Review of Stowaway (2021) by Pcbflare — 24 Apr 2021
This is a movie that probably could have been good. The cast is good, the set is great, the CGI is compenent, but those are the three points i'm giving it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work at all, because the premise is completely demented, and the movie gets a lot wrong about how space programs work.
The filmmakers consulted Scott Manley to get the physics/space right, but it doesn't really seem they listened. Right from the beginning of the movie tears of cringe will fill the eyes of everyone who's at least a littlebit interested in the space programs/physics.
One has to wonder how much worse would it be without Scott's input. The whole premise is completely ridiculous. Without anyone realizing, some dude gets stuck behind a SCREWED IN(!!!!) panel of a rocket, and the crew finds him only after they're already on a way to Mars.
They can't get back to Earth, their CO2 scrubber dies, and they don't have enough oxygen either. The rest of the movie is KINDA about the morality of one vs four, and KINDA about trying to come up with a plan to save the stowaway/rest of the crew.
The main problem is, that the movie doesn't respect the genre. Either you can have a SF movie with nonsensical macguffins, or you can have hard-SF with plausible or semi-plausible technology. Stowaway tries to do the latter, it's near future, more or less existing technology.
Yet the technology spectacularly fails (and there are no backup systems), only as a result of the demented plot, and the characters have to mount a nonsensical rescue mission. The whole movie I wanted to shout at the screen "IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT" or "APOLLO 13 CREW COULD IMPROVISE CO2 SCRUBBERS AND THAT WAS 1970".
The characters are super 2D, certain actions of theirs come out of nowhere, the whole thing is just coming apart at the seams. I really, really didn't like it. Poor cast (as in:i feel sorry for them, not that they're bad in what they do, they're not, they just had to work with what they've been given, which wasn't much).
This review of Stowaway (2021) was written by Pcbflare on 24 Apr 2021.
Stowaway has generally received mixed reviews.
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