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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Culture -> 
Voyagers
    2021-04-14  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

Writer-director Neil Burger’s sci-fi thriller “Voyagers” is visually alluring but dramatically underpowered.

As Earth’s temperatures have risen, causing drought and disease, scientists have sought a new planet that can sustain human life and ensure the survival of the species. They find one with abundant water and oxygen in 2063. Richard (Colin Farrell) is responsible for training the children who will be First Generation passengers on a scouting mission during which they will reproduce on the ship, with their grandchildren ultimately becoming the first colonists at the end of an 86-year voyage. The children were conceived in test tubes and raised in isolation.

Richard insists on revising the plan and traveling with them, allowing for earlier departure and improved odds of long-term mission success. He serves as a caring father figure, teacher and counselor to the young crew.

These young people line up each day for a dose of “The Blue,” a supposed vitamin supplement that actually serves to keep them docile, by controlling their impulses and suppressing their capacity to feel pleasure, pain or desire.

When smart, questioning Christopher (Tye Sheridan) discovers the drug hidden in The Blue, he feels betrayed and manipulated by the mission, while the quiet, intense chief medical officer Sela (Lily-Rose Depp) observes bleakly that the lives of the First Generation are unimportant, and only the Third Generation will matter.

Then Christopher and his buddy Zac (Fionn Whitehead) stop taking The Blue, and for the first time experience the surge of testosterone in their bodies. When episodes of violence or uninvited sexual advances start occurring, Richard reminds them of the rules. But the thrill of breaking those rules has already taken root.

The big shift happens relatively early in the movie when Richard and Christopher suit up and go outside to repair an external transmitter and an incident takes the most responsible adult on board out of the equation.

When it becomes necessary to choose a new chief officer, the election of Christopher doesn’t sit well with increasingly aggressive Zac. He convinces other crew members to stop taking The Blue and start ignoring their designated responsibilities. He gathers followers in a splinter group and spreads panic about a “possible” alien threat while undermining Christopher’s efforts to keep order.

By that point, mutiny and a vicious power standoff are inevitable. The insurgency acquires deadly force when they bust into a pod loaded with weaponry, another secret withheld from them by mission control.

This is a polished-looking film, thanks to the superb camerawork and austere production design, with its cool, blue-lit sterility. Trevor Gureckis’ juddering synth score feeds the mood of claustrophobic dread.

(SD-Agencies)

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