Oh, how the mighty have fallen. This movie was a Top #250 film on IMDb in 2015, and now registers a '6.2' rating as I write this. Funny what a difference a couple of years make with the inclusion of additional visitors to the title.
Before watching this picture I had no knowledge of the novel by Stanislaw Lem or the original Russian movie based on it. So without contaminating my review with the perspectives of those two works, what I thought started out as a pretty good sci-fi mystery turned into an illogical love story aboard a space station. I thought there were all kinds of problems here, principally starting with the main character, Chris Kelvin (George Clooney). He was introduced as an intellectual and level headed psychiatrist who was invited to Solaris because of unexplained occurrences that were driving the scientists on board insane. Fair enough, but when he himself experiences the impossible, he abruptly turns off his brain in order to resume a failed relationship with the woman who was his wife (Natascha McElhone) on Earth. Why? How does that even make sense?
There's also inconsistency with the character of Rheya. The 'first' Rheya who appears on Solaris has memories of her past with Kelvin, but the 'second' Rheya' doesn't. Until she does again when flashes of life on Earth intrude on her memory. I'm really bothered by internal consistencies in a story, and the two I just mentioned were big time ones.
What I really like about well written sci-fi flicks though, is the scientific gobbledy-gook that writers come up with in service to a story. You could have blown me away with that description of the Higgs device - a high energy proton accelerator with a matter phase modulator, which by adjusting the tuning frequency, you could get an enhancement of Higgs anti-bosons at ninety gigahertz, and even better, an almost pure beam at a hundred sixty gigahertz.
See, if I were writing the story, Kelvin could have saved himself a lot of trouble by cranking up the Higgs to a full one eighty, thereby reversing the mass exponentiality of the Solaris gravitational field. Then, by switching to decoupled internal power, he could have calibrated the external high-grain antenna and set a course back to Earth, one that wouldn't have jeopardized the possibility of bringing an alien life force back with him. If he wanted to see Rheya again, he could have depressurized the spin turbines on the Athena, settled back with a brandy, and made love to his heart's content. I guess the simplest explanation is just too obvious.
Before watching this picture I had no knowledge of the novel by Stanislaw Lem or the original Russian movie based on it. So without contaminating my review with the perspectives of those two works, what I thought started out as a pretty good sci-fi mystery turned into an illogical love story aboard a space station. I thought there were all kinds of problems here, principally starting with the main character, Chris Kelvin (George Clooney). He was introduced as an intellectual and level headed psychiatrist who was invited to Solaris because of unexplained occurrences that were driving the scientists on board insane. Fair enough, but when he himself experiences the impossible, he abruptly turns off his brain in order to resume a failed relationship with the woman who was his wife (Natascha McElhone) on Earth. Why? How does that even make sense?
There's also inconsistency with the character of Rheya. The 'first' Rheya who appears on Solaris has memories of her past with Kelvin, but the 'second' Rheya' doesn't. Until she does again when flashes of life on Earth intrude on her memory. I'm really bothered by internal consistencies in a story, and the two I just mentioned were big time ones.
What I really like about well written sci-fi flicks though, is the scientific gobbledy-gook that writers come up with in service to a story. You could have blown me away with that description of the Higgs device - a high energy proton accelerator with a matter phase modulator, which by adjusting the tuning frequency, you could get an enhancement of Higgs anti-bosons at ninety gigahertz, and even better, an almost pure beam at a hundred sixty gigahertz.
See, if I were writing the story, Kelvin could have saved himself a lot of trouble by cranking up the Higgs to a full one eighty, thereby reversing the mass exponentiality of the Solaris gravitational field. Then, by switching to decoupled internal power, he could have calibrated the external high-grain antenna and set a course back to Earth, one that wouldn't have jeopardized the possibility of bringing an alien life force back with him. If he wanted to see Rheya again, he could have depressurized the spin turbines on the Athena, settled back with a brandy, and made love to his heart's content. I guess the simplest explanation is just too obvious.