Warning: Spoilers
I’m torn between thinking that Netflix is a haven for creative actors and directors who’ve been burnt by the increasingly archaic studio system, and understanding why the phrase “dumped on Netflix” is such a thing.
“The Titan” is a Sci-Fi/Body Horror/Dumb Action/Romantic Drama that flails like a freshly dead cadaver being probed with electric prods. Seriously, what in the holy heck is going on here?
We’re told that the world, in typical fashion, is pretty much destroyed by the usual culprits in these kinds of movies: overpopulation, war, famine, blah blah blah. Within fifteen years the earth will be uninhabitable. Someone says something like “something has to be done”.
Flash forward and we meet a married couple comprised of that guy from Avatar and that lady from Orange Is The New Black. He’s a soldier who, along with other soldiers (and their families) have been picked to be genetically evolved into a new breed of human that can live on Saturn’s moon Titan.
To repeat: What?
The government has set up a mad scientist on a small South American island that is apparently the only place left on Earth that isn’t a hellscape. The soldiers and their families go about their posh suburban-lite existence on the island, doing tequila shots and lounging poolside while the outside world presumably burns.
But *gasp!*, things aren’t as they seem! Sort of! Maybe!? Dr. Moreau, as it turns out, is doing exactly what he said he would do only now the wives and husbands of the soldiers don’t like it.
One soldier bleeds out in the shower, another gets aggressive and has to be put down. Our main guy, Avatar Man, is responding to the treatments well enough though, so they splice ahead!
Eventually (offscreen and without any indication of time) he is fully transformed into a dolphin man reminiscent in appearance to the Engineers of “Prometheus”. Only one other soldier survives the genetic rewriting, a lady, and the implication is that they will be shipped to Titan to spawn a new breed of human, carrying on the species (sort of) in the stars.
The trouble is that Lady Dolphin Man goes nuts and kills a bunch of soldiers with finger tentacles (what?) and gets blowed up by the army unit tasked with shooting things.
Eventually the OITNB lady goes rogue herself and does a bunch of shit that makes no sense and causes untold death. She tells Dr. Moreau to “go fuck himself”. More shit goes boom.
The movie ends with her and her son looking up at the stars while Capt. Avatar Dolphin Man literally flies through the nitrogen rich clouds of Titan (what?), a moon with no food sources and no one to mate with, the future of humanity unsaved by one doomed flying squirrel man.
It should come as no surprise that nothing makes sense in this movie. Characters flip and have flimsy motivations, an interesting idea devolves into several cheapo gun battles, the effects and design stink of being lifted from better material, cuckoo apeshit things happen for no reason.
I will fully admit to enjoying other Netflix Original Films and having a genuine excitement for them. I feel like the nature of media is changing, and how we engage with that media culturally is changing. Netflix is leading that charge and pushing against the pre-existing structures that fund creative output. New people are finding their voices and Netflix offers an exciting platform. It’s just that dogshit like this doesn’t help.
In this case “dumped on Netflix” is a beyond apt assessment. Heavy emphasis on the “dump” part.
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