Peter Viney's Blog

2020
Directed by George Clooney
Currently on Netflix
Screenplay by Mark L. Smith
Based on Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Music by Alexandre Despat

CAST
George Clooney – Augustine
Felicity Jones – Sully
David Oyelowo- Adewole
Caoilinn Springall- Iris
Kyle Chandler- Mitchell
Demian Bichir- Sanchez
Tiffany Boone – Maya

Others appear very peripherally, but that’s the basic cast. So we’ve come so far in this pandemic that now George Clooney is straight to Netflix. That’s as A-list as you can get.

I can see that much of this must have been conceived as like Gravity on a mega wrap-around screen with multiple speakers on every side and above the viewer, possibly in 3D if that concept hasn’t entirely died. But it’s starting out on TV. I will avoid the one huge plot spoiler by being very careful how I describe it. It’s all SFX.

The plot is thin and short. I could write it as a short story on a few pages of A4 without missing anything.

It’s 2049. A moon of Jupiter has been discovered which has underfloor heating (volcanic). Jupiter has 79 moons, sixty three of them less than 10 km in diameter, but a few big ones with dramatic names, but this is plain K-23.

This one seems to be habitable as we see it with amber waves of grainand the air is described as crisp and no one is wearing space helmets, not even masks, so we assume the pandemic has died out before 2049. I’m sure they later describe it as a ‘planet’ which it is not. A spaceship with a crew of five is departing to return to Earth. A transport heading there is mentioned.

Back on earth, an apocalyptic event has engulfed humanity. An insane US president with access to the nuclear codes springs to mind here in January 2020. By the map, we’re up on Baffin Island in the Arctic, where everyone is being evacuated from a base of some astronomical sort. One woman is looking for her child, Anna, who is lost, but is told she was on an earlier transport. this is one great big huge RED HERRING, by the way.

Augustine (George Clooney) elects to stay. He is having chemo and vomiting a lot and knows he is terminal. It’s cold and snowy as one might expect on Baffin Island. Amidst the snow he finds a small girl, about 7 or 8 who is mute. She draws a picture, her name is Iris. In between throwing up, Augustine tries to contact spaceships. He realises his satellite dish thingie is too weak and decides to traverse ice, snow, blizzards and wolves to a bigger satellite dish thingie. Perhaps it has a 60 watt bulb instead of a 40 watt bulb. It’s in a valley, not ideal for a signal, I’d’ve thought. He goes with the girl. They find a Norwegian flagged portakabin and stay there. Have they trekked right across the pole? It seems unlikely. The ice breaks up. Augustine falls through and in spite of being terminally ill swims about under the ice, and escapes.

You’d think being sodden from head to foot with Arctic water might make him feel poorly (or dead) but he trudges on, beard and moustache ice-encrusted.

Meanwhile, out in space … It’s a cleverish sort of spaceship. A crew of only five. No streamlining at all, just bits sticking out in all directions, given there is no air resistance in space. Exterior control panels are exposed. Some bits of cladding look soft. They get to planets (or moons) using a Space Shuttle looking shuttle.

Sully (the great Felicity Jones … the reason we watched it) is pregnant with Ade’s baby. Apparently so was Felicity Jones in real life during filming. There is a very, very long sequence … the Gravity bit … where they hit a meteorite shower (never seen that before in a space movie) and have to go outside to do repairs as they do in all space movies. Inevitably there is an accident. A nasty one.

They manage to contact Augustine who tells them Earth is totally buggered between pukes. Trumped, we might be saying in 2049. Any more would be plot spoiling.

Is it any good? Not really. The science is not credible much above Star Trek 1967 levels. The ending was one I’d guessed. I bet those space scenes look impressive on a big screen, but the music continually leads your reaction rather than supporting your reaction. Always a bad idea. The SFX team credits go on for about a metre or more of close-typed IMDB credits. It must have cost a lot.

Put it simply. It’s George Clooney, Felicity Jones and David Oyewelo. You don’t have to go to the multiplex, park the car, pay £12 and have someone eating popcorn and slurping fizzy drinks behind you. In that way, it’s a bargain.