Among the many things that can affect the initial
impressions we have when watching a film, from the marketing to word-of-mouth
to just our mentality concerning what makes a good story, one of the bigger
contributors ends up being other films. Once the realisation sets in that
pretty much everything is a remix of everything else, and brand spanking new
ideas aren’t as prevalent (or as important) as some of us may assume, the fact
that we will end up seeing a lot of similar shit on screen is a little easier
to swallow. Of course, when it comes to discussing what gets used and re-used,
especially if it’s from more popular works, we end up drawing comparisons to
the same works over and over again. Now, even though this runs the risk of
limiting the overall conversation, just because it’s an easy point to make
doesn’t mean it’s any less true. Tl;dr this is basically me covering my own
arse because this film makes it impossible not to bring up comparisons to last
year’s phenomenal sci-fi effort Ex Machina… even though pretty much every other
critic already has. Ugh. Let’s just get this over and done with.
