When you have an absolutely minimal budget for a "serious" science fiction film, the one place you have to invest your time and effort is not acting, not SFX, not music scores...it has to be the screenplay. The screenplay HAS to hold together with no major plot holes or absurdities, because you don't have anything to distract the audience from those problems. Even the dialog can kind of suck if the basic story line pulls you in and doesn't make you hoot with contemptuous laughter.
(Note: the rules are of course different for a space opera, or a fantasy, or a light-hearted adventure set in space. But the movie is presented as "hard" science fiction in the tradition of "The Expanse" or "Gravity")
Starting right out, "Paradox Alice" asks you to believe that one single tanker of water mined from a moon of Jupiter will be enough to make a difference to a world that has poisoned its oceans and aquifers. What's more, it asks you to believe that it is easier to create and launch interplanetary tanker ships with near-lightspeed engines than it is to figure out how to treat the water supply on the planet. (They could have fixed this with ONE line of dialog about the water on Europa having some special catalytic quality that would start a chain reaction that would fix the Earth's water supply or vastly dilute its toxicity).
OK, so mission accomplished, some reasonably decent scenes with the 4 person crew celebrating, relating to each other, and climbing into their life-support pods for the high-G trip back...and that's the last time anything in the film doesn't have me beating my head against the wall to distract from the the idiocy on screen.
The movie then asks you to believe that mankind's nuclear stockpiles are sufficient to vaporize the Earth AND pulverize the Moon. (In reality, the ecosystem might crumble to dust but the net effect would be similar to scraping the organic film off of a huge ball bearing). It asks you to believe that when the only female member of the crew is killed in the asteroid collision that follow, that one of the crew would then spontaneously mutate into a woman in response in an apparent attempt by our DNA to save the human race.
And apparently no one informed the film makers that two males and a female are not enough to re-establish a species. I think the magic number is actually around 200 members to establish a big enough genetic pool that the descendants are not hopelessly inbred past viability.
I might be OK with the film's lapse into fantasy and metaphor, but the characterization collapses as well. The new "woman" crew member seems to completely unable to resist or oppose the unwanted advances of the newly creepy would be rapist, nor to enroll the ship's AI in containing or stopping him. The other male crew member stops being a dynamic, forceful leader of a space expedition and turns into a lovesick, puppy-eyed dough-boy who can't or won't kick the butt of a baby-soft young guy with with no fighting experience. And the role of poor actor playing the "Christian" devolves into that of an utter creep, because apparently evangelism makes no provision for a moral or ethical foundation.
Some attempt is made to discuss issues such as gender roles, women's rights, genetics, manifest destiny, etc. They'd have been better off using bumper stickers.
In the end, this supposedly interplanetary ship becomes an interstellar ark (there's some hand waving about using the ship's "solar panels" to recharge the engines as the ship passes through various systems) and the ending is left ambiguous enough to leave room for a sequel. (Although how the sequel would provide anything for the surviving character to do is problematic).
The copy for the movie on Amazon Prime calls "Paradox Alice" "a cornerstone of a new wave of movies such as "Gravity". Don't believe this for a second. This movie is a incoherent mess that doesn't know what to do with the issues that it raises. The only good thing you can say about it is that the sets are decent, the actors look good (even O'Byrne as the fundamentalist), and the screenplay has a bit of fun when the characters argue with the ship's AI after the disaster and sex change bits.
Feh.
(Note: the rules are of course different for a space opera, or a fantasy, or a light-hearted adventure set in space. But the movie is presented as "hard" science fiction in the tradition of "The Expanse" or "Gravity")
Starting right out, "Paradox Alice" asks you to believe that one single tanker of water mined from a moon of Jupiter will be enough to make a difference to a world that has poisoned its oceans and aquifers. What's more, it asks you to believe that it is easier to create and launch interplanetary tanker ships with near-lightspeed engines than it is to figure out how to treat the water supply on the planet. (They could have fixed this with ONE line of dialog about the water on Europa having some special catalytic quality that would start a chain reaction that would fix the Earth's water supply or vastly dilute its toxicity).
OK, so mission accomplished, some reasonably decent scenes with the 4 person crew celebrating, relating to each other, and climbing into their life-support pods for the high-G trip back...and that's the last time anything in the film doesn't have me beating my head against the wall to distract from the the idiocy on screen.
The movie then asks you to believe that mankind's nuclear stockpiles are sufficient to vaporize the Earth AND pulverize the Moon. (In reality, the ecosystem might crumble to dust but the net effect would be similar to scraping the organic film off of a huge ball bearing). It asks you to believe that when the only female member of the crew is killed in the asteroid collision that follow, that one of the crew would then spontaneously mutate into a woman in response in an apparent attempt by our DNA to save the human race.
And apparently no one informed the film makers that two males and a female are not enough to re-establish a species. I think the magic number is actually around 200 members to establish a big enough genetic pool that the descendants are not hopelessly inbred past viability.
I might be OK with the film's lapse into fantasy and metaphor, but the characterization collapses as well. The new "woman" crew member seems to completely unable to resist or oppose the unwanted advances of the newly creepy would be rapist, nor to enroll the ship's AI in containing or stopping him. The other male crew member stops being a dynamic, forceful leader of a space expedition and turns into a lovesick, puppy-eyed dough-boy who can't or won't kick the butt of a baby-soft young guy with with no fighting experience. And the role of poor actor playing the "Christian" devolves into that of an utter creep, because apparently evangelism makes no provision for a moral or ethical foundation.
Some attempt is made to discuss issues such as gender roles, women's rights, genetics, manifest destiny, etc. They'd have been better off using bumper stickers.
In the end, this supposedly interplanetary ship becomes an interstellar ark (there's some hand waving about using the ship's "solar panels" to recharge the engines as the ship passes through various systems) and the ending is left ambiguous enough to leave room for a sequel. (Although how the sequel would provide anything for the surviving character to do is problematic).
The copy for the movie on Amazon Prime calls "Paradox Alice" "a cornerstone of a new wave of movies such as "Gravity". Don't believe this for a second. This movie is a incoherent mess that doesn't know what to do with the issues that it raises. The only good thing you can say about it is that the sets are decent, the actors look good (even O'Byrne as the fundamentalist), and the screenplay has a bit of fun when the characters argue with the ship's AI after the disaster and sex change bits.
Feh.