craig got the idea to end the movie with a flood from Reminiscence. If so, then that's possibly Reminiscence's only legacy, it's only contribution to pop culture. Though probably not since The Batman (2021) also came out in 2021 (obviously), and the presence of sea walls bursting and causing city-wide floods in both movies is likely just a coincidence.
The movie was a box office bomb 💣, not even getting close to making back its estimated $54 million-$68 million budget 💵, and it was received poorly by critics. Everybody forgot about Reminiscence, and for good reason. It's pretty forgettable movie that really doesn't bring anything new to the table despite the interesting premise and the fascinating lore and worldbuilding, and is really only worth one watch ☝️. This was one of those movies that was made by somebody who worked on Westworld after that show got canceled, in this case, the co-creator, Lisa Joy.
This was her directorial debut, and at the time of me writing this, she hasn't directed anything since. Gee, I wonder why 🙄. Almost very film project that was made someone who was Westworld alum or even a Game of Thrones alum failed to take off. Remember, David Benioff and DB Weiss were supposed to direct a Star Wars movie, and it ended up never happening. It just goes to show that the transition from TV to film isn't always so smooth. Sometimes, it doesn't work out, even if you do get your project off the ground and it does get made into an actual movie. Sometimes the results are just lackluster.
The odd thing is that although this movie was a critical and commercial failure, a lot of the negative reviews had to do with how similar the movie is the other movies. The most often made comparisons were to Inception and The Maltese Falcon. The latter of which being a film from 83 years ago, long after most people alive today were born, and one that most of my generation has probably never even heard of, let alone seen. One critic quote especially strikes me as odd and kind of stupid. It's from a guy named Owen Gleiberman, who writes for Variety. He said, "it's very Blade Runner: The Streaming Series, with maybe a hint of The Godfather. Outside, the flooded Miami landscape, with buildings and byways still visible, evokes a kind of Westworld Lite crossed with a Hunger Games sequel."
The movie has 36% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅, which is considered a rotten rating on that website, and the website's consensus was, "Although Reminiscence isn't lacking narrative ambition, its uncertain blend of sci-fi action and noir thriller mostly provokes memories of better films." That's pretty representative of how the majority of critics interpreted this movie. A lot of said that it had "narrative ambition" (whatever that means), but was too derivative and too similar to other better movies (according to them).
But, I disagree with those critics, I think they got this movie completely wrong. The problem with this movie wasn't that it was derivative, a lot of movies are derivative. Even some of the best movies, movies that a lot of these same critics love and praise are derivative since everything was inspired by something else, and everything is a reinvention or a reinterpretation of something that came before. So, nothing is truly original, even if we all like to pretend that they are. The problem with Reminiscence is that it's boring and completely lacks ambition. I really don't understand what a lot of critics at the time saw in this movie that made them think it had "narrative ambition," because there's nothing ambitious about this story whatsoever.
At the end of the day, Reminiscence is just wasted potential. They could've done so much more with this concept and with this premise and world than they did. As I said before in the foreword of my Transformers: Age of Extinction review, good ideas can only take you so far if they're undermined by bad execution. I wouldn't say the execution in Reminiscence was bad, it was just underwhelming and mediocre. Like, it felt that they took the path of least resistance in a lot of cases, and went with the safest, least ambitious, and most boring versions of these ideas.
I know in my review of Mars Express, I sort of lumped it in with the cyberpunk genre by even mentioning it at all, but it's not really cyberpunk. Yes, it is a dystopian movie, it does take place in a dystopian world ruined by capitalism, but it really doesn't have any of the other hallmarks or tropes of the cyberpunk genre. There's no robots, there's no cyborgs, there's no androids, there's no flying cars, and there aren't even any holograms. The only real sci-fi elements in Reminiscence are the memory machine and the coastal cities being underwater 💦.
There are things that I do like about the movie, and a lot of them are things that most critics who reviewed the movie at the time of its release were bothered by, or glossed over and didn't bother to mention in their reviews. I do like the worldbuilding and the lore they came up with, and I do like that the movie's set in the South, which is a region of this country that isn't typically depicted in dystopian fiction.
We get to see bits of the Creole and Cajun culture that most people outside of the Deep South rarely ever sees. I mean, we do see more of the Cajun culture in movies and TV, but we hardly ever see the Creole culture, and when we do, it's largely just stereotypes. Negative stereotypes. But not here, we get a depiction of Creole culture that isn't at all negative or stereotypical. Sure, it mostly comes in the form of an Asian crime boss with a Creole accent (or Cajun accent, I'm not sure), but that's still way better than a dumb, racist, illiterate white redneck with a Cajun accent, now is it?
And a lot of the things in this movie are still prescient to this day, possibly even more than they were at the time when this movie was released. The effects of anthropogenic climate change are becoming more and more apparent and more and more devastating, millionaires and billionaires are trying to run away and hide from the mess that they made, especially those in the fossil fuel industry, there are rich assholes trying to buy up land and water 💦, particularly in and around the Colorado River, and we are at risk of our country falling to a fascist dictatorship that plans on deporting millions of immigrants and rounding them into concentration camps. And there's always the risk they could expand those concentration camps to include other minorities that aren't immigrant but were natural born citizens.
We're also at risk of our country going to war with Mexico 🇲🇽 should that fascist dictatorship take hold, since the Republican Party has talked about and fantasized about the idea of invading and occupying Mexico 🇲🇽, or at the very least, carrying out airstrikes on the territory of Mexico 🇲🇽 under the guise of eliminating drug cartels. Sound familiar? Even Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex predicted that one. A lot of futuristic sci-fi movies have predicted that one day we would turn against our neighbor to the south, or even our neighbor to the north since they also made a TV miniseries about the US 🇺🇸 plotting to invade Canada 🇨🇦 for what else? Water 💦.
It's called H2O, and the only reason I even know about is that JJ McCullough mentioned it one time in one of his videos talking about how Canadians 🇨🇦 hate the US 🇺🇸, and how he wishes that they'd just shut up and embrace America 🇺🇸. Or it might've been in one of this videos talking about failed future predictions, I don't know. I haven't watched his videos in a long time, and I don't plan on ever watching his videos again. I talk more about the Republicans' evil plan to invade Mexico 🇲🇽 in a future post that I plan on posting tomorrow if I'm not going anywhere and I stay home tomorrow.
I even liked the memory machine itself, I thought it was cool. The idea of reliving your memories, and having memories be a tangible thing that can extracted and stored is an intriguing one, there's a lot of things you can do with it. I really like how the machine is kind of like a water tank 💦 that the user lies down in, like it's basically like they're lying in a bath 🛁, or it's like they're lying inside of a bacta tank to use a Star Wars comparison to kind of ground this for some people, and make it easier to visualize for those haven't seen this movie. They put on a headset that puts them in a sleep or trance-like state 😴, and then they start seeing their memories and reliving them as if they were experiencing them again for real. And their memories are projected onto this stream of water 💦 for the technicians and people on the outside in the real world to see.
It's a really cool effect, water projections 💦 are really fascinating to me. Projecting images onto water 💦 rather a typical projection screen is cool. The machine also records the user's memories, and then stores them as computer data that can be accessed at any time. That's how Nick is able to go back and replay some of his clients' memories to aid in his investigation, and indeed, it's how he's able to keep reliving the memories of Mae indefinitely. Indeed, the dystopian world is really just there to prove context, to prove an explanation for why people would even want to use a machine that allows you to relive your memories. But, the dystopian world they created ended up being way more interesting than the story or the characters themselves.
Speaking of water 💦 though, another thing that I remember about this movie that I’d like to mention real quick is that it’s a very wet movie 💦. Like, the streets and sidewalks are always wet 💦, there’s puddles everywhere, the windows are always fogged up from the humidity and dripping with water 💦. It always looks as if it just rained 🌧️ a few minutes prior to the scene coming on. Even the floors in the interiors are wet 💦 too, like the place where Nick and Watts work, their floors are always wet 💦, probably because the memory machine uses a lot of water 💦.
I know Miami is a Floridian city, and Florida’s a really humid place, but still, this movie is really wet 💦. I feel like it should come with a wet warning ⚠️ like those you see at water rides 💦 in amusement parks. Nick and Watts probably should’ve invested in some wet floor signs so that their clients don’t slip whenever they step into their establishment. Wet floors 💦 can be deadly 💀, just look at what happened to Masahiko Kobe.
All of that stuff in the worldbuilding and the lore was great, and indeed, I do think there is potential for stories set within this movie's universe that have nothing to do with the main plot of Nick, Watts, and Mae, and just explore how other people deal with living in this world. How do other people survive the rising sea levels and coastal cities flooding and sinking into the ocean, and the other effects of climate change like increased frequency and severity of droughts, extreme heat 🥵, increased frequency and intensity of forest fires 🔥, and extreme weather? That could be cool.
It's just that I didn't care at all about the main story. It was really boring and forgettable to me, and I think a huge part of the reason why is that I didn't like Nick as a character. I didn't care about his plight, I didn't care about his little investigation, and I wasn't rooting for him to succeed. The movie kind of portrays him as this pathetic loser who doesn't deserve to win, and indeed that's how he comes across. That's how Hugh Jackman plays him.
He becomes super obsessed with this one woman ♀︎, and throws away everything to try to look for her or at least find out what happened to her after she goes missing, and it all kind of ends up being a huge waste of time. Nothing was truly accomplished. He ruined his life for nothing. And he grows old and dies living a sad existence being hooked up this machine, partially submerged in water 💦, reliving the same memories of that same woman ♀︎ over and over again on repeat because he's unable or unwilling to let go of her and move on like a mature adult, like a strong person. Why would I want to root for somebody like that? Why would I feel sorry for a person like that? I can only sympathize a person who lost their partner to a certain point before it kind of becomes pathetic, to where it becomes an obsession and the person is unwilling to let that person go. And it gets to that point with Nick where I'm unable to sympathize him.
The movie's not badly made on a technical level. It had a decent budget and it was competently made. It's well shot, it's directed well enough,the special effects, the cinematography and production design are top notch. The actors all do a good job, like the cast is solid, and they all give good performances, especially Hugh Jackman, Thandiwe Newton, and Rebecca Ferguson, the main ones. I even like the song on the soundtrack that plays at the end, "Save My Love" by Lonr. and featuring Amber Mark.
I learned recently that’s there’s a music video for that song on YouTube, which you can go watch here. Thandiwe Newton's in that music video if you could believe it, in character as Watts, and the whole thing is framed as visit to her and Nick's company by Lonr. to experience reminiscence, and that's what the music video depicts. All of the singing and the dancing, that's supposed to be his memories.
Oh, and Rebecca Ferguson herself contributed songs to the soundtrack, showing how truly versatile she is. All of which are songs that her character, Mae sang at the nightclub where she worked, and all songs that the keep repeating throughout the movie as Nick keeps revisiting those memories of Mae performing her songs at the nightclub. I wasn't crazy about any of her songs, like I don't listen to them casually or leisurely pleasure like I do with Lonr.'s song, but it is cool that Rebecca Ferguson can sing and did contribute songs to the soundtrack.
And to its credit, it was an original movie, not based on or attached to any preexisting IP. It was its own thing, and was just focused on telling its own self-contained story, even if it did leave some room for it to expand into something later on, which it didn't even do. There's something to admire about that.
Everyone who talks about movies, either as a hobby or as a living, always complains about how there's no originality left in Hollywood, and how everything's a remake, or a reboot, or a sequel, or a prequel, or a spinoff, or an adaptation that's apart of some preexisting IP, and how they wish that there were more original films out there, that were stand alone and self-contained, and weren't concerned with kicking off a franchise or expanding a franchise.
They also complain how there's too much big budget movies that cost anywhere from $100 million 💵, $200 million 💵, $300 million 💵, and now even $400 million 💵, and how there's not enough mid budget movies. Well, here you go, Lisa Joy gave us a mid budget movie that's an original concept that isn't tied to a preexisting IP, even if she did completely miss the mark with it.
It's just that the writing was bad, and the plot was uninteresting and even a bit frustrating at times, but not in a good way. In a bad way. But, this has always been a problem for a lot of neo-noir science fiction genre. The main plot, the main mystery, and detective story is never really the best part of the movie, and is usually not the thing people like about it. It's always the world and the worldbuilding, as well as the more technical aspects of the film like the cinematography, the special effects, the direction, the production design, and even the acting to a certain extent.
Like, I don't recall anyone saying that they like the Blade Runner movies because they have really good plots or that the mysteries were intriguing. The first Blade Runner doesn't have a mystery, but the second one, Blade Runner 2049 does, even if it's not a particularly good mystery. No, it's always the other things that people like about them, the acting, the direction, the special effects, the cinematography, the production design, the world and worldbuilding, and of course, the "themes."
The Blade Runner movies have such "deep themes," don't you know? It's all about what makes us human, and why can't these Replicants be treated like humans too if they pretty much are human? Except, are they really humans? Are they actually machines or androids? It's not entirely clear, and the filmmakers and the films themselves have given us contradictory information about what the Replicants actually are.
Something, something loneliness and existentialism because everyone was pointlessly debating about whether Deckard was a Replicant or not before 2049 pretty much made the question irrelevant, and both Deckard and K were both sad and lonely, and couldn't get "real woman ♀︎." Deckard had to go with a Replicant capable of giving birth, and K just settled for a hologram.
That's how these men ♂︎, or rather one man ♂︎ and one Replicant, chose to quell their loneliness, and they both lose the "artificial" loves of their lives ❤️, and are back to being lonely again. Expect Deckard, he gets to be with his half-human/half-Replicant daughter that he and Rachael conceived and Rachael gave birth to. But, K? He just dies. Oh and also, capitalism is bad, corporations are bad, we can't forget those. The aesthetics and the themes are what people like about Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, not the plot.
This movie could've been a really interesting deep dive into the dangers of nostalgia, and how clinging onto the past instead of embracing the present or the future can be detrimental to our health rather than beneficial. That's not say nostalgia is inherently bad, there's no harm indulging in a little bit of nostalgia and reminiscing about the past, but if you just keep in living in the past and refuse to look forward, you'll never live a truly fulfilling life and you'll never grow as a person.
But no, this movie didn't really do. Instead, it went with the least interesting version of this idea and just did a tragic love story ❤️ about a guy ♂︎ who becomes obsessed with this one woman ♀︎ he met one time, and refuses to let her go, and kind of just lowkey stalks her, only find that she's dead, and the people who had her killed are too rich and powerful to bring to justice.
I know that Mae says that she loved Nick in one of the memories that Nick extracted from one of the bad guys, but this relationship, this love story ❤️ comes across as one-sided as we only really see it from Nick's perspective, and Nick is just an overly obsessed loser with nothing else to live for except this one woman ♀︎ who gave him purpose and gave him a reason to life. And he just gives up on life after he finds out that she's dead.
Any message the movie might've been going for about the dangers of nostalgia and living in past ends up being muddled and toothless by this uninteresting love story ❤️ that I did not care about and was not invested it in at all. I can watch a movie with a romance ❤️, that's not a problem for me, but it has to be a good romance ❤️, and this just wasn't one in my opinion.
Another thing that they've could've explored but didn't was the fact that human memory is imperfect. We misremember things all the time, or we create false memories for ourselves, especially if the thing we're trying to remember something that was so long ago that the details might be fuzzy, and our mind is forced to kind of fill in the blanks. They never say whether or not the memory machine is able to retrieve and represent memories accurately, or if it just represents or shows the memories as the user remembers them, regardless of whether it's accurate or not, regardless of whether that memory actually happened the way the user remembered it.
They've could've explored this idea of people having false memories or misremembering things, and having that play into the story by having Nick use the memory of someone in his investigation, only to discover that they misremembered the event or they misremembered a conversation, or their mind made up the memory entirely, and either none of it or very little of what that person remembered happening actually happened.
That's actually using your premise to its fullest extent, that's actually being narratively ambitious and perhaps thought provoking. And yet, the writer/director/co-producer, Lisa Joy didn't even think to go there. It never occurred to her while writing the script to actually explore that aspect of memory, that it's imperfect, and sometimes people remember things wrong.
Like I said, the script she wrote for this movie was very unambitious, and she often went with the boring and basic versions of these ideas. This premise and this concept never reached its full potential because Lisa Joy just wrote such a bland and boring script out of it. She failed this concept and this premise, she didn't rise to the occasion, and the movie just suffers as a result of this lack of ambition from her.
Decades from now when Hollywood starts remaking movies from the 2010s and the 2020s that aren't foreign films, maybe they could remake this one as well. Someone could take this concept and this premise, and actually do something new and exciting with. Make it actually good, and not boring and forgettable. We can only hope. Maybe I might end up being the one to do it, who knows?
But, the movie as it is now, is kind of just mediocre, and not really worth your time. There are better dystopian movies out there, and there are better neo-noir sci-fi films out there, which kind of overlap with dystopian films, but you know what I mean. Not every dystopian film is a neo-noir sci-fi film, but almost every neo-noir sci-fi film is a dystopian film.
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