I honestly didn't come into this one with very big expectations. Unfortunately, it didn't even reach that low bar.
The premise seemed OK, although the marketing implied that this was a human (they even refer to him as an astronaut) meaning there would be a time-travel element, but no, he's just an alien from 65 million years ago, albeit one who is as absolutely human as lazy writing would make him.
Adam Driver plays Mills (this is an alien name?) who is the pilot taking an exploration team to... aw, who rally cares? They're all in suspended animation for the two-year journey, although they must have been taking the scenic route, since a rescue ship is able to reach the planet in just a few days.
Only Mills and an eight-year-old girl (why does an exploration team have an 8-year-old along?) manage to survive the crash on prehistoric Earth after the ship is hit by an asteroid (note to writer: they're not "meteors" until the hit the atmosphere) and spend the rest of the film walking through a not-very-Cretaceous looking forest dodging dinosaurs. Although this situation should lead to at least a modicum of suspense, every encounter is so telegraphed by the direction that you see it coming a mile away.
Of course, 65 million years ago is a very rounded-off time frame, but gee whiz, wouldn't you know it? An extinction-level asteroid JUST happens to be only hours away from hitting the Yucatan and wiping out the dinosaurs, and any aliens who have crashed there in the past day or two. (Great timing! Why couldn't we have crashed last week?)
I'll give credit to the CGI genies, who did a reasonably good job with the diosaurs and the meteor effects, though both were a bit underutilized and often done in dark areas (or even off camera with only holographic puppets filling in) so they wouldn't HAVE to be perfect. In the same vein, congrats also to whoever decided that the alien little girl wouldn't be able to speak English like the alien Mills: as with the dark CGI, a kid can't deliver her lines poorly if she doesn't really have any.
This one really should have gone straight to DVD (not even bluray.) I wondered why it wasn't being shown in the IMAX at my local theater. Now I know. If you ever want to see this on a screen bigger than your TV, I'd suggest you hurry.
The premise seemed OK, although the marketing implied that this was a human (they even refer to him as an astronaut) meaning there would be a time-travel element, but no, he's just an alien from 65 million years ago, albeit one who is as absolutely human as lazy writing would make him.
Adam Driver plays Mills (this is an alien name?) who is the pilot taking an exploration team to... aw, who rally cares? They're all in suspended animation for the two-year journey, although they must have been taking the scenic route, since a rescue ship is able to reach the planet in just a few days.
Only Mills and an eight-year-old girl (why does an exploration team have an 8-year-old along?) manage to survive the crash on prehistoric Earth after the ship is hit by an asteroid (note to writer: they're not "meteors" until the hit the atmosphere) and spend the rest of the film walking through a not-very-Cretaceous looking forest dodging dinosaurs. Although this situation should lead to at least a modicum of suspense, every encounter is so telegraphed by the direction that you see it coming a mile away.
Of course, 65 million years ago is a very rounded-off time frame, but gee whiz, wouldn't you know it? An extinction-level asteroid JUST happens to be only hours away from hitting the Yucatan and wiping out the dinosaurs, and any aliens who have crashed there in the past day or two. (Great timing! Why couldn't we have crashed last week?)
I'll give credit to the CGI genies, who did a reasonably good job with the diosaurs and the meteor effects, though both were a bit underutilized and often done in dark areas (or even off camera with only holographic puppets filling in) so they wouldn't HAVE to be perfect. In the same vein, congrats also to whoever decided that the alien little girl wouldn't be able to speak English like the alien Mills: as with the dark CGI, a kid can't deliver her lines poorly if she doesn't really have any.
This one really should have gone straight to DVD (not even bluray.) I wondered why it wasn't being shown in the IMAX at my local theater. Now I know. If you ever want to see this on a screen bigger than your TV, I'd suggest you hurry.