A sound of thunder

Year of release : 2005

 

Run time : 1h36min

 

Genre : Sci Fi / Thriller

 

Cast : Ben Kingsley, Edward Burns, Catherine McCormack

 

The movie is based on Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story of the same name.

A team of scientists offer time travel trips to the very rich, as means to get the funding they need for their projects. In these time travel trips the rich kill the dinosaurs. Well, not really, they are told so, as they can't affect the time line, or we'll cease to exist.

I'm baffled that people like this could actually exist, people who want to hunt everything, even prehistoric animals.
Anyway, in one of their jumps, something goes wrong, and one traveler steps and kills one butterfly. That sole butterfly's death triggers time waves which change the future, starting first with the weather, hot for November in Chicago, then the plants, some poisonous and "alive", the animals - like aggressive monkeys with bulletproof skin, half monkeys half reptiles,sea monsters..then the humans, which turn into sea-like human creatures.

 

What I didn't understand was, why did the buildings still exist,since humans were wiped out of existence? Who built the buildings since the humans didn't exist to build them?

 

This was one of my favorite movies, and although I knew the visual effects were bad,last night when I watched it again,I noticed just how bad they really are.

I like the fact it's a movie which makes you think, although I do not believe in the evolution theory.

 

The acting was good,I felt Edward Burns didn't give 100%, but over all was good.

 

The visual effects at times were good but most times were bad, they look cartoonish. When they walk you can tell they are in front of the blue screen,and walk on a treadmill or something. Also,when they built the city around them,they made it small / big in comparison to them walking; the cars look fake..etc...

 

The movie has a good plot but not enough money for the visual effects which I think would have made it a lot better.

 

The movie was panned by critics who complained about the cheap visual effects, bad performances, scientific errors and inconsistent logic, and most of all the fact it doesn't resemble the source material.

On Rotten Tomatoes it only has a 6% score based on 98 reviews!

Cinema Score audiences gave it a D- on a A+ to F scale.

At the 2005 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the movie was nominated for Worst Director, Worst Supporting Actor for Ben Kingsley (I thought he was fine), Most Intrusive Musical Score ( I thought the soundtrack was fine), and Least "Special" Special Effects.

Apart from that, the movie was a box office flop, grossing only 11.7 million dollars against a budget of 80 million dollars.

The movie, in the works since 2001, was supposed to star Pierce Brosnan, who wanted a script re-write. It started shooting in 2002, in the Czech Republic, the visual effects taking 2 years to complete.

The movie has a video game based on it, released in March 2005, which is considered better than the movie itself.

Rating : Worth a watch !