gary-426-161272 Review of Extinct

Extinct (2017)

Marginally Better than watching with the TV turned off. But only marginally.

[2/10 · 3 October 2017]

I begin by noting that I have been a fan of the writing of Orson Scott Card for more than thirty years. His mind is wonderfully creative; his stories complex and thoughtful; and he writes with a deep dedication to a moral code and a spiritual concern. (Yes, and I know all about his loudly-stated position on homosexuality.) I waited thirty years for an attempt to bring Ender's Game to the screen, and if it was a disappointment--and it was--it had more to do with the fact that the studio could not make available the three films and assemblage of seven-year-old actors that the novel needed to transfer honestly to the screen. But if Ender's Game was disappointing, Extinct is a failure almost too difficult to comprehend. I would never have believed that anything Orson Scott Card had been involved in could be capable of such clunky, dare-I-say inept dialogue. I don't know if it's the actors or the director or perhaps an unimaginable intermingling of the two forces, but there is more wooden, stolid presentation on the screen than in a convention of tree stumps trying to do stand up. And Card is not only listed as co-creator but as one of three Executive Producers. I am sure there is plot somewhere in all this because Card could not NOT write plot, but plot isn't enough. There isn't a character that appears on screen who is vaguely interesting or in any way believable. I think we must conclude that this whole project was an act of sectarian loyalty for Card who made this film for BYUTV - Brigham Young University Television. The best that could be said here is the series (in truth, I could only get through the first one and half episodes before giving up) looks like a sincere Final Class Project in a sophomore TV production class.