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| To Sam, Io is only an all text email |
I really thought Sam Walden (Margaret Qualley) and Micah (Anthony Mackie) would science the shit out of their predicament.
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Earth is no longer breathable
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| This is how you do research (library) at the end of the world |
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| Coming from the hot zone, wash off before entering the home. |
Earth’s atmosphere is deadly toxic. It is the supreme environmental message worth repeating time and again, our atmosphere is not so healthy right now.
So humanity has killed Earth. How? Why? What do we need to do? The solution doesn’t have to real. In a world as unlivable as the one Matt Damon got stranded in, I’d be very interested in hypothetical scenarios.
Why is the air toxic only below a certain altitude? Can breathable air be expanded? What are trees to the now toxic atmosphere? What happened to trees and vegetation (think air cycle)? What is breathing? How does the body process oxygen?
Sam was continuing her father’s experiments to adapt to the new Earth so her activities are naturally of absolute interest.
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| Does anyone know how to refill an oxygen tank? |
Doomsday Prep
I would have loved to see a DIY water purifier and hear Sam explain it. Micah had just arrived and he looked uneasy with the cloudy water. He looked as dumbfounded with a greenhouse, Sam can explain that too. A new partner would be good reason for exposition.
The world has basically ended but why is Micah looking at farming as a novel concept?
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| Notwithstanding the condiments why is he acting like he hasn't farmed himself a comparable supply |
Seeing Micah’s surprise I thought the story would go to a tangent on atmosphere and plants having opened to doors from the cloudy water shot. It did not.
There wasn't even a scene refilling those sorely needed oxygen tanks.
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| What is the flame test? |
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| Cloudy but safe to drink |
Retreat to Io
Mankind retreated under the Exodus program to a station off the orbit of the Jupiter moon Io. Harry Walden (Danny Huston), Sam’s father, made a public stand that he would remain, make a fight out of it. Earth is the only home humanity has ever known.
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| What are Sam's experiments on herself? |
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| What are the experiment with the bees? |
Sam was alone for one third of the film’s runtime, doing experiments, broadcasting recordings of her father over the radio.
She thinks she has an audience. She's fairly sure someone's listening even if there's no sign of them reaching out. One proof can be the fact that the Exodus program is still online ferrying passengers from Earth to Io.
It’s fair conclusion that Harry had no organization for supplies, intelligence gathering, research, defense, and no escape plan to Io should things fail.
Micah heard those broadcasts, but when he met Sam he never followed up on the work, never questioned in detail any experiment that Sam had lying around, never wondered if he could help. So what was the broadcast about?
Did people remain on Earth only to wait for Harry Walden to finish? Did people stay just to wait the crisis out?
Why didn't Sam do the same experiments the Micah in order to cement the partnership? Sadly there is a lot of science left unsaid. This is the most pitiful last stand for Earth ever written in movies.
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| Ms. Walden I presume. The movie never tells me these things. |
I’m in a Long Distance Relationship
Instead of talking progress or failure about the single most important endeavor known to man, Sam brought up having the longest distance relationship in history. She has a boyfriend named Elon (Tom Payne) who is on Io. They only connect by what amounts to email.
To my agony Micah accepted conversation by quoting Plato’s theory of human connection. Anthony Mackie is uninspiring when quoting philosophy, at least in a setup as bad as this.
Science has disappeared in the story with still one hour left. Sam’s solo 30 minutes was all science, her experiments and the fact that she’s living and well supplied. When Micah came it became about relationships and humanity’s search to feeling whole.
There were at least three other scenes that would emphasize the relationship angle but of them all what really cemented it was Sam writing a break-up letter that works outside of sci-fi. It’s not working she would say, they were looking for different worlds to call their own.
Is the movie an allegory of career minded people in relationships now?
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| Harry Walden speaking in what was a TV show's final broadcast |
TS Eliot Quote on Home
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Sam ended the movie quoting TS Eliot. Although it is consistent with what her father has long advocated, considering Micah's reference on Plato and other scenes that point to Sam's loneliness, the ending feels like it fragments the story more than it unifies.
Help from Screenanarchy
If it isn’t already obvious I have nothing good to say. Instead I’ll quote the last paragraph in a piece by Shelagh Rowan-Legg who seems to have enjoyed the movie, in order to have something nice in this entry.
A film that is both immediately relevant in its imagining of Earth’s future, and asking those questions we have asked since we sat around campfires in nothing but animals skins, Io is that rare science fiction film that asks us to look beyond aliens, spaceships, and technology, to ask what of the future for humans as individuals and community in how we connect and how we live beyond mere survival.
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| Removing science meant the story lost a of sense of urgency |
No. I disagree. Surviving the Earth of Sam and Micah is about science first. No reason not to have both connection and science, but since science was left behind, I think the movie failed.
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