Comment Waste of Film, Time, Money, and Opportunity (Score 1) 16
I read this thread announcement this AM, and bought two tickets IMMEDIATELY. Four hours later and I am back to give you my review. TL;DR? SAVE YOUR TIME AND MONEY. Get drunk instead.
I knew the film was short: 40 minutes. But 40 minutes would still allow me to see hundreds, if not thousands of never-before-seen images, from detailed images of closer galaxies to images from the furthest reaches. Right?
But instead of showing 40 minutes of celestial images, I would guess that 70% of that precious 40 minutes was spent showing film of earth. Film of various undistinguished people (curiously, about 90% of the people worthy of interview were women, with little of astronomical relevance to say. Make of that what you will...maybe 90% of Webb telescope top-experts really are women?) Then we had film of the telescope being built. Film of the rocket taking off. Film of SIMULATIONS of things. Really boring, boring, boring, at least to me.
So then you get down to the approximately 30% of the film which I expected to blow my mind. It didn't. And I am not entirely sure why. Maybe the quality of the projection was lacking (it was an IMAX, but I had expected one of those monstrously huge IMAX screens, at unbelievable resolution, and this wasn't that). Or maybe it was the music. Or maybe the lack of drama - or explanation - in the presentation? Regardless, 30% of 40 minutes is 12 minutes to show you actual, mind-blowing images.
Anyway, the universe is a really big place. But this film makes it look small. And it makes me question the budget of both the film and the Webb telescope itself.
The tickets were inexpensive, at only $11 apiece. But this film was SO bad, so cheap, so unprofessionally paced, that I wouldn't pay $0.50 to see the film a second time. The theatre was nearly empty. And I don't expect it to fill up by word of mouth. I actually regret wasting my afternoon on this one.
PS. I grew up in the Phillipines, 60 years ago, before all the light pollution made a mockery of dark. I grew up transfixed by the fire and beauty of the night sky, stars handing like diamonds and the Milky Way being stretching light a shimmering road from one horizon to another. And all that you could see with your naked eye. To say I was disappointed by this film is an understatement. Who the hell produced it, what was their intention in producing it, and what was their budget?