This Island Earth (1 Point)

 

            First thing’s first: Cal Meacham’s voice is insanely deep. It has to be all ADR, right? Because like…Jesus Christ.

 

            Anyways, I hate to go full Undiagnosed-ADHD-Zoomer in this post, but I found This Island Earth kind of boring until the last half hour. I wanted to like this one, I really did, but I just couldn’t really get into it until they left Earth. I do love the film on an aesthetic level though. I’ve always been a sucker for clean retro sci-fi props and sets, and this movie delivers on that front. The interocitor’s design is great in its simplicity (although it’s kind of funny with hindsight that it’s essentially a big cell phone), and I appreciate how it explains how the gravity in their spaceship works. The Metaluna set has some really cool architecture and its limitations (by today’s standards) are charming. I really like the added layer of sympathy to the Metalunans. Although the Monitor is a bit of a xenophobic jerk, but Exeter is a likeable guy who wants things to go over peacefully. I really like the poetic spin he puts on Metaluna becoming a Sun, how he says it’ll provide life for other beings.

 

Finally, of course, there’s the Mutant, which is one of the coolest alien monster designs on film (I do find it funny that they put pants on it though. Gotta keep it looking decent). It’s kind of messed up that they made life to perform menial tasks and just kind of gloss over that. The fact it dies from changing pressure is pretty clever. I admit, part of my disappointment came with how excited I was for the mutant and how little it was in the film, but the Xenomorph isn’t in Alien that much either and I still love that movie. I still think it’s worth watching though, mainly for the last twenty minutes. That’s when the film reveals its really interesting ideas and has some fun action. I get the movie was trying to build up to that through mystery and intrigue, but to me it just kind of felt like it was meandering. It could be that I’m just not used to older movies’ pacing yet. Maybe one day I’ll give this movie a second chance after I watch more films from its era.

 

Since this movie has a neat boy too, here's some pictures of the Metaluna Mutant that I like. Consider them Halloween Treats :

:)

Me doomscrolling on election day

I really like this one because it looks like he got caught doing something naughty in a sitcom and just went "Ahh ya got me!" or something and the audience laughed.

 

 

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