I watched the 2012 version of this film.
Its set solely on Earth with only 2 habitable places (Britain and Australia). I liked the look of the cities and the futuristic aspects of everything. Although the visuals of the movie reminded me of minority report, blade runner, I robot and Star Wars.
There's nothing wrong with the special effects or the action sequences, they are very impressive and I liked how they got between the 2 colonies on earth, through the core.
Kate Beckinsale was easily the best thing about the movie, she replaces the SharonStone/Michael Ironside characters from the original. Colin Farrel is engaging enough i guess, even though hes no Arnie type macho action hero, and similarly Jessica Biel seems superfluous to the proceedings, but the main problems I thought were:
- Grounding it solely on earth.
- The goal of Cohagen was quite boring and as the film plays out it left me quite underwhelmed, nothing like the mysticism of the original with aliens building a reactor and then switching it on to create air for the inhabiants of Mars. In fact it left me not caring for what the end goal was.
- No clear visual divide between the 2 territories they visit on earth (other than it rained in the Australia scenes).
- The character of Cohagen hardly appears til the end, and when he does you feel like "who's this guy?"
- It lacks the humour and charm of the original.
- The rebels dont seem to play as much as a part as they do in the original and when you eventually meet the rebel leader theres no real build up to it, and because there is no mutant aspect to this movie there is nothing worth waiting for with the rebel leader either.
I think although it looks very nice, but it comes off as quite soulless overall and would of been better had they spent more time on the story / objective of Cohagen. I'd give it a 5/10.