Johnson successfully includes more brilliant science fiction ideas into one film than large collections of them in general, and as someone that is an admirer and enthusiast in sci-fi on and off the silver screen, it's a remarkable accomplishment just how many of those were innovative. I don't think I need to list them all. Basically and bluntly, tons of the movie was genius, tons of it worked and was powerful and evocative and beautiful. It's ambition is readily palpable and enjoyable. That said, the first 10-15 minutes felt contrived in its world building, each act felt totally disconnected from the others- events don't build and build, totally new plot elements are introduced and setting, tone, and narrative format change, with a new set of narrative goals. This lets the film feel grandiose, but mostly uneven and unfocused. Moreover, the budgetary constraints hugely hurt the credibility of the world. Come on, a panning cityscape wideshot isn't fooling anyone when the sets and dressed locations aren't lit consistent with the wide. Still, the effects were impressive for the budget, but the scale of the film was significantly wounded for this reason.
The telekinesis felt shoehorned in and not fitting in with every other element of the narrative. So, in the future, humans quite totally randomly evolved to have telekinetic abilities without any logic or reason behind it? It's fucking preposterous. That said, I thought the handling of it was almost always amazing and at times shocking and beautifully dramatic. Also, the film was rather predictable in a lot of its major plot points, which was sometimes handled amazingly well and other times blandly and boringly. Still, some hugely shocking 'wtf' moments, such as the new timeline creation following killing him and not killing him, which was the only genuinely mind-bending moment in the film, the rest was a more general type of shocking moment, like the film going as far to kill the children. The photography was a combination of gorgeous and total horseshit, all the dark scenes were approaching washed out with milky black levels and not much artistry in a lot of the shots, and my god, the lens flares.
It sounds like I'm being extremely negative, but I mostly feel like it was a missed chance for a completely genius masterpiece, but what we got was a pretty crazy and strange but still pretty incredible film lacking in cohesion, artistry, and budget, bringing it down quite a few notches. I have a lot more to say about the film, including powerful scenes, ideas, specific things I was extra-annoyed by, and the fact the first half is a time-travel noir thing and the second half a western telekinesis sci-fi thing, and how those two don't actually connect and how that's good and bad. It was still an impacting movie.
