Premise Promise

I recently saw (on cable) two big-budget sci-fi films that flopped. Figured I'd give them a chance.

First there's Upside Down, a 2012 romance about two planets right next to each other.  They're the same size and at the closest are about thousand feet apart, so the planets make up each other's sky.  (The planets seem to both revolve around a common sun, but don't seem to rotate, since the same portions are always across from each other.)

Each planet has its own gravity, pulling items (living or dead) toward its center.  If something or someone from the other planet was put on the surface of the opposite planet, it would rise into the sky and drop onto the other planet.

There are two societies.  One planet (Up Top) is rich and the other (Down Below) is poor.  People from Up Top--snore--exploit the people Down Below.  There's a building connecting the two worlds, with a huge office on the middle floor which contains a huge office where both sides work on the other side's ceiling.

That's the set-up. (There's an awful lot of narration at the beginning explaining the system--I get the feeling this was a late addition for confused audiences.) The actual story involves a boy (Jim Sturgess) who falls in love with a girl (Kirsten Dunst).  They meet as kids when both climb a mountain and are about a hundred feet apart.  They fall in love but are split apart by others.  Years later, they meet while he's working on material that can reverse the other side's gravitational effect.

I could go into the particulars of the story, but that's the part that doesn't work.  What does work is the premise (as absurd as it is) and the beautiful visuals.  You can literally see why director/writer Juan Diego Solanas wanted to make the film.  But then it goes on and on without really going anywhere.

The other film is Mortal Engines from 2018.  It's a post-apocalyptic adventure based on a series of novels set in a world where cities have engines and wheels and move across the land attacking and sometimes capturing other cities.

The movie starts with the city of London, on what was formerly the European continent, capturing a small mining town.  We meet Tom (Robert Sheehan), an apprentice historian for London who collects old technology like smart phones and toasters.  However, he finds out too much and is thrown off the city by its powerful ruler.  Also thrown out is Hester, an assassin from the village that was taken over who tried to kill the leader.

The rest of the film has Tom and Hester trying to get back and right all the wrongs of this world.  Once again, I don't want to go into it, not to avoid spoilers, but because it got more ridiculous as it went along.

A lot of money was spent on this movie and you can see it onscreen.  The images of London are pretty impressive.  The story might have worked on paper (or in a Young Adult novel) but doesn't really play in film.

I'm glad when money is spent on expensive sci-fi films that aren't major brands or franchises. I'm glad when anyone takes a chance on a film these days.  But it takes more than design to make a sci-fi film work.