Review of 65 (2023) by Hnestlyonthesly — 22 May 2023

65 offered exactly what it promised, the Adam Driver dinosaur movie, nothing more, nothing less. “If anything, there should’ve been MORE dinosaurs,” Friend said. “If Universal makes one more Jurassic World in the next two years, I’m going to stop watching movies in general. I’m so OVER dinosaurs,” Friend’s husband screamed (after the movie was over, in the lobby). Everyone agreed that there was no false advertising. Spoilers ahead.

We had some predictions going into this movie: the navigation system must’ve been so absolutely terrible that Adam Driver could fly his ship 32.5 million years in one direction and then 32.5 million years in the other before getting to Earth, where he started. Like, how unbelievably unlucky is that flight path? It’s actually worse than that. In the movie, there are OTHER human civilizations that predate Earth and yet make it to Earth and they speak English and have cultural references we understand, I guess?

We predicted that, as with any time travel stranding movie, the main character ultimately does not want to return home, either because he’s being held accountable for bad decisions or he just has nothing left to live for there, so the attraction of being stuck in a dinosaur hellscape will prove attractive by comparison. That’s not quite the case here? This is an open-and-shut The Last of Us surrogate father story with dinosaurs, but there are a lot of reasons to think that he’s not especially keen on return. He even makes employee of the **** month by originally offering to do himself in so that he doesn’t incur rescue costs from the company employing him.

We predicted that the time travel would be accidental and non consensual. Turns out there is no time travel? Which I guess begs the question why is this movie called 65? 65 compared to what? What’s with all this relativistic titling in a sci-fi movie?

The value added by having a language barrier is low, but Friend is sure that it makes for a stupider, cheaper movie to produce.

The only thing that really got my hackles up are the yellow lamps, prominently featured in the trailer. Why does Driver place so many of them around them in such a tight circle when all the end up doing is turn red? Surely he could’ve just set one down? He’s been carrying like fifteen of these lamps for miles–to which Friend corrected me, she’s been carrying the bag, not him. Which is when it dawns on me that Driver doesn’t really care how heavy the rucksack she’s dragging around weighs, because he chooses to carry the fanny pack and gun for the hike while she has to shlep all their food and supplies.