I can pretty much say that the reason so much hate is directed at this movie is because Asimov's story is such a beloved classic, and the movie has absolutely nothing to do with it. None of Asimov's ideas made it into the movie. There's no trace of the mounting fear of darkness, no exploration of the panic that will ensue, nothing about the burning of the cities--actually very little of the movie has anything to do with nightfall. It's all about this perplexing love story between Aton and this desert chick with her weird snake story. Where in the galaxy did the filmmakers get that stuff?...
That said, I watched it last night (right after reading the story), and I have to say I agree with you--it's not all that bad. There's some interesting stuff here. It held my interest, and this morning I keep finding myself thinking about it--and not in a negative way. Maybe there's more to this movie than people give it credit for.
I just read the novel, too, and I actually loved it. It really only fell apart for me at the end. After I finished it, I immediately read the original story, and I feel the original was better. Sometimes it's best not to know what happened next. The original story leaves you gasping for more...and the novel gives you more. But as Spock said, "having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting."
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Blueghost
11 years ago
It's a small indy film made by a film maker who is not a sci-fi film maker, but an indy film maker who makes small films about people. That's what he knows best, so that's what we got here. He throws in all of the thematic stuff at the end as a kind of slap to the characters to get them to realize that they aren't all that important. There's a bigger universe out there, and regardless of all of your squabbles and petty disagreements that you think are so important, you're really nothing.
Still, that too is a slap in the face of the people who were expecting to see an epic about a society that hadn't coped with anything like a "night". It comes across as artsy pablum. The kind of thing you watch at small indy-film festivals. And that's the part that pisses people off, and I'm sure the film director is egotistically perplexed at why people didn't like it. Or, if he does know, then he doesn't care or has no apology for what he made.
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