When the trailer for Life came out I knew this was one movie I had to see. I grew up on Science Fiction movies, in fact my childhood movie list included movies such as The Thing and Aliens. As I grew older I would watch those films and remember the joy of seeing them and the little bit of terror I felt as the big scary monster appeared.
With the advancement of computer graphics, and motion capture. Science Fiction movies needed a new edge in the ever growing world of movies based on terrible Young Adult Books. It needed to recapture the terror that caused audiences to shrink down in their seats when the monster appeared. Or even worse when the monster was just lurking in the background right behind a character.
Life written by Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese is just such a movie. It recaptures the terror of Ridley Scott’s Alien, a movie that changed the Science Fiction genre. The story is set in modern day with an international group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The crew consists of Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal), an army doctor who loves being in outer space after witnessing the horrors of war. Dr Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), a british doctor and a member of the CDC. Rory “Roy” Adams (Ryan Reynolds) a wise cracking pilot. Sho Kendo (Hiroyuki Sanada) the station’s engineer. Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) a paraplegic scientist and their commander Katerina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya).
They retrieve a capsule containing soil samples from Mars. As they study the samples they find a single cell organism, which is named Calvin. As time progresses Calvin starts to grow and react to stimulus. All seems to be going well; Sho even witnesses the birth of his daughter Mei via video chat. However an accident in the lab seems to cause Calvin to go into a hibernation state. The crew decides to try giving Calvin an electrical shock to wake it back up. As Roy puts it they ‘shock the monkey’ which causes Calvin to attack Hugh and break free of its confinement and run amok aboard the space station.
The terror begins as Calvin starts to kill of crew members in brutal and stomach churching ways. In fact I am still gagging in terror from the first gruesome death scene an hour after watching. The crew now must find a way to kill Calvin before he kills them all and possibly even finds a way to Earth.
Space is a beautiful yet terrifying place. There is no oxygen, there’s no gravity and without heat, a human will freeze to death. Going out into space is also dangerous in itself, one mistake even the smallest can kill an astronaut. This helps increase the fear of the movie being trapped in a place where even going out means a slow painful death.
Gyllenhaal and Reynolds compliment each other perfectly in this film. Reynolds keeps to his method of being a wise cracking extrovert and Gyllenhaal plays the opposite a broken yet introvert. They don’t overpower one another and blend well in this film, it would be interesting to see them in other movies with the same methods perhaps even a buddy cop movie.
For me, while I enjoyed this film, my technical brain and somewhat limited knowledge of how NASA conducts things pulled me a bit away from this movie. There were certain plot holes that cause the little voice in my head to go ‘yeah that’s not right’ or ‘how does Calvin know about…’
Life is a movie of pure thrill and terror on the same level as the Alien series, however the ending will leave you with a pit in your stomach as the closing credits roll. If you are a Science Fiction horror fan itching for some good terror before Alien: Covenant comes out this is one movie you need to see.
Rating 99/100
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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