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"I don't think you're going to find any of the answers you're looking for."
Just watched the last episode of Taken on BBC and feeling cheated. We don't get much by way of answers (although the sequence where we track around everyone as they work out the 'why' of what the aliens are doing is atmospheric and well (though strangely not brilliantly) filmed) just a load of pseudo-mystical pseudo-psychological bollocks about how it's more important to ask questions, not to get answers. Which couldn't be a more blatant way of signaling a lack in the creative progress. We've been strung along for some three months or so, with a human drama spanning generations but with these shadowy creatures in the background who, when you look at them, you see time as a place, not as an event.
But in the end, the creators draw back from that. In the last three or four episodes to have access to this ability means only to be extraordinarily powerful, that you can make dozens of people have a perfectly realistic alien encounter that shakes them to their core, to destroy things with a glance, to manipulate energy itself. But as the power levels increase so the desire to say anything truly meaningful goes down, and we're left with the Hallmark generation.
The aliens are more powerful and advanced than us. Are they us? One refers to himself as a scientist, but are they archaeologists too, back from the future in the only form that could make such a journey, energy, to manipulate things so that they can discover this human element they lost? What about the things from the first few episodes, was the 'five aliens needed to power a craft' thing purely so they knew that one was missing?
To make intelligent sci-fi is one thing, and should be applauded. But it is not sufficient merely to proclaim that one is going to do it, one also needs a story and something to say. 'Taken' had a story, but it lacked a message. It is not sufficient merely to question. With no answer the question is meaningless. |
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