Netflix'd Scifi: 3022 & I Am Mother

There is a breed of scifi movie done by Netflix that is what SyFy or Space Channel should have become the kings at, but didn't. The former slipped into an easy pattern of doing hilarious but absolutely terrible flicks (Shark vs...) while the latter seemed more about re-distributing instead of original content -- oh they had a few series of classic mostly-bad Canadian Genre TV, but not much in the way of movies. Netflix is greenlighting or producing or sometimes just grabbing up something for exclusive distribution. Most are middling at best and I am fine with that. I think the Specfic genre(s) need to be more like Horror, in that a lot of material is produced, most in the middle of the road by ways of quality, but most comes from a love of the genre and gives a space for directors and writers and creators to learn their crafts and eventually (hopefully) get better at it.

3022, 2019, John Suits (The Scribbler) -- Netflix

I remember the trailers for this flick doing the genre blogs a while ago, the premise of a disastrous event happening to the Earth while some scientists are assigned to a space station. They never find out what happened, but they are now stranded alone in space, limited time ahead of them and only a few people left... forever. Obviously, the question is What's Next. How do they survive? What do they do? How is their mental state?

Alas, the finished product was a little (just a smidge, but enough) different and extremely lackluster. The space station turns out to be a refueling depot half way between Earth and Europa (moon of Jupiter) where the first space colony is established, in what I assumed was its own space station. The crew is stationed in the half-way point for 10 years at a time, and the only reason that is given seems to be for the plot (can they stand the rigours of alone-ness for so long?) for if they are a re-fueling station, that means people are coming and going regularly, even if it is in astronomical time frames. They could also be regularly taking on new people and disembarking those who are not doing so well. Alas, premise -- people don't do so well locked inside a confined space with few other people. Wait, that sounds familiar...

So, yeah, Earth Blows Up. Some want to go see what happened (it can't be real, right?) and others just want to go to Europa One. The latter seems the most logical to me but Home, Loved Ones, etc. Thus continues the story as conflict and isolation and disaster peeks around every claustrophobic corner. I was already dialed out by then. I was hoping the title of the movie was some reference to the year something else would take place (the movie does begin in 2190) but it ends just being a reference to the day when two characters reunite, and nothing is really resolved.

I Am Mother, 2019, Grant Sputore (a couple of episodes of Australian TV series Castaways ) -- Netflix

Where the above was an elevator pitch never succesfully expanded upon, I Am Mother is a comfortable trope in the genre (Post-Apocalyptic, Isolated Bunker, Not Sure What Is Going On Outside) but with a lot of heart. Daughter is raised, from embryo stage, by Mother, a robot obviously grown from the Boston Dynamics line of robotics (a really good looking WETA product). Earth has been devastated by a biological plague and Mother has to protect Daughter from the outside. That is, until another human comes banging on the bunker door poking holes in Mother's story.

The best thing I can say about I Am Mother is that I was never sure whether the assuring voice of Mother was hiding a malevolent intent or there was no emotion there at all, and it was all just programming. The story does a grand job of never really giving us a definitive answer one way or the other. Of course, Mother is being deceptive and its exactly the why you would expect (think Skynet) and you learn very quickly, as Daughter does, that Mother has been performing a very very deadly and tragic experiment. But has Mother evolved? Has Mother learned empathy for the race she helped destroy? The easy answer is No, but the movie dodges any decisions on the matter, despite a rather dark dark end.