It was sloooow (Feels like a lot of synopsis writers use ‘heartwarming’ when they really mean ‘slow’). And a pretty linear plot. No real surprises there.
Yeah, there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours than in the company of Tom Hanks. I enjoyed it for what it was, basically an apocalyptic version of Castaway.
There was a lot of unexplained science going on, with both the robot AI and climate change (why was the climate perfectly fine all of a sudden?). I had to keep repeating to myself this was just a Tom Hanks movie and should really just relax. The story takes place sometime in the future, so it’s not completely implausible that off-the-shelf AI logic would include deep human emotion simulation, I guess.
This movie was great for people who want to watch Tom Hanks mutter to himself in his Mister Rogers voice while Caleb Landry Jones stands around and gets CG drawn over him while he acts like an annoying robot.
I guess the dog was cute? Also, the movie inspired meto write this riddle, which I hope you all enjoy:
Q: Who would win in a fight between Finch and Midnight Sky?
A: Greenland.
Found Finch poking around the Apple TV movies and gave it a watch. I really enjoyed it, but then, I’m a sucker for this sort of movie. Robot-coming-of-age, grouchy old Tom Hanks, near-future post-apocalyptic wasteland, all stuff I can get behind. Definitely don’t think too hard about the science or (mostly implied) history of the world, have to just turn off the analytic brain and go with the story flow. It’s not a terribly great example of any one individual thing, but all of it together was right in my wheelhouse.
The three reasons for signing up for Apple TV were Ted Lasso, the Foundation and the two Tom Hanks movies, Greyhound and Finch. Finch, was another example of Tom Hanks’s talent for turning a slow, derivative work into a quite enjoyable movie. A Boy and his dog were funnier, and plenty post-apocalytpic movies were more suspenseful…
In fact, I’d argue the difference between Midnight sky, which I fell asleep watching after an hour or less, and Finch is Tom Hanks.
It would have been interesting production discussion. Director “We need a A-list star”, Casting, Tom Hanks is available. Producer, well there goes the budget. Exec Producers, maybe we can rewrite the script to get rid of any other actors.
Agreed on all counts. I actually really liked Greyhound, but Ted Lasso is classic.
Foundation was a bit … weird… but hey I am all for weird and … ok it was weird. Having read the books as a teenager some years ago I saw a vague resemblance.
I also liked the reese jennifer aston thing at least the first season.
We watched it about a month ago (late to the Apple TV+ game,) and felt the same way. And to what Strollen said, it’s was Tom Hanks carrying things completely. I’m sometimes floored when I think of the zany Bachelor Party Tom Hanks and try to reconcile that with a man I can’t turn away from as a serious actor now who seems to shine in any role.
I need to look that one up. We just started watching Shining Girls which seems to be excellent so far.