That is what I thought as the movie concluded. Mae's perpetual and hopeful naivete didn't coincide with her actions at all. One big example of this is that she doesn't seem to take much personal responsibility at all for Mercer's death. She also agrees with Ty and he helps her expose the bosses, but continues on to lead the world into full 'Big Brother' 'openness' without a thought as to the valid privacy concerns brought up by so, so many people, including her own love ones. And the director tries to play her off as the victim/ the heroine of the flick? I don't think so.
I hadn't read the book, but in reading articles about the movie afterward, I was shocked to learn that the book had the exact ending that my mind was searching for as I watched the credits. Mae is not a good person. Mae is a brainwashed, corporate drone. And that's how she is written in the book. In those same articles, the director advises that he believes that he has captured the essence of the novel. Except.. what if the essence of the novel wasn't about privacy, globalization, and the technological world, as much as it was about the human condition, and about how easily it is for someone with good intentions to accomplish something very bad, completely unawares as to the damage they are causing?
It is unfortunate that isn't the movie they filmed, because I think the world has had enough happy endings and optimistic futures. Ironically, that's the Kool-aid that we have all been drinking for a very, very long time. Maybe now, now when scientists say that we only have so much time left to save the environment, when presidents can pick fights with missile-hoarding sociopaths on Twitter, and when people vote with their eyes glued to their own pocketbooks... maybe now is when the world needs to start seeing the bad endings, seeing the possible affects of their own potential actions played out on screen, right in front of their eyes. We don't need false hope any more. What we need is truth, and this movie actively robs us of that.
6 stars because I did not want to stop watching until the end, and because I enjoyed the actors, if not the characters they were playing.
I hadn't read the book, but in reading articles about the movie afterward, I was shocked to learn that the book had the exact ending that my mind was searching for as I watched the credits. Mae is not a good person. Mae is a brainwashed, corporate drone. And that's how she is written in the book. In those same articles, the director advises that he believes that he has captured the essence of the novel. Except.. what if the essence of the novel wasn't about privacy, globalization, and the technological world, as much as it was about the human condition, and about how easily it is for someone with good intentions to accomplish something very bad, completely unawares as to the damage they are causing?
It is unfortunate that isn't the movie they filmed, because I think the world has had enough happy endings and optimistic futures. Ironically, that's the Kool-aid that we have all been drinking for a very, very long time. Maybe now, now when scientists say that we only have so much time left to save the environment, when presidents can pick fights with missile-hoarding sociopaths on Twitter, and when people vote with their eyes glued to their own pocketbooks... maybe now is when the world needs to start seeing the bad endings, seeing the possible affects of their own potential actions played out on screen, right in front of their eyes. We don't need false hope any more. What we need is truth, and this movie actively robs us of that.
6 stars because I did not want to stop watching until the end, and because I enjoyed the actors, if not the characters they were playing.
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