fnh's Blog - 2009/4/13 - not_worth_knowing 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scroll no-repeat bottom right}.node>.body>h1{font-size:larger;font-weight:normal;margin:20px 10px 10px 10px}.node>.body>div{margin:10px;}.node>.body img{padding:4px;margin:4px;border:1px solid #000} Not worth Knowing Posted by fnh on 2009/4/13 21:09 I went to see Knowing last night, and it probably is one of the worst films I've ever seen. Coming from someone who's seen Starship Troopers 2 and Ghosts of Mars, that's saying something. In fact it's so bad I want to warn the world about it. At first I thought it would suffice to (re)twitter a few bad reviews, but upon reading them I found that even the worst reviews were too forgiving. The following review contains spoilers, but don't worry, you don't want to see the movie anyway. The first three minutes of the movie were enjoyable however. The opening credits zoomed in from orbit all the way down to the backyard of astrophysicist John Koestler (Nicolas Cage). Any movie that opens with extremely large, digitally projected, high definition pictures of the earth from orbit is off to a good start in my book. The blinking lights they added to make everything a bit less static were unrealisticly bright, but hey we're not going to nitpick. When the next scene referenced the Drake equation, I though I might actually enjoy this movie. The first time I felt uneasy was when astrophysicist John Koestler tried to explain and contrast determinism and chaos theory during a lecture at MIT. The character claims that determinism means that everything happens for a reason. Nothing wrong with that statement per se, but it was clear from his attempt to compare this with chaos theory that he didn't mean reason or cause as in the producer of an effect, but rather as in purpose, goal. Not only did the portrayal of determinism and chaos theory as competing theories make me wince (they are compatible after all). Not only did the bad explanation of determinism grate like fingers on a blackboard, the explanation of chaos theory - shit happens - and its application to everything - you, me - totally glanced over evolution, further discrediting the character as a scientist. I wonder if the elementary grade lecture about the sun and earth followed by such a bad representation of determinism and chaos theory could be a reason for MIT to sue for defamation. Johns scientist friend Phil Beckman (Ben Mendelsohn) doesn't do any better. He gets to play the part of the incredulous scientist that doesn't believe in the predictions made by the numbers. His own credibility however takes a nonrecoverable blow when he dismisses John's analysis of the numbers simply as being something that he wants to see. One assumes that someone with a science degree knows enough about statistics to see or even just intuitively feel the difference between finding your birthdate in the digits of pi and finding a chronological sequence of the dates and deaths of disasters that happended in the past 50 years. Even if the unexplained numbers wouldn't have been so regularly interspersed with the data that would've been a rather strong indication that these aren't just random numbers. Had the film ended right then and there, I might've forgiven Hollywood for getting the science wrong and cutting a few corners here and there to further the plot. After all, even if the acting was rather bad and the plot a bit of a jumble, the special effects were impressive. Unfortunately it didn't end just yet. Worse, instead of simply finishing up a bad science fiction/armageddon movie with a happy ending, they decided to end it with a religious happy ending. The second part of the movie is nothing more than a silly attempt at rehabilitating Christianity by explaining angels and god as aliens and the devastation of earth by a solar flare as the end time. In the end both John's son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) and Diana Wayland's (Rose Byrne) daughter Abby (Lara Robinson) are saved by the aliens to be deposited in a new Eden alongside two white rabbits. One simply has to assume that instead of introducing myxomatosis a few years down the line, the aliens introduce talking snakes to keep the rabbit population under control after which Abby eats from an apple and an inbred idiot human race struggles for a few thousand years dying of scary dental diseases before once more inventing digital watches. All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again I guess. Don't go see it. A total waste of time and money.