Hacker Cinema
A Wrinkle in Time
2018 · Film · 109 min
Directed by Ava DuVernay
AdventureScience FictionFamilyFantasy
After the disappearance of her scientist father, three peculiar beings send Meg, her brother, and her friend to space in order to find him.
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7 comments on Hacker News
> He found 2001: space odyssey kind of slow and tedious
Oh man, have you rewatched it lately? I had very fond memories of 2001, like I’m sure many people here, but I watched it again and found it slow and tedious and then some. The first act with the apes and wailing operatic singing went on forever. The stuff on the moon is forgettable. I was really surprised to find out that everything I remember about the movie, where they’re near Jupiter, starts halfway through. The ending is so weird I’d forgotten most it that too. There’s no question about 2001’s influence and place in movie history, but by today’s film standards, for kids who are used to modern film, 2001 is harder to appreciate. Or I don’t know, I looked up the critical reception and maybe it was then too… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)#Reception
I have made the mistake of showing my kids films that I loved from my childhood way too many times. It has backfired and made my kids not want to watch movies with me, and most of the time they’re right and the films I loved just aren’t that good by today’s standards. My youngest is also afraid of watching space movies, especially with me, because I liked a lot of them and maybe started trying to show him when we was too young. The quality of films and shows has gone up, though, and my kids helped me see it. Once I completely stopped pushing the movies I liked, the kids started sometimes finding them on their own, but they also show me movies they live that I wouldn’t have considered. It is also surprising how often movies I like haven’t aged well in terms of social dynamics, my kids are fairly sensitive to mildly racist or sexist dialogue, and there’s more than we remember from movies made in the 70s-90s.
Sci fi movies my kids have loved: Villeneuve’s Dune, The Last Mimzy, A Wrinkle in Time (non-Disney version), Cowboy Bebop (anime), Interstellar, Arrival. (Will add more if I remember)
> Wheel of Time is a great example of the issue, though. In the early 1990s, a series where the most powerful organization in the known world is a multiracial women's group and men aren't allowed to channel because they'll just break things was very much in accordance with "The Message".
I take it you mean this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time
I had initially mistaken it for a A Wrinkle in Time, given your description seemed to fit my vague impressions (from ads, etc) of the film adaption that has Oprah (and I have zero memory of the book).
Er, Phil Christman really doesn't get "A Wrinkle in Time".
Somehow the page opened for me at the point, halfway through, where he starts crapping on the movie adaptation of "A Wrinkle in Time" for what seem, to me, to be really weird and deeply personal reasons.
Aaaaanyhow, as a fan of bad sci-fi movies (I just watched "Galaxina" last night, gosh what a turd of a film!) I gotta insist that you can't read too much into them.
Maybe future psycho-historians will glean important insights into the human condition from "Escape from Galaxy 3" (Oraclon! King of the Night!) but I don't think the Institute for Advanced Critical Studies will.
There was a burst of this in the 1950s and 1960s, inspired by interest in/anxiety about science and math prompted by Sputnik, the space race, and nuclear war. So these are period pieces but you still might enjoy them -- I did:
Fantasia Mathematica (1958) and The Mathematical Magpie (1962), two short story collections edited by Clifton Fadiman
Mathenauts (1967), short story collection edited by Rudy Rucker
The Space Child's Mother Goose (1958?), poetry
Come to think of it, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle (1962) fits right in with this group. The math and cold war anxiety themes are stronger in the book than in the recent movie.
Maybe I'm desensitised from political agendas in films now, but from Captain Marvel I really didn't get a overwhelming feminist agenda that I felt impeded it from being a genuinely entertaining movie.
I'm disappointed about Brie's comment about Wrinkle in Time, however. It really wasn't a great film. The single feminist angle of 'girl saves boy' doesn't make it a great film. All I got was an "evil is a alternate entity you can defeat and bad actions aren't your own fault" lesson. This I thought was quite dangerous for children.
It's unfair to discard people's opinion just because they're white and 40. Just as much it's unfair to review bomb a movie because the actor said something in an interview.
I fully get this article for defending this movie and I'm also upset by the disproportionate ratings we're seeing from critics and audiences (see Orville vs Star Trek: Discovery). But something else stinks about this article.
What I also find interesting is the fact that Netflix doesn't necessarily even need the "flex" to succeed. Their push on bird box could have failed miserably, and they really wouldn't have suffered greatly, whereas Disney's push of A Wrinkle in Time probably hurt, since the movie ultimately flopped and their only chance to recoup costs was after the huge investment.
Netflix's goal is quite distinct from much of its competition. In simplistic terms, their goal is to release enough compelling content to keep existing subscribers subscribed and then hopefully entice new users to sign up more than old users quit. These "flexes" I would assume are primarily for the second category. If you make something enough of an event, with subscribers talking about it all the time, maybe non-subscribers will think they are missing out and take the plunge. If that fails, however, they only really lose out on the marketing costs, since it's very unlikely to affect the existing subscriber base at all.
Fraking books. I'm sure we all feel the guilt of letting our kids read books too early. Fiction, non-fiction, magazine, and gasp graphic novels. And the movie tie-ins, the fantasy worlds, the sci-fi realms. I knew as soon as I shared A Wrinkle in Time it was all over. Now they're reading everything and deep diving into over-consumption. Star Wars fiction, biographies, current events, and even internet sites.
Fiction is the worse. All the best books get made into movies that my boys have to see. Sometimes I wish I never picked up a book and instead took them on hikes and taught them to shoot guns.
(That's about the point I gave up reading...)