I keep thinking I should, like, let people commission me for #AnaWatches but today's Netflix offering is POSEIDON. You'd think that would be a movie about the god of the sea romancing, like, a lady dragon but no it's about a cruise ship getting all fucked up. "It was supposed to be a dream cruise...until a rogue wave came along. Now it's a nightmarish battle for survival." Let me just say that I enjoy disaster movies wherein rich jerks get killed.
I'm assuming THESE people are all virtuous blue collar workers who work on the ship or spent their retirement pension on tickets or otherwise are out of place among the glittering 1%ers. But a cruise disaster on a 1%er ship would be wonderful.
This cruise ship doesn't even look that big. A guy jogs the length of the ship which is big but seems like it could be bigger, idk, maybe I'm just picky. Elsewhere, inside a huge cabin two lovebirds canoodle. Old Dad walks in and scolds them for touching hands. Girl calls out his condescension and stalks out.
In an ostentatious lobby, Jogger seems to magically intuit that a girl who seems impressed by everything is probably, like, a stowaway or something rather than just starry eyed by the big shiny boat. He's nice to her anyway, so I guess that's a low bar of Good. An older man begs an answering machine to "call me at midnight". Old lover or estranged child? YOU DECIDE.
The captain gives a New Years Eve speech and I feel reflexive distress. Do normal people like New Years Eve? Jogger and Slut Shaming Dad play high stakes poker together. Dad slut shames his daughter for having cleavage so she reveals he's holding a pair of fives. Good on her. Virtuous Single Mother runs into Poker Jogger as he gently helps up the boy who ran headlong into him. VSM shuts down Poker Jogger hard when he tries to come onto her by negging other women and I'm on her side.
Ok, whoever had money on Old Lover for the lonely sad gay man wins the pot. First mate can feel and then see a tidal wave coming. How does he feel it through his feet? Why is there no warning? They start trying to turn the ship which seems complicated. The entire ship is turned upside down for its own hubris and everybody dies.
The captain in the main ballroom wants everyone to stay put and wait for rescue. The main characters are deciding otherwise. We have Poker Jogger, Rich Dad, Gay Architect, Single Mom (and child), and Stowaway's Brother. Stowaway, Daughter, and Boyfriend are trapped on the disco floor. Our first threat: fiery kitchen. From fiery kitchen we go to elevator shaft to next floor up/down. Current Threat: the elevator in the elevator shaft thirsts for human blood.
Jesus. They actually wrote and filmed an old, rich, white man being "forced" by circumstance to shake off to his death a blue collar, non-white young man, lest they both die. That's a really disgusting writing decision!!! To make it even worse, the older white man had been flirting with / perving on the young man mere moments before, so that was a hell of a choice. What the actual fuck.
The two groups of protagonists have rejoined. For no reason whatsoever, Stowaway reveals to Gay Architect that the guy who died was not her brother as I thought but instead just a guy she was fucking in order to get passage to see her sick brother in New York. Great. She doesn't know he just died and she doesn't know it was the Architect who killed him so this is just...contrived so we don't have to feel too bad about his death? Who wrote this. Who.
Additionally, except for Stowaway, all these people are filthy rich. Why. Why wouldn't you make them employees or pensioners or blue collar lotto winners. Did we still sympathize with rich people in 2006???? So far, the two people who've died have done so minutes after receiving a name. The captain and everyone who waited in the ballroom on his orders are now dead. Having him be a Black man who was wrong about literally everything was another choice. Christ, this movie.
Everyone gets stuck in the ventilation system while Elena, who I'm pretty sure is our only remaining person of color and Not Rich, has a claustrophobic panic. They have to flood a room for pressurization reasons and swim for safety; fate itself snags Elena for watery death. The white protagonists weep. The white protagonists are reassuring themselves they did all they could for Elena. A way out opens up, but the white Single Mother and Child are swept away. Remembering dead Elena, Poker Jogger goes back for the pretty white woman he wants to bone.
How everyone hasn't frozen to death in all this ocean water is beyond me. We're down to: Architect, Daughter and Boyfriend, Single Mother and Child, and Poker Jogger. Architect seems the least likely to survive at this stage, just based on archetypes.
Men do important things while the women watch. They got out and onto a raft, then paddled away from the collapsing ship. It looked immensely silly. Helicopters rescue them before they freeze to death and our white, rich protagonists laugh the easy laughs of people who know the ensuing medical care will not bankrupt them. Good god, that was awful.
0 comments:
Post a Comment