MovieChat Forums > Approaching the Unknown (2016) Discussion > I don't think this fool ever left the de...

I don't think this fool ever left the desert


I don't think this fool ever left the desert. OK?

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Yep - all the rest was his dying thoughts.

The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.

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He had to have died in the desert right? Aside from his drop to mars ( watch 7 minutes of terror...video about landing curiosity on mars) being waay waaaaay off they kept going back to scemes in the desert...or him talking about the desert. I thought i was nuts....it seemed like it was his idea of what space would be like. ..traveling through nebula etc

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[deleted]

Yep, as it stands it's barely a 4, a little too vague for me.

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Plus, he'd never go up alone... Dunno if it was even possible to write this story - I guess it may be worth watching, just for fun (MAYBE), because it's Strong; otherwise a sure pass, heh.

(The 'one moment of pure wonder' thing, to make us sit through the movie - for nothing - not so cool, though)

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[deleted]

That's just how Hollywood likes to write space exploration movies.

Heck, even the film treatment for Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" took away the multiple-person attribute of the "vehicle" and instead made it a solo trip. And in the novel it being multiple people was kinda important to the plot IIRC.


- - -

Chipping away at a mountain of pop culture trivia,
Darren Dirt.

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I think they gave several hints that it could be true. When he fell asleep on the ship and woke up in the desert, then woke up back on the ship... His constant water struggles and talking about how dry it was on the ship... At the end when we could only hear the wind... Even the title suggests it, because what is more unknown than death? I often had the sense he was hallucinating the whole experience.

Movies are IQ tests; the IMDB boards are how people broadcast their score.

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[deleted]

I think you got it right. It makes complete sense. If people thought of it this way, and didn't expect Gravity or Interstellar, or the Martian, they might actually like it. I thought it was alright. Not the best. But, a good twist to the plot. The whole thing was him dying on Earth.

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That makes sense, it did show his invention failing in the desert and it's not like NASA wouldn't have made sure the damn thing worked before spending what would have been hundreds of millions on a plan doomed to fail from the beginning.

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I don't think he left the desert either. One scene showed him wrenching after he drank the dirt water. Even if he did succeed with the machine that doesn't mean he goes into space with it. A real astronaut would have gone. Otherwise we must believe he built that machine then also becomes an expert on space vehicles. The feeling of helplessness came thru in the film loud and clear.

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*retching*
HTH

The Adventures of The Man With No Penis: http://tinyurl.com/8ezrkh

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He died in the desert. I'm watching it now.

At around the 50 minute mark they flashback to him actually dying (collapsing) in the desert, then cut right to him conversing with Skinny - "You remember what you said to me when you returned to camp? You said you squeezed water from a stone." He replies, "Well, that's half true" and then changes the subject to the ship that had to turn around. Meaning, well ... he squeezed a stone.

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Now at approx 1:02, he actually describes his death:

"There wasn't a reason I um, that wasn't the moment ... I drank the land. But just when I got it working, you know the minute I was, I was gonna take a drink? My, my foot, my leg went numb: bang! I collapsed. I tried to take a drink, I couldn't. I couldn't grip the bottle. My hand was like ... air. I thought I was evaporating. I laid down in the sand. I wove myself in. And this barrier - between me, and everything - just dissolved. And I could die, because life is enormous. I loved the feeling of dying."

*Shuddered deep breath*

"And then I passed."

(That's it, imo. The rest is either an afterlife type experience or hallucenation)

"The feeling passed. I could feel my hands, my feet ... got up, I walked to the rendevous, and I made up my mind right there and then - I'm going on one-way mission to Mars."




- Just finished it. I'm thinking this was a coma dream or his thoughts at the end of his life as he's attempted to be rescussetated while laying out dehydrated in the desert still (there were A LOT of hints after that nebula scene - "can almost hear Skinny as if he's trying to reach out to him", referrals to the there just being the machine -craft, body - with him inside, and I think the actual landing scene on Mars right at the end is when he lets go.

I liked it (good not great). I liked Solaris (the remake) a lot too though, and a lot of people hated that one.

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I like the idea that he really died in the desert, because I thought those space views were ridiculous. Although, breathtaking to see.

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