With the competition of original content for new distribution methods such as Netflix, major studios avoid risking new and original products and strive to create remakes of already successful films, which includes many Spider-Man and Disney designs. Vida, a work directed by Daniel Espinosa and which debuts on the 26th, could be that blockbuster not based on films of the past and that stand out for being original. However, the film looks so much like other works that viewers can get bored quickly.
The science fiction film tells the story of astronauts, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Fergunson and Ryan Reynolds, who uncover evidence of life on the planet Mars. As they study this unknown extraterrestrial life form, they realize that they are smarter than they think. Worse, it is understood that such an organic form was responsible for ending life on the red planet, and now threatens the crew.
The very idea of a story showing an entity that appears innocuous, but soon terrifying, has already been used in relation to Mars. The film, however, copies more than the plot. The beginning of the film looks a lot like Alfonso Cuarón’s film Gravity and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, where the camera moves in a complex way, pirouetting in the face of a menacing universe. However, this is the most stimulating part of the film since the images dazzle even though they are similar to previous films. However, it is at this point that the film transforms and repeats another style: that of the movie Alien, by Ridley Scott and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It is then that the film turns into a cat-and-mouse race with such a premise that we are only wondering who will be the next victim of the Martian creature. The characters, which are also developed according to an already familiar formula, do not help to provide the desired entertainment.
If the script could gain a lot in originality, it is even more surprising that even the trailer for the film has already given what to speak in its similarity to other films. For example, at 26 seconds from the trailer for Vida appears a scene that is exactly the same as a scene from the movie Spider-Man 3, which has caused many fans of the superhero to imagine that the Martian entity unveiled by the astronauts is actually the origin of Venom, one of the hero’s most famous arch-enemies.
What is most surprising in the film is the fact that characters, played by big stars, disappear gradually, hunted by their discovery – a fact very rare in the past, where great movie stars survived from beginning to end (and used as a comedy in the movie Mars Attack , by Tim Burton).
It’s difficult to understand how a low-risk strategy, relying on film remakes and familiar styles, can give Hollywood what it needs to make its movies profitable. Yes, ecstatic images call attention, but it is what happens after these first images that gives the public the desired fun.
(article translated from the original version in portuguese, by Google Translate)